APOD 1.7

- This image was taken in the northern constellation of Casseopeia. The reddish color is very bright and illuminating. The light is reflecting off gases in space as well as space dust. After learning about the different colors that gases reflect, it was interesting to learn that hydrogen produces a red glow. on Earth however why does hydrogen not glow red naturally. Why do its electrons have to be excited with electricity to create the color. Is there some sort of electromagnetic radiation in space causing the color? The color manipulation helps to aid our visualization of picture. The image coming from the telescope could not have been this high of resolution. The narrow filter stated in the descriptuion was very helpful in creating this picture.

APOD 1.3

- This image is very intersting to me. First off the land is extremely light yet the sky is dark, and the stars are visible. What time of tday is this? The description says that the photo was taken in Spain, I assume at a very high altitude away from the effects of city lights. The meteor streaks are as well very interesting. Taken over 90 minutes of time, the visible length the comets have taken is remarkable as I can only imagine how far away they actually are. If the size of the meteors are the size of a pebble, what makes them so visible in the sky. They cn't be on fire as there is no oxygen. They must be surrounded by some gas or force that reflects light, as how else would they be visible to us? None the less, a very cool image.

Astronomy Observations- 7

October 22, 2011
              -After the astronomy night I looked up at the sky Tuesday morning and saw an extremely bright object in the North West corner of the sky. I could not see the moon very well, but this object was the most pertinent object in the sky. I assumed it was Mercury or Venus as Mars is generally a reddish color and this was a blueish hue. I did not expect that it was actually Jupiter as at the previous night it was in the Northeast portion of the sky. I sometimes forget that due to the Earth's rotation objects can drastically change their position in a few hours of time. It amazes me that astronomers have been able to record so many astronomical effects. It was at this moment that I really appreciated the time and effort tht has gone into hundreds of years of study and observations of the night sky that has given us what we have in Astronomy now.

Astronomy Observations- 6

October 21, 2011
             - Continued astronomy night.....Another interesting part of the night was the shorter telescope aimed at Jupiter. Jupiter was extremely bright and was in the north east portion of the sky. The telescope was very focused and actually made the off colored rings on Jupiters surface distinctly visible. After the first telescope passed, I was amazed that four other telescopes were spotted that night. No shooting stars were spotted that night. Throughout the night we referred back to Deneb, Altair and Vega, in order to find the summer triangle and other objects within their respective constellations. Lyra had two binary systems. Another awesome moment of the night was the meteor flash around 8:50 at night. Again I was most fascinated by the satellites, and after studying the Hubble Telescope we actually observed it passing across the sky.

Astronomy Observations- 5

October 21, 2010
                   Astronomy night was yet again a success. The sky was clear except for some hazy clouds in the lower portion of the northern sky. I observed Scorpius, which at the time was jsut above the horizon. Sagittarius was just above it. The binocular stand was interesting as well. I was able to observe the sky through a reflecting contraption. I saw the many stars that were in the previous systems as well as others in the Milky Way. Over the shell parking lot was Delphinus and Job's Coffin. One of my favorite parts of the night was the passing over of the telescope. This is what i found most interesting. As an object that is so far away from us, that we can physically observe the reality of its existence and speed. I have always seen images of satellites but have never actually viewed one.

APOD 1.2

The above image is called a pireus iredescent cloud. The photo was taken in Ethiopia. Like a rainbow this phenomena is caused by water droplets and the diffraction of sunlight when it hits the droplets. The uniform and similar size of the water droplets also adds to this occurence. I wonder why I have never seen any of these clouds before in Florida? There must be other atmospheric properties in certain regions that allow this to happem, because I have viewed hundreds of clouds, rain or not and have never seen this before.

Michael Mastlin

        Michael Mastlin was a renowned astronomer from Germany. Born in 1550 and past away in 1631. Mastlin created many parts of the fundamental aspects of Astronomy. Such noteable contributions to astronomy are the correct interpretation of what is now known as Earthshine, and the idea that the heavens and celestial objects are changeable, which were previously thought to be fixed objects. Mastlin also had contributions to the development of other great minds in Astronomy such as Johan Kepler.
         One of Mastlin's major contributions was the idea of Earthshine. When the Sun shines light onto an object, part of the light is absorbed, while the other part is reflected. As light shines from the Sun to Earth, a portion of the light reflects off Earth onto the moon. Following this process light from the moon is then reflected back to Earth and so on. The farther down the chain the dimmer the light, as at each reflection, the majority of the light is absorbed. Another important contribution by Michael Mastlin was the idea of the heavens being changeable. Mastlin observed a nova in 1572 and presented his observations and concluded that it was proof, that celestial objects are not fixed objects.
       Despite complications with the idea of parallax, Mastlin observed many moveable objects such as Comets. Mastlin also accepted the Copernican models of astronomy. Other facts would be that Mastlin had two wives, and many children. The second wife in particular gave birth to nine of his children. Kepler and Mastlin were two great friends who together developed prestigeous reputations in the fields of astronomy and the study of the heavens. Masltin lived a full 81 years, which in his time, was an amazingly long life.

APOD 1.6

       This image is very interesting. I have always known that throughout the universe there are other objects than planets and stars, such as comets and asteroids. Typical knowledge that I have however leads me to believe that they are very scarse, such as Haley's comet. This image places gives me a better perspective of the actual amount of asteroids there are in such a close proximity to Earth. The word close, being used very vaguelly. Thanks to Neowise and their infared imaging, we have a better knowledge of the number of asteroids. As light is a difficult determinant to exactly calculate the number of asteroids. Some asteroids are non-reflective and others are extremely reflective. The suns heat is stored in the asteroid, allowing infared radars to detect the presence of an asteroid.

Astronomer Sources List

Gail Virtual Reference Library:
1) Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 3: 1450 to 1699. Detroit: Gale, 2001. p394.


2) Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 9. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. p167-170.


Online Source:


1) http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Mastlin.html

APOD 1.5

9/30/11
                I chose this image simply because it looked very cool. I have always been curious as to the difference in color of the stars. As some appear red, and other appear blue there must be some difference. Whether this difference is cause by the fluctuations in heat between stars, or the distance the star is from us. The cloud like image in the middle of the picture is also an awe inspiring view. As there aernt clouds in space like there are in Earth's atmosphere it must actually be globs of stars. The haze must be a visualization of actually millions of distant stars blurred together. Every time I look at pictures of stars I always realize how small and insignificant we are in comparison to the universe. Out of all these stars the odds of having life similar to ours somewhere in the universe must be pretty great. To have all this space and all of the millions of opportunities for life, there must be a similar world as ours, somewhere out there. 

Astronomy Class Stargaze

9/28/11
            Astronomy night was the first of many to come, and I hope the ones to come are just as awesome. Throughout the night the stars were easily visible without a cloud in the sky. There were no visual obstructions, except for the person in the white dodge dakota drifting through the parking lot. I was amazed to be able to see Jupiter, and that it had a more reddish glow to it. Also the fact that I could witness the actual movement of a satellite was unreal. I have never seen a satellite from direct sight before, and the speed at which it moved was very awesome. Throughout the night people were gazing at shooting stars and gasping when they saw them. To my misfortune I did not witness a single shooting star, but hope to see one in the future. Through the telescope I was able to witness many clusters of stars. Such as m=8, and I believe the other cluster was 13. I believe the 13 cluster was much more dense as there was a more hazed appearance. All together the night was a success.

APOD 1.4

September 23,2011
          This picture is awesome to say the least. It is a fact that stars appear to move as the
Earth rotates. This concept is something that is hard to understand as the speed at which the stars seem to move is very slow, as ooposed to a car speeding by you. This image is a tactual piece of evidense, rather than a verbal description to try to imagine what occurs. Also the circular motion of the stars and at the corner shows why the Northern Star is so important. As the Earth rotates there is one specific star that basically stays in one spot. This was important for thousands of years of traveling. I'm not entirely sure what the yellow lines are, I guess just some debris or something, because those are obviously not celestial objects.

Astronomy Observations- 4

September 23, 2011
           This morning was a very clear sky around 6:15. I was able to see the stars and the moon very well. I saw the moon and viewed it as a waning crescent. I could however still see the outline of the moon, and the darkened portion very well. I thought to myself, why on some nights is the darkened shade of the moon more easily visible than other nights? To specify my thoughts, why is the dark portion somewhat hazed and other nights the outline is clearly defined? This must have something to do with the light reflecting from the Earth's atmosphere to produce the more easily visible outline.

Astronomy Observations- 3

September 21, 2011
           This post is somewhat different from my others as I observed the Sun versus the stars at night. I went to the nokomis beach with my family to watch the sunset and figured I should blog about it. The Sun was a deep orange and as the sun set the sky turned an orangish red glow. Now I have always heard the myth of the green flash but I have never seen one. However as I was hoping to see one I was attentive at watching the sky. Even though there was no green flash there seemed to be a lingering green above the base of the horizon. This could have been nothing but I feel as though I did some some green hue lasting for about 2 minutes after the sun set.

Astronomy Observations- 2

September 17, 2011
          I believe I saw Mars on this night in the sky. As this was a clear night I observed the stars in their glowing awesomeness. I saw two lights in particular that seemed to be brighter than the others. I assume one of them was the North Star and the other I believe is Mars. I googled Mars and its positions after I observed the figure to see if it was Mars and found results stating that Mars was visible. It is amazing to think that for how different a star and a planet are that they would appear to be similar objects in the sky.

Astronomy Observations- 1

September 12, 2011
           On my way to school this morning I observed the moon. The moon was in the "Full" phase and was very bright and was very large in the sky. The moon was also close to the eastern horizon. Also there was a somewhat orange/red colored hue to the moon. It was very interesting as this is probably the largest I have ever seen the moon in my life. This course has taught me to observe the moon so closely, and I realized I have never really "looked" at the moon to understand its importance in the sky.

APOD 1.1

August 14, 2011. I found this image to be very interesting. Living in Florida, i dont see many tornadoes which is both good and bad. Good because there isnt a posibility of my house or community being torn apart, but bad because its a part of mother nature that is probably interesting to see from a safe distance. The fact that the tornado was in the same spot as a rainbow, and the total timing of the entire picture is a very good coinsidence. What are the odds of all the aspects of the image coming together at just the right moment? I learned that most tornadoes are formed in the tornado alley This tornado alley is more located in the midwest, from North Texas to South Dakota. Luckily I do not live here as there are many news stories of tragic porportions. Also I learned to not try to outrun a tornado as their paths are unpredictable and you might just end up running in to it. So the safest method is to park and use the most safe methods to protect yourself from the storm.