Observation 4

The Earth is wobbling on its axis like a top. You can’t feel it, but it’s happening. And over long periods of time, these wobbles shift our calendars around, move the stars from where they’re supposed to be, and maybe even mess with our climate. Thank you very much precession. The earth wobbles regularly changing our north star and also effects the climate.

Observation 3

Tonight i looked at the sky and saw Venus and Mercury. These planets are close to each other which only happens once a year. Mercury is very hard to see throughout the year and this is the only opportunity to be able to observe it. Mercury is a very small planet and only rises a few degrees above the equator. Venus on the other hand is very easily viewed and is a rather bright object.

observation 2

http://www.astronomycast.com/2013/11/ep-321-solar-flares/
Sometimes the Sun is quiet, and other times the Sun gets downright unruly. During the peak of its 11-year cycle, the surface of the Sun is littered with darker sunspots. And its from these sunspots that the Sun generates massive solar flares, which can spew radiation and material in our direction. A solar flare is a sudden flash of brightness observed over the Sun's surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to 6 × 10²⁵ joules of energy (about a sixth of the total energy output of the Sun each second or 160,000,000,000 megatons of TNT equivalent, over 25,000 times more energy than released from the impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter).

OBSERVASION

http://www.astronomycast.com/2013/11/ep-322-soho/

The Sun is a terrifying ball of plasma. It’s a good thing we’re keeping an eye on it. And that eye is the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. Operating for more than 18 years now, SOHO has been making detailed observations of the Sun’s activity though an almost entire solar cycle. With so many years of operation, SOHO has some amazing stories to tell. SOHO is an observatory that specifically looks at the sun and gives us the best images for today's knowledge of the sun.

APOD 2.8

The first thing that one sees when viewing this image is the striking blue brilliance of the clouds of gas reflecting light off of stars. This cosmic scene is located less than 500 light-years away from us, near the northern edge of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. Despite only taking up about a degree in our field of view, the clouds depicted here are magnificent when magnified. The blue tinge of the cosmic clouds is due to their reflection of light off of hot young stars obscured by them. Among the vast blue clouds there are also various other interesting celestial bodies, such as the spiral seen to the center left of the picture and the red orb seen in the lower left center. At the center of the two main bodies of blue cosmic dust there also appears to be two pairs of double stars, embedded in the blue double cluster. The effect is one of cosmic brilliance.

APOD 2.7

This incredible photograph is of the group of reflection nebulae in Orion called NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973. This cluster of nebulae is usually overshadowed by its glittering nearby neighbor, the Orion Nebula. The clouds reflect the light off of hot blue stars which is how they gained their brilliant colors. NGC 1977 is the cloud going across the picture slightly below the center, while NGC 1973 occupies the top right and NGC 1975 is in the top left and all of these clouds are separated by the dark red clouds of hydrogen gas.

APOD 2.6

This exposure of the aurora borealis was taken on Kvaløya, near Tromsø Norway, 2009 December 13. The 30 second exposure also happened to catch a meteor as well as the aurora, providing a striking contrast between the intensity of the two atmospheric events. This meteor was from the Geminid meteor shower, which has meteors that appear to originate from the constellation Gemini. Despite both events occurring in the upper atmosphere about 100 kilometers up, they have drastically different causes, with the aurora being caused by magnetically charged particles and meteors being space rock heating from the impact of crashing into our atmosphere.

APOD 2.5

At first sight, this panorama is breathtaking. Its combination of colors is an incredible contrast and quite the sight to behold. The valley pictured, the Valle de la Luna, is fittingly for this panorama titled Moon Valley, located in the Chilean Atacama desert. The spectacular lights on the horizon originate from the city of San Pedro, as well as the cities of Socaire and Toconao. Also, this picture includes the four galaxies easily visible from our planet's dark sky regions. On the left are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. On the right is the Andromeda Galaxy. This panorama is truly a masterpiece of celestial photography combined with a breathtaking landscape of Earth.

APOD 2.4

This picture is a picture of the Leonids Meteor Shower in 1999. The peak of amount of meteors was over 1000 an hour in Europe. Other areas around the world only got 30 to 100 meteors per hour. This picture is a 20 min long exposure photograph. You can see about 5 meteors in this photo. The Leonids will continue to awe viewers for the next couple night resulting in more amazing pictures and more life memories.

APOD 2.3

This picture is a picture of Orion. It shows us that Orion is not just the three stars on the belt that everyone knows, but a collection of nebula and gas that is astounding when looked at with the help of a telescope and a little underwhelming when attempting to view with the unaided eye. in fact the lowest star in the belt is not even a star at all. It is actually a nebula called the flame nebula. Orion is also home to one of the nebulas that has the most recognized shape named the horsehead nebula.

William Herschel bio

Peter Florian

Mr. Percival-Period 5

Astronomy

7 January 2014

William Herschel Biography

Frederick William Herschel was a German astronomer of the late 18th/early 19th century. He lived with his family in Germany until he eventually moved the Britain at the age of 19. Herschel's mother gave birth to ten children, and his father played the oboe in symphonies. Herschel started out his life as a musician who played the violin, cello, harpsichord, and the organ. He wrote 24 symphonies, of which four are well known, and played first violin and first organ in many orchestras. Herschel's brother and sister were also musicians who sometimes played with him in the Octagon Chapel in Bath.

 Herschel's musical interest made him fond of mathematics, and his interest in astronomy started when he met English Astronomer Nevil Maskelyne. He started building personal reflecting telescopes, and spent as much as 12 hours a day grinding, polishing, and fixing metal primary mirrors. He started looking at the stars and planets in the early 1770's, and kept an astronomical journal. Herschel's early observations focused on closely grouped stars which he believed to be double-stars. He published his hypothesis that these stars orbited under mutual gravitational attraction, and proved it in the early 1800's. He discovered over 800 confirmed double or multi-star systems.

 In 1781, when Herschel was searching for double-stars, he discovered a nonstellar disk object beyond the orbit of Saturn. He originally thought it was a comet or star, but a colleague of his computed that the object was probably planetary. He agreed, and named the new planet the "Georgian star" after King George III. The name never stuck, and Uranus was universally adopted. The King was so astonished by this discovery that he named Herschel "The King's Astronomer". Herschel discovered that sunlight contained infrared radiation when he was looking at sun spots and researching with filters.

 With the help of his son John and sister Caroline, Herschel began to search for deep sky objects. He and his siblings discovered over 2400 objects known as nebulae, which he posted in three famous catalogs under eight different classifications. He created the NGC method for naming deep sky objects, which is still the most universal way to name them. Herschel discovered two moons of Saturn (Mimas and Enceladus), and two moons of Uranus (Titania and Oberon), which were named by his son John. He studied the axis tilt of Mars and was the first astronomer to discover that the solar system is moving through space. He also created the term asteroid.

 William married his sweetheart Mary and only had one child. In 1816, Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order by Prince Regent, which entitled him the prefix "Sir". He helped found the Astronomical Society of London in 1820. On August 1822, Herschel died at the same Observatory House that his son John was born in. He is still very much respected and his works noted by many Astronomers today.