APOD 4.4

 

This picture is of an emission nebula in the constellation Auriga. The nebula is called IC 140. The nebula is 12,000 light years away. The two little squiggles in the upper left are called the Tadpoles, and the nebula is affectionately referred to as a pond.

Observation, Q4

I went outside the other night, as usual, but this particular time, I brought my star charts. I noticed that the star I actually thought was Spica wasn't Spica. It was actually Saturn. I was amazed. Now I can perfectly identify Virgo, Spica, and Saturn.

APOD 4.3

This picture is what the night sky would look like if we could see the radio waves being emitted by a black hole in the Centaurus A galaxy. The waves are invisible to the human eye, but their distribution covers a huge area of the sky. The galaxy is located in the constellation Centaurus. The dots in the background represent not stars, but rather x-ray emitting galaxies.

Zooniverse

I have been spending 2 hours a week recording the weather charts from old ships. I have also dabbled in the star classification project, but mostly I just do the weather one.

APOD 4.2

This is an image of Earth taken from the International Space Station in 2003. This is what Earth might have looked like to Yuri Gagarin, who was the first person in space almost exactly fifty years ago. On April 12, 1961 he was launched. He was a soviet hero, but unfortunately, he died in a plane crash only seven years later. The first Us launched space shuttle also launched on an April12. it launched in 1981, twenty years after Gagarin, and thirty years ago.

Zooniverse

I have been recording date from old weather reports made by British ship captains during WWII. It is fun, and I can track the ships as they travel and note important changes in the weather. I have also analyzed stars' light curves to try and identify planets.