APOD 3.5

     Recently I was looking at the APOD titled "A Dark River to Antares". The dust in the picture makes the river look somewhat murky because it is obscuring the star light in the background. The star Antares creates a yellow reflection nebula even though it is actually a red super giant star. Above Antares is the star cluster M4 which is a actually located about 7,000 light years away. The entire dark river is actually areound 500 light years long.

Quarter 3 Bio Sources

Sciences, National Academy Of. 1877—1957 (n.d.): n. pag. Nasonline.org. Nasonline. Web.

"The Bruce Medalists: Henry Norris Russell." The Bruce Medalists: Henry Norris Russell. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.

APOD 3.5

     This is a picture of Neptune taken two hours before the closest approach of Voyager 2 in 1989. I chose this APOD because Neptune is my favorite planet and I feel that this picture captures just how massive the planet is. Neptune is made of mostly helium and hydrogen. Neptune has the fastest winds in the solar system and there are speculations that diamonds may be created in the dense hot conditions that are under the clouds of Neptune. 

APOD 3.4

     Recently I was looking at the APOD titled "M100: The Grand Design Spiral Galaxy". When you think of a galaxy what is the first picture that comes to mind? For me it would be a spiral galaxy just like this one shown. This Galaxy is one of the brightest Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. This picture was taken by the Hubble Space telescope in 2009 and it reveals clusters of blue stars and swirling dust lanes which are used to classify this as a spiral galaxy.

Stellar Nursery Links

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2409.html#.VNycTua-2m4


http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/baby-stars-are-ripping-their-stellar-nursery-to-shreds-140702.htm


http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_643.html


http://www.space.com/18988-stellar-nursery-ngc-3603.html


https://www.sciencenews.org/article/stellar-nursery-gives-birth-quadruplets

http://www.space.com/21142-orion-constellation-s-blazing-dust-band-holds-stellar-nurseries-video.html

Observation Post quarter 3.1

    On January 31st I was in Lake land and I happened to look up at the sky. The moon was at a waxing gibbous at the time so that I could not see many stars, however the clouds around the moon seemed to have formed a perfect circle around it. Also while observing this phenomena I happened to also see a shooting star. I also saw the full moon on February 3rd.

APOD 3.3

 
     Even though it is called the sombrero galaxy I personally believe that it looks more like a UFO. M 104 the sombrero galaxy is famous for its ring that seems to be edge on. The picture above was taken by the Hubble Space telescope and was reprocessed so that the color would show up to make it seem natural. This galaxy can be seen across the spectrum and many believe that it has a black hole in its center which spans about 50,000 light years across. This galaxy is one of the largest galaxies that is located at the southern end of the Virgo galaxy cluster.