Observing 1/30/11

Tonight, I looked up at the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 8:00 pm.  I didn't see the moon from where I was at this time, but it is approaching its new moon phase.  I did see a couple of bright stars though.  I could make out the four stars of the Pegasus constellation in the southeast portion of the sky.  To the left of the constellation, I think I saw the planet Jupiter, shining brightly.

APOD 3.2

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Hidden Treasures Of M78, uploaded on January 27, 2011.  It is a picture of the constellation Orion, containing the nebula called M78.  This picture of M78 was actually the winner of the Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography competition.  This picture is of a constellation that is 1,600 light years away, and is not hiding in planet Earth's night sky.


The Hidden Treasures competition in 2010, held by the European Southern Observatory, was when astrophotography pictures were taken of cosmic gems for a competition.  The winner was this picture of the bluish nebula surrounded by dusty, dark clouds.  At the top of the photo, there is a smaller reflection of NGC 2071.  In the lower right of the picture, the recently discovered McNeil's nebula is seen.  The whole image spans a little over 0.5 degrees in the sky, correlating to the 15 light years estimated distance of M78.

Observation 1/22/11

Tonight I went out and looked at the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 10:00 pm.  I saw the moon low in the eastern sky.  It just passed its full moon phase, so it is now in its waning gibbous phase and about 90 percent of it is illuminated.  From where I was, I couldn't see very many stars, so wasn't able to make out any major constellations.

APOD 3.1

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Saturn Storm, uploaded on January 19, 2011.  It is a picture of an unusually bright storm erupting on Saturn, taken by the Cassini spacecraft with a blue filter.


The storm first erupted late last year in the gas giant's northern hemisphere.  Saturn's rings are also seen in the photo, casting shadows on the planet's southern hemisphere.  First spotted in early December, Saturn could be seen rising in our predawn sky.  While the Cassini spacecraft was orbiting Saturn, it was able to capture this up close look at the disturbance area.  It was taken on December 24, 2010, 1.8 million kilometers away from the planet.  As time went on , the storm evolved and and it has grown to stretch partway around the planet.  By January 5, 2011, it spanned more than 100 degrees of longitude.  The main part of the disturbance is half the size of earth, but with the tail included, the whole eruption is 36,000 miles long.

Observation 1/12/11

Tonight, I went out and looked up at the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 7:20 pm.  I didn't see any stars or planets tonight, but i saw the moon when I looked in the south western portion of the sky.  About 50% of the moon is illuminated.  It is in its first quarter phase tonight.

Sun Photos

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Quarter 2 Biography: James South

Gabrielle Pata

Period 1

10 January 2011

                       

James South

            James South was a British astronomer who was born in Southwark, London, England in October of 1785.  He died at Campden Hill, Kensington, London, on October 19, 1867.   South grew up as a son of a pharmaceutical chemist.  He originally studied surgery, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and he acquired an extensive practice when, through marriage in 1816, he suddenly became wealthy enough to get into studies involving medicine.  James South started devoting much of his time to astronomy at this time.  He established many observatories in London and Paris, where he worked with many good telescopes.

            South worked in collaboration with another astronomer, John Herschel, during the years of 1821 to 1823.  John Herschel was lucky enough to find a collaborator like James South, who could afford the refined instruments that were necessary. Double stars, which were originally discovered by Herschel, were one of South's interests during the nineteenth century.  Together, they produced a catalogue of 380 double stars in 1824.  New ones were being found and more precise measurements were made with each improvement in telescopes.   The main purpose of their studies of double stars was to detect position changes.  They helped verify the newly discovered orbital motion of certain neighboring stars, and they went on to catalog 380 double stars.  They showed them to the Royal Society in 1824, and they were given the gold medal of the Astronomical Society and the grand prize of the Institut de France.  By doing this, they were revisiting quite a few of the double stars that William Herschel had discovered.  Over the course of the next year, South went on to discover another 458 double stars.  South was then awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for the founding of this next group of stars. 

             South became greatly worried about the decline of science in Britain.  So, he published a criticism of the Nautical Almanac in 1822, alleging its inferiority to continental ones.  Then, in 1829, when he was in charge of the Astronomical Society committee, he publicly criticized the Royal Society.  He was trying to improve the effectiveness of the institutions, but it did no good. 

            During the late 1820s and 1830s, South did much of his astronomical work.  In 1826, James South won the Copley Medal.  Later on in that same year he won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.  Due to a technicality in 1831, he left the organization.  South then became knighted in the year of 1831. He also became a part of the Royal Society of London, the Linnaean Society, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Academy of Sciences, and the Academia Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitana.  He then had craters on Mars and the Moon named after him.  Beginning in 1826, South had plans for a bigger telescope, which would be an equatorially mounted achromatic refracting lens telescope in a brand new observatory.  He got a 12 inch lens from Paris, and it was so big that it most likely was the biggest achromatic object in the world in its time.  South completed building the telescope, but it was destroyed in 1838.  The problem was the equatorial mount, which caused the telescope to become dismantled.  James helped found the Astronomical Society of London.  He was president of the society from 1831 to 1832.  Under his presidency of the group, a petition was successfully submitted to have a royal charter in 1831, upon which the society became called the Royal Astronomical Society. 

            South got involved in a famous lawsuit brought against Edward Troughton, who was the instrument maker.  The problem was over the equatorial-mount telescope that Troughton had built for him, which had been thought to be defective by South.  So, Edward sued  him and ended up winning.  James destroyed the telescope mount, while the lens was saved and given to the Dublin Observatory in 1862.  They mounted it on a Grubb equatorial, where it still stands today.  After Stephen Groombridge, James was the next owner of the Troughton made, Groombridge Transit Circle of 1806.

Observation 1/8/10

Tonight, I went out to look up at the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 7:45 pm.  I saw the moon in the western portion of the sky, and the bottom fifth of it was illuminated.  The moon is in its waxing crescent phase.   A little further south from the moon in the sky was Venus, shining brightly.  I could see a couple stars, but not enough to make out any constellations.

APOD 2.8

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Sunset, Moonset, uploaded on January 7.  It is a snowy picture taken from central and northern Asia on January 4.


On this day, the New Moon and the sun set together in a partial solar eclipse.  A partial eclipse is when the Moon's penumbra strikes Earth.  Only part of the sun is in an eclipse, so the un-eclipsed part of the sun is still dangerous to look at.  More partial solar eclipses happen than total solar eclipses.  The picture was taken on the bank of Berd River, which is near Novosibirsk in Siberia, Russia.  In the photo, the eclipse is in its maximum phase, right around sunset.  It looks like the cold scene is set in the western horizon.  Aside from the sun and the New Moon setting, there seems to be smoke and an airplane trail in the sky.  This eclipse in Asia was one of the first eclipses of the new year.  The eclipse was technically visible from Europe to North Africa, and Middle East and Central Asia.

Works Cited (Astronomer Sources)

James South." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia

   Britannica, 2011. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/555540/James-South>.

"James South." VisWiki. VisWiki.com. Web. 5 Jan. 2011. <http://www.viswiki.com/en/James_South>.

"South, James." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 12. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 551-552. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Jan. 2011. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE %7CCX2830904092&v=2.1&u=fl_sarhs&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w>