APOD 4.8

Monday marked a celebratory event: the first sunspots of 2013! Found in the active region AR1748, four sunspots surged within the span of under 48 hours, (going clockwise from the left, the four were documented in extreme ultraviolet, captured at the Solar Dynamics Observatory). Sunspots are ranked by peak brightness in the X-Ray spectrum, with X-class flares typically acting as a prelude to a coronal mass ejection. Three of the four did reach this point, but were not aimed at Earth; the fourth might just braze Earth's magnetic field and disrupt a few radio broadcasts. But this region isn't done yet, likely having a few more flares up its sleeve for later in the year.

Jan H Oort Biography

In the year 1900, on April 28th, Jan H Oort was born in Franker, Friesland, the Dutch province. He later grew up to study in the city of Groningen alongside Jacobus Kapteyn, with a Ph D thesis titles "Stars with High Velocity".

In 1924, Oort discovered the galactic halo, the clusters of stars outside the disk of the Milky Way. By 1927, Oort provided evidence of Bertil Linndblad's theory of the Milk Way's rotation through close observation of the stars; as well as calculating the centre of the Milky Way being at 5 900 parsecs in the direction of Sagittarius.

1932 marked the first proof of dark matter, provided by Oort. He resolved that the mass of the universe cannot be made up of all mass we can see; there must be more than that. The mass of the Milky Way is 100 billion times that of the sun, and not all of that is evidently visible in the disk. His studies of star motion further proved his point.

In the solar system, there is a home to comets that was hypothesised by Oort, and has been dubbed the Oort Cloud following its discovery. The spherical cloud is primarily composed of ices--water, ammonia, and methane. It lies roughly a light-year from the sun.

He discovered polarised light from the Crab Nebula, seen through a synchrotron spectrum.

Among his awards and honours are the Bruce Medal, The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Karl Schwarzchild Medal, and the Balzan Prize.

When Oort passed on November 5th, 1992, the renowned astrophysist Subrahmanyan Chandreskhar said "The great oak of Astronomy has felled, and we are lost without its shadow."

APOD 4.7

In October of 1604, the famed astronomer Johannes Kepler saw a supernova before his very eyes; this namesake stuck to the remnant. While this explosion of celestial wonder baffled the olden times astronomer and his contemporaries, modern day astronomers are taking advantage of their technological advantage and looking at the nebula in all spectra. This photograph in particular shows the false coloured X-Ray image of it. The cause of this supernova has been deemed a white dwarf in a mass transfer system with a red giant, its binary partner who aided the former star in exceeding Chandrasekhar's limit.

APOD 4.6

From the Stone Tree--known also as Roque Cinchado--situated on the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife, the central band of the Milky Way can be seen arcing across the sky. With this cooled volcanic formation to the left, the right displays several gems of the summer sky.

APOD 4.5

25 ultraviolet images later, this photo of our vary own sun was produced courtesy of the Solar Dynamics Observatory. In this particular wavelength of the extreme ultraviolet--known as 171 angstroms--the highly ionized iron in the sun's corona can be pinpointed, capturing the distinct characteristic of 600 000 Kelvin temperatures. While the sunspots are not as easily seen in this image as they are in most visible light spectrum photographs, the nature of the sun's unequal magnetic field can be well noted, especially in the band around the solar equator.

APOD 4.4

Within Orion dwells the stellar masterpiece of the Horsehead Nebula, also known on Messier list as M42 and on as Barnard 33 in other catalogues. In honour of the Hubble's 23rd anniversary up in space, this photograph as taken in the infrared spectrum to showcase the magnificent emission nebula typically outshined by Sigma Orionis. We have a good few million years to marvel over this spectacle about 1 500 light-years away, for after that the high energy starlight will destroy this formation; or, more optimistically, sculpt it into something new!

APOD 4.3

What really matters is what's in the soul; and in that of the Queen Aethopia there are many stars forming. While Cassiopeia is, in mythology, scorned for her vanity, her stellar counterpart houses many open clusters in IC 1848, featuring a handful of open clusters, the radio force of W5, and bubbles formed from the winds of forming stars. This soul spans about 1000 light-years, sitting about 6500 light-years away next to its photogenic companion, the Heart Nebula.

Jan H. Oort Sources

"The Bruce Medalists: Jan H. Oort." The Bruce Medalists: Jan H. Oort. 05 May 2012. Web. 22 May 2012. <http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/brucemedalists/oort/>.

"ESA - Space Science - Jan Hendrik Oort: Comet Pioneer." ESA - Space Science - Jan Hendrik Oort: Comet Pioneer. European Space Agency, 27 Feb. 2004. Web. 22 May 2012. <http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMBPC2PGQD_index_0.html>.

Noble Wilford, John. "Jan H Oort, Dutch Astronomer In Forefront of Field , Dies at 92" The New York Times, 12 November 1992. <http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/12/us/jan-h-oort-dutch-astronomer-in-forefront-of-field-dies-at-92.html>

APOD 4.2

Oops! Messier Moment! In this photograph taken in a field adjacent to Tänndalen, Sweden, the comet PanSTARRS soars through the northern skies, brightness rivaling that of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Thus the two are both seen bright in the sky, along with the double cluster h and chi Persei along the Milky Way, which can be used as a guide to the aplha star of Cygnus, Deneb. 

APOD 4.1

Rainbows might be a common occurance, but this tourist is acting a little different than most of the native rainbows of Paris. High in the sky resides the sun, which is always opposite the centre of the rainbow. Since it is also raining, the high beams reflect off the drops, making the rainbow unusually low, with only the top seen due to the rest hiding below the horizon. This rainbow only stuck around for a few minutes, but one observer managed to snap a photo of it before it vanished.

George E Hale Biography

Born on June 29th, 1868, George Ellery Hale began his life in the then budding city of Chicago, the son of a wealthy businessman. His parents frequently doted on their son, tending to his sicknesses in fear he would end up as his siblings did: dead during infancy. Hale survived these plights, and soon after entered the world of astronomy. He asked for a telescope at 14 to watch Venus pass between the Sun and the Earth; from then on his interest of the heavens expanded just as the universe does.

His education is flavoured with a few of the most reputed universites--MIT, Observatory of Harvard College, along with abroad studies in Berlin--which is where his interests centred on the sun. While still at MIT, Hale invented the spectrohelioscope, subsequently discovering solar vortices. With the use of the Zeeman effect, he established in 1908 that sunspots were a result of magnetism.

After this discovery, Hale found that the sun had an east-west magnetic alignment, mirror symmetry exhibited across the equator, and the changing of polarity of the sun's hemispheres orientations over the course of sunspot cycles. The systematic properties of sunspot magnetism are now known as "Hale's Law".

In 1890, he acted as the director of the Kenwood Astrophysical Observatory, only for him to then become a professor of Astrophysics at Benoit College for the next two years. He was an associate professor at the University of Chicago until 1897, when he became a full professor and worked until 1905. He coedited the book Astronomy and Astrophysics and edited the Astronomical Journal. Between 1921 and 1923, he served on the board of trustees in the Society for Science and the Puiblic.

Hale was an influence to both Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble, hiring them while he worked at Mount Wilson (he also worked at Yerkes, Palomar, and his own Pasadena workshop Hale Solar Laboratory). He developed the California Institute of Technology into a leading research college as well as founded a multitde of institutions. Despite his keen organisational skills and unrelenting ambition, he suffered from both neurological and psychological problems, including insomnia, headaches, and schizophrenia (one of his most reoccurant hallucinations was of a little elf who acted as his advisor). While director at Mount Wilson, he would take large spans of time off to be secluded at his Maine sanatorium, which led to his eventual resignation.

Of the many awards he won, the most note worthy are the Henry Draper Medal (1908), the Bruce Award (1916), and the Copley Medal (1932). He passed away in Pasadena at the age of 69 on the 21st of February, 1938.

APOD 3.8

This is a helmet big enough for a god alright! This nebula--commonly known as "Thor's Helemt" (for the Norse God of Thunder)--spans 30 light-years across, large enough for any omnipotent head; however it isn't made of steel but molecular cloud, blowing away from the Wolf-Rayet star as it enters pre-supernova stages. NGC 2359 sits 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The blue colour comes from the emission of oxygen gas within the cloud, which makes it an even more stylish piece of headgear for any Avenger.

APOD 3.7

From the MESSENGER space craft comes this stunning image of Mercury, coloured by the mineral, chemical, and physical features of the land which, for the most part, escape the human eye. The Coloris Basin, an indent from a comet or asteriod from the early years of the solar system, is the prominent tan circle in the upper right. The basin, long ago, was filled with lava, its formation similar to that of a lunar marina. The blue and white regions are from more recent impacts, the rays of the remanents emitting the odd colour.

Lemon Slice Nebula

 
Located in the circumpolar constellation Camelopardalis, IC 3568 is a fairly simple planetary nebula with a tasty name: the Lemon Slice Nebula.

Why is it it called that?

Because it looks like a giant lemon slice floating in the sky, thanks to its uniform spread. The morpohlogy is nearly perfectly sphereical, with a hot super giant in the centre expelling mass, thus creating the lemon slice and what I call 'freshly squeezed juice drops' in a halo around it.

It is a young nebula with only a diameter of .4 light-years, although it dwells about 4500 light years away.

It is about 7.5 degrees away from the North Star currently known as Polaris, and can be seen with a telescope as a faint yellow orb.

APOD 3.6

Comet Lemmon and Comet PanSTARRS (also known as C/2012 F6 and C/2011 L4 respectively) are seen in this image soaring across the skies of the South. Lemmon's ironically lime green coma and slender tail to the left in this frame of a time lapse video from the 12th of February, tracking the motion of this comet compared to other background stars and showing how Lemmon's path has taken it into the same realm as other famous celestial formations, such as the Small Magellanic Cloud and 47 Tuscanae (the globular cluster easily noted on the right side of the image). Within the constellation Microscopium lies PanSTARRS, as it blows through the faint filler formation throughout the video. In the next few months, these comets ought to appear in the skies of the North, where they will appear much more luminous and can be spotted with a pair of binoculars!

George Ellery Hale Cited

"Dr George E Hale, Astronomer Dead." The New York Times Learning Network. New York Times, n.d. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0629.html.

 

"The Bruce Medalists: George Ellery Hale." The Bruce Medalists: George Ellery Hale. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2013. http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Hale/index.html.

 

Hale, George E. The New Heavens. New York: n.p., 1922. Print.

Formation of Stars

Between stars and galaxies, with no radiating visible light, is the Interstellar Medium, which will in parts condense due to some shockwave force in space and thus create fragmented clouds: future stars.

The start of star formation thus means that particles of the ISM are being pulled closer and more compactly together, soon giving off rays that infringe on the visible spectrum and thus make them opaque clouds which are closing in and heating up.

Both stages four and five embody protostars, the begining types of stars just before they become hot enough to fit the definition of a full star. This protostar is a classical T Tauri, fitting the bill of a protostar emmiting large amounts of visible light as its core heats.

Once the protostars are hot enough, they will becoming regular stars, but not fit into the main sequence. Its luminosity will be greater than that of other stars. They will be hotter and expand before they cool a little and conform with the rest of the star body, which is where it will stay for the rest of its stellar life.

APOD 3.5

Within the winter sky's hallmark star, Orion the Hunter, is the intriguing fuzzy patch known as the Great Orion Nebula (or M42). This image is a composite of four colours of infrared light (courtesy of the WISE observatory orbiting the Earth), showing how this nebula bursts with forming stars, all surrounded by heated gas and space dust. Trapezium is a star cluster within the centre of the nebula, and often noted as the source of the Orion Nebula's grand appearance (accompanied by the reflecting dust filemanets which colour the region an eerie green).

APOD3.4

From the Herschel Space Observatory comes this infrared view of the closest galaxy to the Milky Way at only 2.5 million light-years away: the enormous and spiralling Andromeda Galaxy. This island galaxy stranded within the constellation of the Princess--known officially as M31--spans 200 000 light-years across--twice as large as our galaxy. The infrared spectrum reveals shining dust clouds and some areas of ocaque dust, with the red coming from radiating star heat of barely a few tens of degrees above zero and the blue from the hotter central core stars.

Labelled Lunar Landscape

(done to the best of my abilities in Windows95 Paint)

APOD 3.3

Along the snowy scape of Lower Miller Creek, Alaska, the quarter moon with its ethereal halo of ice is guarded by two moondogs, more scientifically known as paraselenae. Much like a parhelion--or sundog--the paraselenae are produced beby the refraction of moonlight through thin, hexagonal plate ice crystals found in high cirrus clouds. These particular paraselenae are faint, for they are better viewed when the moon is closer to the horizon when they are more bright; but it still makes a damn good picture!

APOD 3.2

The North American continent may be renowned for its countries emmissions, but this emmission nebula NGC 7000--named for North America--can make something from all its hot air: stars. The representation of South America and Mexico in this celestial masterpiece placed within Cygnus the Swan is a hot bed not of jungle but of gases and dusts, not to mention what we know as the Cygnus Wall, newly formed stars.

APOD 3.1

A ripple in the great celestial river of Eridanus reveals a swirling galaxy, NGC 1309 on the bank but a good 100 million light-years away. It is about one third the size of the Milky Way--30000 light-years across--and has long spiraling arms of blue star clusters circling the settled, elderly yellow stars in the centre. Also the host of a rather recent supernova and the Cepheid variable stars which calibrate universal expansion, this beauty continues to glorify our skies today!

APOD 2.8

Blasted from a stellar gun are Orion's bullets, 1500 light-years in diameter for the loaded, dense calibre of a true celestial hunter. These hot clouds of gas are ten times the size of the erratic orbit of dwarf planet Pluto, aglow from ionised iron and streaked with yellow, shocked hydrogen gas from the hot nebula, the plumes up to 5 light-years long. This infrarred photograph was taken in Chile, displaying the wicked shots of the infamous Hunter.