Observation

On Saturday, March 26, I attended Astronomy night at Pine view school. At 9:30 I could identify the constellations Orion, Taurus, Gemini, Canopus in Carina, Canis Major, Ursa Major, Leo, and Capella clearly in the sky. Through a telescope, I could see the many stars that make up the Pleiades star cluster. At 10:00, through an even larger telescope, I observed Sauturn, and could see the shape that its rings made! This was an absolutely amazing experience for me and i really enjoyed it.

Spacecrafts streak over Colorado

On rare occasions, spacecraft can be seen drifting over Earth. They are usually most visible in the night sky as they reflect back sunlight to us. These spacecrafts circle Earth every 90 minutes. When a spacecraft is visible to us, it is usually about 2,000 km above Earth or lower. This is defined as a low orbit. You can usually tell if a bright object in the sky is a spacecraft or a star because a spacecraft will change brightness as it moves across the sky and reflects light from different orientations above Earth. Three types of spacecraft that are commonly seen above Earth are the ISS (International Space Station), the NASA space shuttle, and Iridium Communication Devices. The two that can be seen in this picture are the ISS and Discovery, the NASA space shuttle. The path of the ISS crosses over the constellations Cassiopeia, Camelopardalis, Lynx, and Leo.The path of Discovery crosses over only Leo, but is located directly above Cepheus, Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, and Leo Minor. I especially found this picture interesting because of the beautiful landscape of Colorado, which is where i was born.

Iridescent clouds

In this striking image of clouds, iridescent clouds, formed by diffraction, can be seen. This difraction occurs when a cloud is very thin and is composed of droplets uniform in size. The colors created by this diffraction can be seen from the entire color spectrum, are usually very delicate. These iridescent clouds are formed most commonly in lenticular clouds. They can also be seen is altocumulus and cirrocumulus clouds, as well as in trails left by rockets or airplanes. They are usually seen in clouds that are newly forming, due to the similar age and size of droplets that make up the cloud. This picture was taken in Canada, from the Top of the World Highway.

Cooling Nuetron Star

Cassiopeia A, is now a supernova after its violent explosive death. The fact that Cassiopeia A is now a supernova tells us that it was an extremely massive star during its lifetime. The light from this massive explosion reached Earth 330 years ago. This is because this supernova lies at a distance of 11,000 light years away from Earth. The extremely dense, collapsed core is a nuetron star, and it is classified as a white dwarf while it is cooling. Once it cools completely it will be a black dwarf. The rapid cooling of this star has made astronomers come to beleive that this core may be secreting a nuetron superfluid. This stunning image is an X ray/optical composite image.

Gibbous Europa

This picture shows a familiar moon phase on an unfamiliar moon. One of Jupiter's moons, Europa, is shown here in the gibbous phase. Having a diameter of 3,121.6 kilometers, it is the 15th largest body in our solar system. As can be seen in this photograph, the surface of this moon is very chaotic, covered in deep cracks and dark spots along with domes and various raised regions.These strange regions on the surface are thought by scientists to be the result of convective motions taking place in the interior of Europa. The surface of this moon is covered in ice, and has a temperature of about -260 degrees F. Suprisingly, it's atmosphere is composed of mainly oxygen. However, this is a different type of oxygen than the kind we have here on Earth. Galileo spacecraft, which is responsible for this picture, has confirmed that there is an ocean located deep underneath the surface of Europa. It is beleived that this deep ocean may be home to some living organsisms. On Earth, we would call these organisms that might possibly live there extremophiles. Extremophiles are organisms that can thrive under extrememly severe or averse conditions. This mysterious ocean is a place that is hoped to be more thoroughly researched in the future.

Sauturn's Hyperion

Hyperion is definitely one of the oddest of Saturn's moons. It was discovered in 1849 by William Cranch Bond, George Phillips Bond, and William Lassel. This moon has an unusul sponge like texture caused by the many deep craters and its surface appears to be many different colors. Its low density tells us, however, that it is mainly composed of water-ice and very little rock.The variation in color is said to be the result of  the differering chemical makeup of the surface. At the bottom of the deep craters is said to be an "unknown dark material" This picture was taken from the Cassini orbiter, sent to photograph Hyperion and help scientists to find out more about what lies at the bottom of these deep craters.

Ice Fishing for Cosmic Neutrinos

This IceCube Nuetrino Observatory is located in the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station in Antartica. This telescope consists of thousands of DOMs, or, Digitaln Optical Modules.  These DOMs contain photomultiplier tubes and a computer that sends data received to the counting house. DOMS are lowered into the ground as deep as  2,450 meters. These holes are drilled into the ice using a hot water drill. This neutrino telescope is looking to detect the point sources of nuetrinos which could possibly tell us where the highest cosmic energy rays are originated. This telescope is very skilled not in detecting the number of netrinos, but the few neutrinos that it does detect is in very high resolution.