APOD 3.6

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110226.html

This photograph shows ARP 227 (name from Halton Arp Catalogue of Galaxies, published by Caltech) Shell galaxies near the edge of Pisces, the Fish. It lies around 100 million light-years away from Earth. ARP 227 is made up of two prominent galaxies, NGC 474 and NGC 470. The 'shells' in 474 formed as density waves in a dynamically cold component (thick disk) during a flyby interaction with another galaxy. The field of view is 25 arc minutes.

Willem de Sitter

de Sitter was born in the Netherlands to Lamoraal Ulbo de Sitter and Catharine Theodore Wilhelmine Bertling, whose family had a rich tradition of strictly lawful professions. de Sitter rebelled with his love of mathematics and science. He studied at the University of Groningen, earning a degree in math and studying physics at the same time.  David Gill visited Kapteyn to discuss progress on the southern sky survey, and de Sitter met with him (with the help of a translator as his grasp of the English language was complete. After he recieved his Bachelor's degree, he began study at Cape Town with Gill. He worked at the Cape Observatory in South Africa for two years taking part in photometric and heliometer programmes. He submitted his thesis Discussion of Heliometer Observations of Jupiter's Satellites to the University of Groningen in 1901. He married  Eleonora Suermondt, a schoolteacher, and had a child with her in Cape Town. In 1913 de Sitter produced an argument based on observations of double star systems which proved that the velocity of light was independent of the velocity of the source. It put to rest attempts which had been made up until this time to find emission theories of light which depended on the velocity of the source but were not in conflict with experimental evidence. De Sitter asked "If no matter exists other than the test body, does it have inertia?"- this led to Arthur Eddignton's work on gravitation effect's on photons. de Sitter also refined the fundamental constants of astronomy, most notably ones concerning the composition of the Earth. He received the Watson Gold Medal. He died from pneumonia at sixty-two years.

Stargaze observations!

Time:7:30
Place: Pine View Service Road

Yesterday's stargaze was especially eventful as I brought both my mother and little sister with me to see the sky; neither of them have any astronomical background, but my mom was blown away by the experience! My little sister was also amazed at how much more you could see even just with binoculars. As the telescopes were having trouble, I spent quite an amount of time picking out stars from the chart and identifying them with my mom and sister, which I feel was very beneficial. I used Orion as a starting point (also because I knew the most about it.) The most exciting moment was identifying M42 in the binoculars- it was really, really pretty. It was the first time I was able to see an emission nebula with binoculars. Looking at Jupiter with the binoculars was quite difficult because of the unsteadiness of my hands, but through the telescope, I could see one of the lines of storms in the atmosphere.

Willem de Sitter Sources

"Sitter Biography." MacTutor History of Mathematics. Web. 20 Feb. 2011. <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Sitter.html>.

A. Blaauw, "Sitter, Willem de (1872-1934)," in Biographical Dictionary of the Netherlands .                          <http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn2/sitter> [13/03/2008]

Lipanovich, Charles. "de Sitter, Willem" The Columbia Encyclopedia. Morningside Heights, New York.             Columbia University Press. 1940.

APOD 3.5

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110215.html

Above, two different views of the North American Nebula rest neatly- the first showcases what is familiar to the human eye, and the second shows the view in infrared (whose primary source is energy). The North American Nebula (named for its resemblance to the continent in the visible spectrum) is a star-birthplace.As they form mostly in the dust regions, it has been difficult to see detail in the past. The Spitzer Space Telescope  took this image and is the final mission in NASA's Great Observatories program. The North American Nebula lies near Cygnus.

APOD 3.4- ODE TO THE SETI

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110206.html

O SETI! Mystery signal

 As those with egregious grey matter call you so

Life out there?

We broadcast 1's and 0's into space waiting

for a response that will only come in two many years for us to reach solvency

unless the laws of physics change

from space to Arecibo in Puerto Rico

the radio telescope of the people

like even those who have it, you seek life

1420 to 1660 MHz

water-hole

high-stakes high-reward

but still all chance

sitting and waiting with headphones and satellites

APOD 3.3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110128.html

The NanoSail-D is the first ever 100-sq-ft solar sail in low-earth orbit, deployed January 20th in Huntsville, Alabama. The image above is an artist representation. It is sponsored by the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation and Dynetics Inc. It's pretty interesting how the sail was deployed- it ejected itself! It had looked like it was going to be a failure until it spontaneously  ejected itself for reasons even the engineers don't fully understand. NanoSail-D is expected to return to Earth in 70-120 days. Its intended purpose is to clean up Earth's atmosphere. Solar sails have been featured in the science fiction of the past, and prominent comics make use of the sun's wind to further tales. Kepler was actually the first suggester of the sail, after observing comet tails affected by solar breeze. The radiation pressure on the sail is actually what it is largely powered by, moreso than the solar wind. 

Tuesday observations!

Time: 7-8 pm
Location: Venice, Fl

I dragged two chairs, a dog, and a father outside to observe the event of the night- an iridium flare! While the dog, Candee, was more interested in a random fruit rat than the sky, the father was quite curious as to why I dragged him outside. I had to explain both what an iridium flare was, what caused it, and the system of magnitudes, which was quite helpful in cementing knowledge. My dad found the system of magnitudes the most interesting. Locating where the flare would be involved identifying Orion and Sirius and making a triangle- I was a little bit to the left of where it actually was, but it was accurate enough! I will again complain about the trees blocking all of my view- when the flare started travelling we had to get up and run around the edge of my yard to get the trees out of our field of view just enough to see the end! This was the first flare I've seen (and my dad has not seen any either) so it was a pretty cool experience. The yellow-gold color was very majestic.