Zooniverse 1!

So I've been working on a few of the projects. The first one was the Milky Way Project. It was full at first, but I refreshed enough so I got to be a part of it. One image that showed up was very interesting because there seemed to be waves in a bubble I found. I put that up on the discussion page, and I hope someone replies. While the Milky Way Project is the prettiest looking project, I also worked on PlanetHunters, which might be the favorite, and most exciting; finding a planet is probably one of the coolest things I can think of. I analyzed quite a few star and found some promising abnormalities, so I flagged those. Lastly, I worked on Old Weather for the fun of it, and also because I owe it to people- I've been making people squint to read my writing for 17 years now! I now know what the weather was like at a few Southern ports in the 1600's.

APOD 4.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110408.html

I was quite excited when I saw the link to a science fiction book about the journey to the center of a red star, which I would most definitely read, then sad to see it was only about Earth(classic still, but how cool would the other one be?). Asteroseismology, besides having the best name, is the study of planetary oscillations/starquakes.  The study works similar to the way seismology works on Earth, which is that quakes are used as a peak into what's actually beneath. Stellar masses and radii can be determined to a high degree of precision using this method. The Kepler spacecraft is used to take measurements; this is the same spacecraft that has located 1,235 candidate planets orbiting other suns. The oscillations are measured like sound waves (compressions) and they can indicate hydrogen and helium fusion taking place.

APOD 4.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110405.html

We are here, in the Milky Way. This galaxy is a spiral galaxy consisting of over 400 billion stars. We are quite a bit away from the Galactic Center(which is where the nuclear bulge is) in the Orion-Cygnus Arm. There are two other types of galaxies, elliptical and irregular(cosmic misfits). There's only one irregular galaxy documented, which is M82, The Cigar Galaxy in Ursa major. We are inside the disk of the Milky Way. This picture shows the waxing moon under the dramatic arch of the milky way.

Observations on a colorful night

            So whilst stressing about my AP Chem mock, I opened the window in my room and glory behold a mix of pink and purple. I ran outside with my dog, and only a small portion of the sky was affected by the Rayleigh scattering that had produced such a pretty mix (I would say royal purple and tropical pink, if I had to name them something that was also in my nail polish collection,). It was an odd segmentation, as the rest of the sky was the same dreary blue as today's storm. But it was very beautiful, and if I had a camera, I would have taken a shot. It's the sunsets like these that make me think about how beautiful the Florida sky is, and how sunsets at the beach are going to be something I miss at college. I feel like a lucky person tonight for seeing the sky in the midst of its change, when it looked even more like watercolor than usual.