Observations from last weekend

Location: UCF
Time: Around 12 am

I was graced to be given a tour of the winter sky by one of your ex-astronomy students, Ron Pekarski! We started from Sirius, the brightest star of the winter sky. Even looking through stadium lights you could still clearly see the bright star clear as day (/night I guess). We walked all along the campus, so I could see the sky at various magnitudes throughout the night. The most obvious constellation was Orion in the sky, and his pretty cool dog. Orion's belt includes Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.The most interesting information he passed on was how to tell the time of night from the moon, based on phase and season. It's so logical, but something I would have never connected! I really hope I retain as much information as he has after your class is over. It was really cool to see the information being used.

APOD 2.4

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101118.html

This image depicts the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) and space dust in the same sky.The Pleiades is known for its Blue Reflection Nebula. The 'reflection' in this nebula is caused by dust grains, which scatter light particles with short wavelengths (hence the blue!). The mythology of the Pleiades (super short version) goes as hence; The great hunter Orion saw the Pleiades walking through the countryside with their mother and wanted them, so he pursued them for seven years. They prayed to Zeus for delivery from the hunt and he turned them into birds and put them into the sky. Then when Orion was killed, he too was placed in the sky, near them so the chase would continue forever. This picture of Taurus has the Pleiades in the upper left. The photo also includes M45, LBN777, Vdb27 FSQ 106EDX,  and STL11000M. The image was created as a 5 shot combination. 

APOD 2.3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101110.html

The Fermi gamma ray space telescope (GLAST- I <3 acronyms) has collected data recentley that indicates the previously unknown fact that our very own Milky Way Galaxy has large gamma-ray emitting bubbles in or near the galactic center (probably about 50 degrees above and below, says one astrophysics site). There are two bubbles that emit both x-rays and gamma rays. The cause of the bubbles in currently a mystery! Guesses include AGN activity or Bipolar galactic wind.

Tuesday Stargaze!

Location: Blackburn Point
Time: 6:30-8:00

First we took a gander at the moon, which was amazingly bright and in crescent form. Through the telescope the detailed rocks and craters were absolutely stunning. Right next to the moon was Sagittarius. Tonight we observed many double stars, including Polaris, which has a companion star of 7 magnitudes difference at 10:30 if it were a clock. According to the video we watched today, something like 60% of stars have companion star, which interestingly makes our own sun an anomaly. The Square of Pegasus was a good starting point to observe the other constellations in the fall sky, as pointed out by trusty green laser pointer, or TGLP. TGLP also showed us some deep sky objects, which were semi-visible with binoculars, but moreso in the telescope. We viewed M11, the wild duck cluster, which is an open cluster. I also saw M57, M27, and M13. My favorite was the ring nebula, whose distinct shape made it really cool to look at. I also observed Jupiter through the telescope; besides the four Galileon moons (which were awesome) you could see the weather bands of Jupiter. I also participated in the Great World Wide Star Count!(http://windows2universe.org/citizen_science/starcount/steps.html) We determined that tonight Cygnus had a limiting magnitude of 5, and I reported the data online. Yay data!

APOD 2.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101101.html

This is a shot from Réunion island, which is a French island east of Madagascar. The wikipedia says the Furcifer Padalis(Panther Chameleon) is one of the native species, so here is a picture of that. Pretty cool, right? It's a chameleon.

But back to the first picture. The volcano in the foreground is the Piton de la Fournaise (Peak of the Furnace in English). It is one of the world's most active volcanoes and a major tourist attraction on the island. Last month, it started an eruption.

Hot lava bombs, which are masses of volcanic rock, were spewed up to 10 meters in the air. Luc Perrot, who also made this really cool 3-D model (http://www.lucperrot.fr/?multimedia/eruption_volcan_vr), captured it on film whilst the Milky Way, our galaxy, was visible. The stellar disk of the milky way is 100,000 lightyears. The Pleiades is also visible, which is a famous open star cluster. Also visible is Orion the Hunter and its star Alpha Canis Majoris, or Sirius.

APOD 2.1

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap101028.html

Happy late Halloween! There is not much supernatural about Mirach's Ghost (as far as we know); it is a dwarf lenticular galaxy, which is a galaxy with a central bulge and disk, but no spiral arms, of type S0. The galaxy lies in the constellation Andromeda which is to the south of Cassiopeia. Although bright (10.1 visual magnitude), it is difficult to observe because of the glare from Mirach, one of Andromeda's 3 brightest stars and a red giant. There are a high proportion of red giants (stars with low surface temperature and tenuous surface tension) within the galaxy. Mirach's ghost is centered in the star field. Diffraction strike tends to dillute most earth-shot images.