APOD 4.7

This is a photo of the launch of the space shuttle Endeavor, which occured May 16th, that marked this particular shuttle's last mission.  Endeavor is scheduled to travel to the International Space Station and pursue a project that will detect dark matter (matter that is theorized to exist due to the presence of gravitational effects but does not emit or absorb light or radiation that is easily seen), charged antimatter (composed like regular matter but with antiparticles) and strangelets (hypothetical particles that consist of equal numbers of up, down and strange quarks) that will last a total of 14 days.  The six crew members of this mission titled STS-134 are Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori.  Endeavor marks the 36th mission to the International Space Station and is one of the last shuttle launches, the last being Atlantis which s scheduled for July. 

APOD 4.6

The image above is of the circumpolar constellation Ursa Minor or "The Little Dipper" as it is commonly known, which was listed by Ptolemy as apart of his list of 48 constellations.  The second magnitude star Polaris, which marks the north celestial pole at this time but will later shift location, is clearly visible at the center of left hand side.  Although it is not the brightest star in the night sky (it is actually the 48th brightest), it is the brightest star of its neighbors in this photo and it is the brightest Cepheid variable star. Cepheid variable stars like Polaris are important to Astronomers because a relationship exists between their absolute magnitude and pulsation period that enables us to determine their distances and therefore, the distances to other galaxies!  

David Levy Biography

David Levy was born in Montreal, Canada on May 22, 1948 and cultivated a fascination with astronomy beginning as a child.  Despite this early precociousness displayed in this particular field, Levy obtained a bachelor's and master's degree in English Literature instead.  In 1967, Levy was nearly removed from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's Montreal Centre after a few quarrels with the group's leaders.  However, after developing communication through letters with Isabel Williamson, one of the leaders he had infuriated the most, he became a regular visitor and Levy was able to maintain his position as a member of the centre. 

Levy has been able to discover 22 comets, nine of which were found using his own backyard telescopes.  One of his most notable accomplishments was made through his work at the Palomar Observatory, located in California, with the help of the fellow astronomers Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker.  They were able to discover the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, appropriately named for their two last names, that actually collided with the planet Jupiter and created one of the most dramatic and visually enticing explosions ever witnessed in our Solar System.  David formerly served as the editor from 1997 until 2006 for "Parade Magazine", which reached an audience of about one fourth the population of the United States Levy is currently a contributor to the famed "Sky and Telescope" magazine and regularly writes articles as a apart of the "Star Trails" column.  Levy has written or edited 35 books in total and has won an Emmy in 1998 as one of the writers for  the Discovery Channel's documentary "Three Minutes To Impact".  He is a frequent guest on television shows and talk shows, such as "Good Morning America" and "The Today Show". 

Also David and his wife Wendee host a radio show once a week on the website letstalkstars.com.  David Levy is president of the National Sharing The Sky Foundation, that seeks to educate the general public about Astronomy and stimulate interest to further pursue the subject.  Levy and his wife currently live in Vail, Arizona and are members of The Jarnac Comet Survey which operates mainly out of the Arizona Jarnac Observatory but has telescopes stationed internationally.  Ironically after nearly being expelled from Canada's Royal Astronomical Society early in his career, Levy has been one of the most, if not the number one, successful modern astronomers and continues to be involved in an extreme variety of projects.          

APOD 4.5

The lagoon nebula, as pictured above, is an extremely active star-forming region located in the Milky Way Galaxy and is classified as a M8 object.  This particular image was created by the Argentinian astronomers Julia Arias and Rodolfo Barbá who used the Gemini South telescope with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph.  They created this final version as a composite image of various photographs taken by two narrow band filters that are sensitive to hydrogen.  The galaxy has been referred to as "psychedelic" because the photons had to travel a distance of 5,000 light years in order to appear in front of this camera, which makes it an actual flashback as the distance is so large.

David Levy Biography Sources

http://www.jarnac.org/aboutdavid.htm

Astronomy Magazine.  Columnist Biography
http://www.astronomy.com/contributor.aspx?id={E1E4148B-A5F4-4B5F-8F60-A14A06A13C96}

http://www.astronomyoutreach.net/index.php?title=David_H._Levy

APOD 4.4

 

This image of the Cat's Eye Nebula (located in the constellation of Draco and originally discovered by William Herschel) taken by the Hubble Telescope illustrates an average planetary nebula, meaning it was a main sequence star similar to our Sun that burned away all the hydrogen to helium in its core causing the star to rapidly expand.  The star then loses its outer layers, which results in a hot  stellar core with a significant amount of its mass that was likely about 1000 years ago.  About 95% of our Milky Way galaxy stars eventually become planetary nebulae and the Cat Eye Nebula is insignificant when compared to the numerous other ones of its type, except that its elaborate inner structure that creates such a striking visual is very unique and little is know about how this pattern formed.  Astronomers suspect that at its center might be a binary star system    

APOD 4.3

 

This picture taken by the Wide-Field Survey Explorer provides a look inside of the Rho Ophiuchi  cloud complex, where hot and bright young stars are easily visible and create stunning colorful effects against the cloud's dust when seen through infrared imaging.  The cloud complex borders the two constellations Ophiuchus (the serpent handler) and Scorpius (Scorpion) and it is unique because it is one of the closest star forming regions to Earth and therefore provides valuable insight into the lives of young stars which is harder to receive from farther regions, such as the Orion nebula.  The white and blue tinted regions of this image indicate the presence of an emission nebula and the pink objects are young stars in the process of formation. The bright red dot in the picture is actually another galaxy called PGC 090239.  Overall it is fascinating to see how many objects and processes we can identify from these cloud complexes in space, despite the fact that they are mere points of light when viewed from a far distance in the sky.     

Zooniverse II

This week on Zooniverse I classified additional galaxies on Galaxy Zoo bringing my total to 30 and I saw a few interesting and unusual things while doing so.  I was able to spot a few disks edge on and saw several cluster of stars that appeared apart of a central bulge with irregular spiral patterns.  Also I have officially decided to further continue with Solar Storm Watch and I am a new recruit that has been spot trained and I am currently working on possibly joining a detection group.

Zooniverse Post #1

This week on Zooniverse I worked mostly on the Hubble galaxy zoo project and was able to classify 26 galaxies according to shape, cluster characteristics and evidence of a disk or special features.  I also experimented with solar storm watch and galaxy zoo: the hunt for supernovae, but I have not decided yet which one of these other projects I plan on pursuing along with the Hubble Project.   

APOD 4.2

 

In this artist's rendition of the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan, a very chaotic scene appears.  The violent storm that struck Titan is illustrated here with busts of lightning, swirled clouds and rain, which made this image appealing to select for an apod post.  The evidential source for this drawing came from images of Titan taken by the Cassini spacecraft as Titan undergoes its seasonal storms that darken its surface periodically.  Cassini measured the distance of the storm to be about 750 miles in length east to west and 930 miles long northwest to southwest by taking an image with a narrow angled camera filtered for infrared light at nearly 808.000 miles away from Titan.  Scientists speculate that the source for this unusual rain on such a inhospitable moon (it is estimated that the dry climate of this area of Titan is similar to that of the Southwestern portion of the United States) is from methane wetting the surface since it is also an astounding - 179 degrees Celsius on Titan which would make liquid water impossible as an option.    

APOD 4.1

 

In this image of the Milky Way taken in the Canary Islands off of Spain, nine high resolution images of the night time sky have been combined to create a visually stunning panorama.  The Milky way galaxy is composed of over 400 billion stars and dust, which are mostly concentrated in the area of the flattened, rotating disk that holds our Solar System.  The Milky Way galaxy is classified according to Hubble's system as a Sbc because the spiral arms mostly dominate the object.  Alongside the Milky Way, the image of the waxing gibbous Moon and the Pleiades star cluster (located in between the constellation Taurus and Perseus).     

APOD 3.8

In this photo taken at Lorry State Park in Colorado, the seasonal constellations for this time of year are labelled and easily identified.  Along with constellations such as Draco and Canis Major, the orbital paths of the International Space Station (which is currently orbiting around Earth at this moment) and Discovery Space Shuttle (that landed back on Earth on March 9th this year) are indicated.  It is astounding to be able to see many of the lower magnitude stars, such as the full visibility of all of the stars in the typically faint constellation Ursa Minor, due to the remoteness and high elevation of this location.  As a future student of University of Colorado at Boulder, I am super excited to be able to star gaze and see clear skies with high visibility of the stars in the night sky.       

APOD 3.7

 

This image of Hyperion, Saturn's irregularly shaped moon was taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005  Typically Hyperion appears to have a reddish tint when viewed in natural color, but here it appears to have a grayish tint because the image was enhanced using false color imaging techniques. The reason behind this bizarre shape is that although Hyperion is quite large, its gravitational force is not sufficient to eliminate the gaps and hold the object together as a sphere. Scientists suspect that Hyperion was originally apart of a larger moon, but broke away after a major impact from an asteroid.  Hyperion has little gravitational force due to the fact that it has a surprisingly low density Hyperion's rotation is also unusual, because it has no fixed spin axis (as revealed by the Voyager 2 mission) and since Titan orbits Saturn 3 times for every 4 times that Hyperion orbits Saturn, Hyperion experiences strong pulls from Titan's massive gravitational force as there orbits match up.  The sponge-like cratered surface is likely a result of the fact that Hyperion orbits Saturn at a relatively far distance compared to Saturn's other moons and therefore experiences little tidal forces that would help blur these bizarre features. One of the most interesting aspects of Hyperion's composition is that it has bright crater walls, which are likely to be forms of condensed water ice and it is a future goal of scientists to further investigate the surface and its potential to contain water.      

Percival Lowell Biography

Percival Lowell was born on March 13, 1855 into a wealthy, successful, aristocratic family in Boston.  He attended Harvard University and graduated in 1876 with a B.A. and mainly focused on mathematics.  Lowell spent a year in Europe travelling after graduation and subsequently became involved with his grandfather's cotton business, eventually travelling to Japan in 1883 to study the culture and customs.  While staying in Japan, Lowell was invited to serve as the foreign secretary and general counsellor to the first diplomatic mission from Korea to the United States and accepted.  Lowell remained in Korea for a few months after his mission as a guest of the Korean government and also published several books detailing his experiences in Korea, such as Chosön—the Land of the Morning Calm—A Sketch of Korea (1885). 

However, Lowell became increasingly more interested in Astronomy as he travelled through Asia and he took a telescope with him to Japan on his final trip there to make observations.  Due to a particularly convenient orientation of an opposition to the planet Mars in 1894, Lowell decided to focus his studies on Mars.  Lowell had extensive new research that was readily accessible to him since Giovanni Sehiaparelli had extensively studied the planet Mars at another opposition in 1877, during which Sehiaparelli  had discovered canals on the surface of Mars and opened up new opportunities for research.  As Giovanni Sehiaparelli started to lose his eyesight, Percival Lowell decided he must continue his work and expand upon it.  In 1894 after testing several potential observation sites, he settled on Flagstaff, Arizona after a suggestion by W. H. Pickering  that the air there is the steadiest in the United States, as the location for his new observatory that included a 18 inch and a 12 inch telescope.  Lowell had developed a theory that Martians were using the canals to channel water to one another as a artificial irrigation system. 

Lowell became involved in finding a ninth planet, labelled "Planet X".  He predicted its existence mathematically by calculating Uranus' eccentricities that Neptune did not account for.  Lowell kept his research secret for a while in order to ensure that no one would steal his information and claim the credit, but by 1908 his project became public.  With the help of Elizabeth Williams, Lowell increased his efforts and made numerous calculations as well as upgrading to a 40 inch reflecting telescope.  Lowell became very disappointed as no planet was officially discovered and the Academy of Arts and Sciences refused to publish his findings and theories on the existence of "Planet X".  Interestingly, this ninth planet (or Pluto) which coincidentally is no longer considered a planet, did show up on Lowell's plate findings but was fainter than expected and therefore was not noticed.  Lowell died in 1916 of a stroke in his observatory in bitter agitation at not finding this planet X.  Lowell's will included a million dollars to be used in the discovery of the ninth planet, which Clyde Tombaugh succesfully found in 1930.        

APOD 3.6

This image of the night time sky taken in Switzerland depicts a stunning view of the Milky Way and the constellations that mark this season's sky.  Other galaxies that can be spotted (and labeled by scrolling over the image with the cursor) are the Andromeda (m31) which has a double peaked center and is very comparable in composition to our own Milky Way galaxy, and Triangulum (m33) which is the largest of the local galaxies (Andromeda and the Milky Way are both members) and is one of the furthest objects in the sky that can be seen with the naked eye alone on a clear night.  Also several nebulae can be seen, such as the Rosette nebula that was the topic of my last APOD post, the California nebula that closely resembles the silhouette of the state of California and is located in Orion's arm, as well as the Heart and Soul nebulae named for a striking resemblance of the heart symbol and are located in the constellation Cassiopeia.  

Pervical Lowell Biography Sources

"Lowell, Percival." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 8. Detroit: Charles     Scribner's Sons, 2008. 520-523. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Feb. 2011.

 

"Percival Lowell."  Lowell Observatory Archives.  Web.  18 Feb. 2011.  <http://www.lowell.edu/Research/library/paper/lowell.html>

 

Mager, Brad.  "The Discovery of Pluto: Percival Lowell's Quest."  Web.  18 Feb 2011.  <http://www.discoveryofpluto.com/pluto04.html>

 

 

APOD 3.5

The rosette nebula that is pictured above and appeared as a miscellaneous item on the constellation quiz this week (located in the constellation Monoceros), seemed to be the perfect topic for this week's APOD post.  The rosette nebula is a vast cloud of dust and gas that spans about five times the area of the full Moon.  Inside the nebula there are four NGC numbers that have been assigned to several clusters of stars, which are 2237, 2238, 2239, and 2246.  One of the most fascinating clusters is NGC 2244, which is considered to be a relatively young group of bright stars that were formed about 4 million years ago and is able to be seen with a pair of binoculars.  These bright stars each emit high energy light that ionizes the surrounding hydrogen gas clouds creating the striking reddish hues in the nebula.  The hot wind that is also emitted by the stars in NGC 2244 helps disperse the gas clouds' particles which adds even further to the awe-inspiring image as the reddish filaments are formed into sweeping, curvy patterns and a hole is formed at the center, revealing the sky behind these clouds.   

APOD 3.4

 

This photo of the constellation Orion, captures the differing colors of its stars by using the step-focus on each star's trail.  This technique is created by varying the focus of the camera ens during each star's exposure, which dilutes the light and makes each star look larger and brighter as well as effectively illustrating the subtle color differences between the stars.  For this particular photograph, the lens focus was moved from infinity to about 1 meter in a series of 10 steps about three minutes apart and a total of 35 exposures were combined to produce one picture.  Betelgeuse, a cool red sugergiant star, clearly stands out here as the red blur towards the top left corner.  Although Betelgeuse has a surface temperature of about 3600 K, which is significantly cooler than our Sun's surface temperature of 5800 K, it appears very bright because it has a very large mass and is actually about 20 times as massive as the Sun.  The pinkish blur towards the center of the picture is the Great Nebula of Orion, which is basically a giant molecular cloud complex that is 1500 light years away, and scientists have discovered numerous infant solar systems in the nebula.  Finally, the star W Orionis, which appears towards the bottom, is a Carbon star that has a magnitude of about 5.8 and is one of the few faint class C stars that can occasionally be seen by the naked eye.  W Orionis is slowly becoming brighter and as it loses mass at the rate of a tenth of a millionth of a solar mass per year, it will shed its outer layers and become a white dwarf star.         

APOD 3.3

As we are studying stars and specifically the interstellar medium at the moment, I chose this image of the runaway star Alpha Cam that is apart of the constellation Camelopardalis (the giraffe) that appears in fall skies and has appeared on our constellation quizzes often while accidentally following several APOD links.  The term runaway as applied to stars refers to those that are traveling at an extremely high speed through space and therefore the interstellar material between celestial objects, which is actually not completely devoid of matter as many people assume, but rather is made up of a low density composition of 99% gas to 1% dust.  Alpha Cam has been classified as a bright white-blue type O star, but has a relatively dim apparent magnitude of about 5 because it is far away from Earth and is blocked by this interstellar dust that surrounds it.  In comparison to our Sun, Alpha Cam is extremely bright and has the luminosity of 530,000 Suns and a mass 25 to 30 times greater than the Sun.  Scientists have hypothesized that this star will explode relatively soon, since it is a massive super giant, and is quickly losing a significant amount of mass (at a rate of six millionths of a solar mass per year).  Alpha Cam moves at the unfathomable speed of 60 kilometers a second and as it moves it compresses the interstellar material that it passes, which means it was likely originally apart of a binary system and was propelled by the force of a super nova explosion of the other star.        

APOD 3.2

 

As we are studying stars, I found this image of the supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5 to be particularly relevant and also visually astounding.  The ring has a reddish tint because the Hubble Space Telescope used imaging that only captures the frequencies of energetic hydrogen, which occurs when hydrogen electrons fall from the third lowest energy level to the second lowest level using quantum mechanics.  Energetic hydrogen also happens to be the brightest of visible stellar light, and is therefore the most useful to be extracted in a photograph of a star's remnant.  The reason that the gas is in the shape of a bubble is that these particles have been shocked by the blast of the supernova that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which is about 160,000 light years away from Earth and are considered satellites of the Milky Way Galaxy and are oddly shaped, and is currently moving at the high speed of 11 million miles per hour!  This explosion has been classified as a type Ia supernova, which results from the violent explosion of a white dwarf star that has completed its life cycle and stopped its process of nuclear fusion.  This supernova remnant lies near the constellation Dorado, or the goldfish, and although it is extremely far away, the brightest star Canopus (apart of the Milky Way) is only 310 light years away.           

APOD 3.1

 

This APOD post shows the bright, large storm that appeared on Saturn last year as taken by the Cassini mission.  The storm was spotted in December, when Saturn was visible in the morning sky just before dawn and was at a distance of about 1.4 billion kilometers from Earth, by people using amateur telescopes and the first recognized images were taken by the astronomical photographer A. Wesley.  On Christmas Eve the Cassini probe captured it in full detail at a much closer distance of 1.8 million kilometers.  The main spot of the storm is exceptionally large with a distance of 6,000 km which is the half of the size of Earth, and the entire storm is about 60,000 km.  The storm started off as a mass of three zones and a bright core.  The storm's features have changed as time progresses  and has significantly widened and stretched in latitude over time.  The storm has been labeled NED (Northern Electrostatic Disturbance) and has grown to take up nearly half the planet at this present time and its tale continues to extend further and further.  Scientists are still charting observations on Saturn's NED and it will be exciting to see more images released from the Cassini probe as the storm develops.     

APOD 2.8

 
As a former student of AP Art History, I found this picture of an ancient Greek astronomical mechanism that seems to resemble a wheel to be intriguing and was interested in both its historical and scientific relevance.  It is called the Antikythera mechanism (named for the small Greek island it was found near) and the wheel-like structure is actually a system of gears that comprise this surprisingly sophisticated mechanical computer. This 2,000 year old device was used around 80 BC and was found in a ship wreck in 1901 by divers and analyzed using x-ray radiation in order to reveal its purpose.  At first scientists believed the Antikythera mechanism was used as a navigation instrument and others thought it might have been one of Archimedes' small planetariums.  After a slow and painstaking process of cleaning the device, scientists agree that it was probably an Astronomical clock used to chart the positions of the planets, the Moon, the Sun and Stars based on a geocentric model of the universe.  It is based on the Egyptian calendar of 365 days and the dials can actually be adjusted to compensate for the extra quarter day in the solar year.  Also its functions extend beyond astronomy since the device charted the Ancient Olympic games.  Its technology is so shockingly advanced that it has been called a precursor to the almanac and has even been compared to 19th century Swiss clocks!          

APOD 2.7

Since we are studying the Sun, I decided to choose this image of a "Sun halo"  taken in Stockholm.  Due to the snowy, frigid weather and dryness of the air, there are millions of ice crystals ( hexagonal and symmetrical in structure) in the atmosphere.  These ice crystals are acting like lenses, which basically just means that they are bending rays of light (or refracting) creating two virtual images of the Sun on the left and right side of the actual Sun.  The scientific phenomenon behind ice crystal halos is similar to what causes rainbows, which are produced when sunlight is reflected off of and refract water droplets.   As sunlight enters through one end of the ice crystal's face and exits through an opposing face, it results in a refracting angle typically of 22 degrees (calculated by finding the angle of minimum deviation by using the index of refraction that equals 1.31 and  the apex angle of a prism that equals 60 degrees).  These halos (also called sun dogs) are best seen when the Sun appears to be low in the Earth's atmosphere, such as sunset, because these ice crystals tend to flutter down towards the ground      

Images of the Sun

This link provides a photo of the Sun taken by a radio telescope and shows the sunspots as well as the magnetic fields. 
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~white/images/93nov07_c_r_full.html

This link has a variety of impressive images of features such as solar flares, prominences, eclipses and an animation of the Sun rotating that was taken using several composite images over the course of 6 days from an ultraviolet telescope.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/the_sun.html

Finally this link is from the website for SOHO (The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) and provides a gallary of images of the Sun's corona.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/SolarCorona/

Astronomer Biography

Pierre Méchain was born on August 16, 1774 in Laon which is in Northern France.  Pierre’s father was a ceiling plasterer and his mother had attempted to follow a similar architectural career, but did not succeed.  At a young age, Pierre Méchain was recognized for his talents in mathematics and was sent by the French nobility to école des Ponts et Chaussées, located in Paris.  However, his studies ended early after two years due to his family’s lack of finances to support him.  Shortly after this interruption, Pierre accepted a tutorship for two young nobleman.  At some unknown point Pierre became friends with Jérôme de Lalande who was finishing his book L'Astronomie and let Méchain read segments of it.  As Pierre quickly proved he had promising potential in the field of Astronomy, Lalande offered him a temporary position as hydrographer at the naval archives in Versailles, which forced Pierre to supplement his income  teaching mathematics.  Although Méchain was removed twice since his position was not meant to last for very long, he was continually reinstated for his exceptional talent at map making and his maps were used to chart the shoreline from Nieuwpoort in Flanders to Saint-Mato. 

During his time creating these naval archives, Pierre Méchain intently studied Astronomy and made significant achievements in the field, such as the discovery of two comets and calculated their orbits and also proved that the comets appearing in 1532 and 1661 were not the same object contrary to popular belief, earning him the award Académic Royale des Sciences in 1782.  After being recognized for his efforts, Pierre decided to invest more and more time into working towards new astronomical discoveries and he was able to find nine more comets and thirty deep sky objects, resulting in Méchain coordinating efforts with Charles Messier to catalog these new celestial objects.  Pierre earned the position as editor of the French almanac “Connoissance des temps” in 1785, which he held for six years. 

In 1787 a project developed attempting to improve the precision and accuracy of various scientific instruments that would be orchestrated by both the British and the French, ho are well known rivals.  Méchain was chosen to work on the project along with the astronomers Cassini and Legendre.  The group was able to lessen the distortion of telescopes by clamping a circle to it and by using it to measure angles at multiple segments of the circle, graduation errors were greatly diminished.  Another famous and revolutionary achievement made by Pierre Méchain was the fact that he was chosen as a member of the committee to create a decimal system of measurement, which was a project approved by the National Assembly, the legislative body of the French government at that time.  As the French Revolution wreaked havoc all around Méchain, he was arrested because he was carrying suspicious equipment, such as parabolic mirrors for reflecting signals in order to measure the meridian, and was suspected of being a traitor of the Revolution.  After two months spent in incarceration, Méchain and his associates were released and travelled to Spain to continue their scientific progress.  However, Pierre’s astronomical work was interrupted when he was asked to inspect a hydraulic pump and got caught in the machine, resulting in the breaking of his ribs, collarbone and the inability to use his right arm as well as the loss of consciousness for three days.  After the accident and the loss of many of his friends, who died at the guillotine, Pierre Méchain became a strange and cantankerous man.  Méchain was able to discover two more comets, became the director of the Paris Observatory before his death from yellow fever in Spain on September 20, 1804.                      

APOD 2.6

As an unfortunate person who has never had the privilege of spotting the amazing green flash effect that occasionally appears at the end of the sunset, I was very intrigued by this APOD and hope to be able to spot one in the future now knowing its cause.  The phenomenon of the green flash and the even rarer blue flash that occurs as the sun sets is pictured here and was taken in Spain.  A viewer's visibility of the green flash requires that the land is flat and has a distant horizon, such as over an Ocean.  It is a common misconception that the green flash is a result of a reaction in our eyes where the red cones are saturated therefore causing the green flash to occur as an after image.  The true cause of the green flash can be explained by the basic properties of Earth's atmosphere.  As light enters the Earth from the Sun it slows down and refracts, which at sunset or sundown means it bends downwards.  The blue light is bent more than the red light in the atmosphere because it is nearer to the ultraviolet frequencies (shorter wavelengths) and is slowed down more.  The flash appears green because the blue light is scattered more than the green light in the atmosphere and usually the blue is entirely removed, except in this rare case where both can be seen.  Both the green and the blue flash were able to be seen in this photograph because the atmosphere was astoundingly clear and did not scatter the blue light as much as it normally would have.      

Biography Sources

"Méchain, Pierre-François-André." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 9. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 250-252. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.

 

Frommert, Hartmut and Christine Kronberg.  "Pierre François André Méchain."  Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.  19 May 2008. <http://seds.org/messier/xtra/history/pmechain.html>  

 

Observation Post

While kyak camping from December 27th- December 30th as apart of a group called Paddle Florida, I was able to estimate the star visibility to be at 4th magnitude.  The light pollution in the Deland area, where most of the camp sites were located near, is far less detrimental to star gazing as Sarasota's.  It was truly incredible to be able to see at least twice as many stars in the sky as I am normally able to find.  I easily spotted Jupiter, the constellation Orion, Pegasus and Cassiopeia, but with improved visibility I also saw Capricorn and Pisces. 

Observation Post

Over the break, on the night of December 21st, I viewed the lunar eclipse at 3:30 AM and a meteor flash across the sky around 10 PM.  This meteor was likely apart of the Ursids meteor shower that occurred that night.  This astronomical combo of events was really exciting to watch.  The moon actually appeared much smaller than I had predicted, since I expected it to be the size of the Harvest moon.  Also the moon was at a rust orange at this stage.  This lunar eclipse was considered unique to astronomers since it also marked the day of winter solstice, which happens only three times between 1638 and 2094!