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).