Observation

The other night I went observing in my yard. I saw Orion, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Taurus, Auriga, Gemini, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Leo, and Hydra. I waited until Sirius was high in the sky, then looked directly south and saw Canopus. I went out last night, but it was cloudy.

Biography: Quarter 3

My biography is about James Hopwood Jeans. He was very cool, so sit back, fasten your seat belts and get ready for one wild ride!

James Jeans was born in Ormskirk, England, a small town in Lancashire near Liverpool. He was very well educated, because he went to  Merchant Taylor's School, Wilson's Crammer School, and Cambridge University. He was a professor at Cambridge and Princeton. He lectured at Oxford and worked at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. Jeans came up with a theory about all the planets forming from solar debris that was knocked off the sun during a collision. This theory is not believed by anyone anymore, though. Jeans and another scientist, Arthur Eddington, founded British cosmology. Their theory is also not believed anymore, since the Big Bang has become accepted. Jeans was also a mathematician, and he wrote many math related books. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Jeans established his reputation as a scientist in the field of relativity. In 1907, Jeans married Charlotte Mitchell, an American poet. Jeans' theory about the creation of the solar system is called the Tidal Theory. After the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925, Jeans began to see the universe as a mental construct. Jean's most critical development in astronomy, however, was the Jeans Length.  It was used, in combination with the size and density, to determine whether an interstellar cloud would be able to condense into a star or not. In 1945, he married an Australian musician, Suzanne Hock. He died on the 16th of September, 1946, at the age of 69.

APOD 3.5

This picture is of the supernova remnant Simeis 147. Supernovae are when large-mass stars die. Remnants are what is left over after the supernova is finished. In this particular remnant, however, there is a pulsar left over within. Pulsars are very compact stars that shoot beams of radio waves from their magnetic poles. As the star spins, we see the radio light flashing, and the star seems to pulse, hence the name.

APOD 3.4

This is a picture of the constellation Orion. All the stars have been stretched out far to show their colors. All of the stars are blue besides Betelgeuse. That's because Betelgeuse is a red giant star, and all the others aren't. Rigel is the most white, because it is a blue supergiant. Red stars are the coolest, and blue stars are hotter.

APOD 3.3

In this picture, the star Zeta Ophiuchi is seen in the center. The star was flung out, possibly by a companion star that went supernova. it is rushing forward at 24 kilometers per second. The yellow and red streak of dust is being pushed forward ahead of the moving star by the solar wind. This star is an O9 III specral type, and has an absolute magnitude of -3.2, meaning it would be a very bright star, if it's light wasn't obstructed by gases.

APOD 3.2

 

This image was taken in Antarctica in 2003. Two photographers traveled to the bottom of the world to see the complete solar eclipse. The image is a composite image to recreate what the human eye would have seen. The corona extends out beyond the shadow of the moon. To the right of the other photographer is an equipment bad and a collapsible chair. Some people really like eclipses.

APOD 3.1

This image is a time exposure of the sky during the Quadrantid Meteor Shower. The cistern structure lies above the buried Persian city of Qumis, known to the ancient Greeks as Hecatompylos. There are actually only two meteors in this picture, they go against the light trails of the stars, the brightest of which is actually not a star, but the planet Saturn. Time exposures are when the film is left to capture an image for an extended amount of time, and that's why the stars appear to move.