Apod 2.7

 

     Recently I was looking at the APOD titled "Geminis Fireball over Mount Balang". A few days ago there was a geminid meteor shower that was visible in the night sky. During this shower this amazing picture was captured that shows a meteor descending right over Mount Balang In China. This fireball was actually just a pebble that had intercepted with earth's atmosphere and it only flashed for a fraction of a second. In the background of the picture one can see the three stars that make up Orion's belt. The star Sirius is also visible near the center of the picture as well.

APOD 2.6

     I was looking at the APOD labed Moondog Night. I had prior knowledge of sundogs but moondogs were something that I have never seen before. The picture shows what seems to be an explosion in the night sky when in reality it is actually just a moondog. These moondogs are created when the moonlight is refracted through hexagonal shaped crystals in cirrus clouds. The lower the moon the fainter the moondog. The moon dog in the picture only lasted ten minutes until it had faded into the night sky.

APOD 2.5

     Today I was looking at the APOD titled Sharpless 249 and the Jellyfish Nebula. This nebula is usually very faint and hard to see, however this picture seemed to capture it perfectly. This nebula has a neuron star and the debris cloud is expanding after the explosion of a massive star. It blows my mind that such a nice picture of this nebula could be taken despite the fact that it is 5,000 light years away. I am also surprised by how much it actually looks like a jellyfish.

APOD 2.4

     Recently i was looking at the APOD titled LDN 988: A Dark Nebula in Cygnus. This APOD stuck out to me because it never occurred to me that star fields actally that many stars. That was something that completely blew my mind when I first looked at it. All of the stars look like tiny pebbles on the ground, almost like sand. This APOd focuses on the nebula pointed out in the picture. It is sometimes called the North Coalsack and is associated with many young stars. Another reason that I picked this APOD was because it has to do with the constellation Cygnus which we had learned of in class. 

APOD 2.3

     I was recently looking at the APOD titled "Descent to a Comet". It is about the first landing of the lander Philae on a comet which is also the first landing ever. This is history and it has taken that lander around ten years to get to where it is now. Despite the fact that the lander's harpoon did not fire, it was still able to land successfully and will conduct its mission for 2.5 days and bring back images and data to the Earth. The lander Philae is able to maintain battery life because it is fitted with extensive solar panels that charge it and allow it to function properly.

APOD 2.2

     
    This week I was looking at the the APOD labeled "NGC 4762: A Galaxy On the Edge" The line on this picture is actually the edge of a disk galaxy. This picture was a perfect photo to show how thin some galaxies are and how they may be hard to classify. Many other Galaxies can be seen in this picture as well. Also the Milky Way Galaxy is though to be as thin as this galaxy. Even though it appears to be thin this galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter.

Great World Wide Star Count

     Recently I participated in the Great World Wide Star Count. I was asked to observe the constellation Cygnus. I was barley able to do so and I found out that the limiting magnitude of the sky outside my house is around 3 on the chart.  If I was closer to a town it would have been harder to see the constellation and if I was farther it would have been easier to see. I can see over a hundred more stars after looking at the sky for fifteen minutes than looking the stars right when I walk out of my house. This is because it takes time for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

APOD 2.1

     Today I was looking at the APOD titled "Milky Way over Devil's Tower". This APOD is fitting for today because it is Halloween. It shows the Milky Way and clusters of stars over the strange formation known as the Devils Tower. One can actually see Pluto in this formation of the Milky Way as well. Not only is this picture fitting for today, it is actually also very beautiful as the milky way seems to look like a rainbow over the formation. This a very cool panoramic picture.

Observation 1.3

     On the night of October 7th I observed the full moon. It was too bright to see many other stars though. On October 8th morning i attempted to see the lunar eclipse but weather conditions were not ideal and the clouds blocked the moon. On the night of October 8th however, the sky cleared up a bit and I was able to observe some stars and attempted to label them in constellations but many stars were not visible due to the brightness of the sky and I was unable to do so successfully.

Observation 1.2

     On October 1st I went outside to observe the moon. About two fist lengths away from the moon to the west mars was visible and so was the star Antares. Both of these stars appeared somewhat reddish. I was not able to see the constellation of Scorpius however because it was too bright outside to see all of its stars.

APOD 1.8

     I was recently looking through the APODs when i saw this one titled "Eclipse at Moonrise". This is yet another APOD dedicated to the total blood moon eclipse that occurred on  October 8th. However this is my first time seeing a picture of the composite time exposure of the moon rising making it look like it is leaving behind a trail. This picture shows how the moon rises in the sky and with the lights of the city of Chongquin the moon seems to be the only object in the night sky allowing views to focus on it.

James Gregory Biography

      James Gregory Biography

            James Gregory was a Scottish mathematician who was born in the village of Drumoak, Scotland in 1638. He was a very sickly child, therefore he was homeschooled and taught by his mother and later his uncle, who was a student of Viete; a French mathematician. This might have been where he got his thirst for mathematics. While homeschooled James Gregory learned many core subjects including the little known subject of geometry. In 1651 Gregory’s father passed away and Gregory was sent to attend grammar school in Aberdeen, he later went on to study at the Marischal College in 1662.

            After college Gregory traveled to London, there he published his first work called Optica promota (1663). In it he suggested that telescopes would be more effective if they used concave mirrors. Newton later used this idea in his studies without giving credit to Gregory. This paper also added on to Kepler’s description of the telescope. The telescope that Gregory had described is known as the Gregorian telescope. Unfortunately Gregory was not able to secure a job in London and moved to Italy where he continued his research. While in Italy he published Vera circuli et hyperbolae quadrature (1667), and Geometriae pars universalis (1668). This explained how to find the area of a circle or hyperbola. It also focused of convergent and divergent series which later became the foundation for calculus.

            At age 30 Gregory was in London once again where he was elected into the royal society and became chairman of mathematics for St. Andrew’s College in Scotland. Upon returning to Scotland Gregory married widow Mary Jamesome in 1669 and had two daughters and a son with her. James Gregory was not satisfied with the curriculum at St. Andrew’s however his efforts to change it were in vain as the Governing Board of the college refused to allow any changes in the curriculum. Gregory was not the only one who was dissatisfied with the curriculum as students revolted against the administration. During this Gregory was in London again attempting to start up the first public observatory in Britain at St. Andrew’s. The administration decided to blame Gregory for the student revolt and punished Gregory by not giving him his salary.

Luckily for Gregory he was soon offered a job at Edinburg University to be chairman of mathematics there. He did not publish any papers while at Edinburg but he did relate to John Collins an English mathematician the important results of the infinite series (a series that is used in calculus).He also worked with various colleagues in Paris to predict the occurrence of a lunar eclipse. It was here that Gregory was able to predict longitude for the first time.

  However he soon died. Gregory was showing his students the moons of Jupiter when he suffered a stroke and was blinded. A few days later he died.  Many of his unpublished papers stayed hidden until they were published in 1939. In these documents he discovered the interpolation formula and binomial theorem before Newton did. He also discovered Taylor expansion a full forty years before Taylor. He also solved Kepler’s problem of how to divide a semicircle through its diameter and gave the earliest example of a comparison test for convergence. If James Gregory was able to publish those papers he would have been seen as one of the greatest intellectuals and mathematicians of his time.  

APOD 1.7

     Today I was observing the APOD 1.7 titled "The Moons at Opposition". This is a remarkable picture because it not only got the moon at its eclipse but it also was able to get the planet Uranus and its moons which were at opposition with the moon at that time. Even though Uranus is somewhat faint and its moons fainter still, the photographer was still able to get a picture of it and was able to label them for us. It is very impressive that we can even see the planet Uranus from the Earth at all because it is far away, this gives us an idea of just how big Uranus really is, after all it is an ice giant.

APOD 1.6

     Recently I was looking at the APOD from October 2nd called the Bubble Nebula. Based on the picture of the Nebula this really does look like either a bubble or a marble. This nebula spans over ten light years and even though it looks peaceful it is actually a place of rough stellar wind and radiation. The center of this nebula is an O star which is over 45 times as massive as our star. It is amazing how detailed this picture is of the Nebula. This is from the hydrogen and oxygen around the nebula which is used to create the red and blue images in the nebula.

Biographical References

"Gregory (More Correctly Gregorie), James." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. Print.

Simpson. "James Gregory and the Reflecting Telescope." Journal for the History of Astronomy (1992): n. pag. Web.

APOD 1.5

I was recently looking at the APOD titled The Lagoon Nebula in Stars Dust and Gas. This is a nebula that is so big that it can actually be seen without a telescope near the constellation Sagittarius. This nebula is M8 and spans a distance of 100 light years across. This is cool because M8 was the first nebula that we learned about in our constellation quizzes. In the center of the nebula is a knot of gas which is known as the hourglass nebula.

Observation 1.1

     Lately I have been looking up at the sky more often attempting to label the phase of the moon and the constellations that I could see above. From September 12th I took note that the moon was a waning gibbous that slightly seemed to get smaller and smaller as the days went on. September 16th was the day that the moon reached its third quarter phase and Today September 19th the moon is at its waning crescent phase. I also noticed that the moon seemed to be shifting a little bit to the east every day getting closer to the sun.

APOD 1.4

     Today I was looking at the APOD from September 14th 2014. This is M27 also known as The Dumbbell Nebula. This APOD stood out to me in particular because we just had a constellation quiz and M27 was near the constellation of Vulpecula (fox). I was surprised to learn that this Nebula is a representation of what our Sun will look like in about five billion years. The Dumbbell Nebula is known as a planetary Nebula and is the outcome of what happens when a star stops undergoing nuclear fission in its core. I was also impressed that the colors shown above were from a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.

APOD 1.3

   

  Today i was looking at the APOD titled Super Nova Remnant Puppis A. It is incredible that the explosion is now over a light year in diameter which is a huge distance. The x ray imaging of the super nova shows an array of colors which looks absolutely beautiful in the picture. It is amazing how the light from the super nova should have reached Earth 3,700 years ago yet it is still appearing bright in the x ray imaging today. This shows how powerful these super novas are when a star's core collapses. These super novas are only one example of how this universe actually works. 

APOD 1.2

     Today I looked at the APOD from September 3. It was called M6: The Butterfly Cluster. This is a nebula that seems to resemble a butterfly. It is near the constellation of Scorpius and can actually be seen with binoculars of a clear dark night. Like most clusters it is composed of mostly blue stars however this cluster's brightest star is an orange star that is over 100 million years old! M6 is an important cluster because it is used by many astrologists to calibrate the distance scale of the universe. It is amazing how such things can naturally exist outside of our world. 

APOD 1.1

     Recently I was looking at the APOD titled Venus and Jupiter at Dawn from August 21 2014. It blows my mind that we can see both Venus and Jupiter from here on Earth. It surprised me at first when I realized that Venus seemed to be bigger and brighter in the sky but I later came to the conclusion that it was this way because Venus is closer to Earth than Jupiter. The planets were at their closest conjunction since 2000.  I never expected to be able to see Jupiter from Earth. Im surprised that Jupiter looked so big even though it is so far away from Earth. It blows my mind how big Jupiter must be in order to appear that size from Earth.