Frosted Leaf and Night sky

This work of art captures both the beauty of the galaxy as well as the beauty of nature we have here on Earth. The frost on the star looks very much like the stars in the night sky. This picture was taken over Japan. In this picture, a meteor can be seen flying behind the trees on the far lower left. Next to the streak of the meteor is also the streak left behind from an airplane. Once again, capturing the similarities between Earth and the rest of our galaxy. The star with the highest magnitude, Sirius, can be seen shining brightly on the left side of the image. The constellation of Orion can be seen easily, as well as his belt of three stars in a perfectly spaced row. This belt is located benaeath the red gas giant. This gas giant is named Betelguese. To the right of the image is the star cluster of the Seven sisters, or, Pleides open star cluster.

observation

On saturday, November 20, 2010, I saw the full moon looking beautiful about 6 degrees above the horizon in the East. I was located by the bay near mote marine aquarium.

NGC 4452: An Extremely Thin Galaxy

This galaxy is so thin that it is barely visible when viewed from the side. It is a type of disk galaxy known as a lenticular galaxy. A lenticular galaxy has used up most of its stellular matter. It is made clear that NGC4452 is a lenticular galaxy due to its lack of dust surrounding it. There is very little star formation in this galaxy. It spans about 35,000 light years. There is a bulge of stars loc ated in the center of this galaxy.

Spicules: jets on the Sun

Spicules are "spikes of superheated gas" made up of plasma that are on the sun. they are 300 miles wide, and usually about 3,000 miles long. They move at a speed of 50,000 miles per hour and then vanish after about 5 minutes. this characteristic of spicules makes them very hard to study in depth.Spicules are one of many factors that generate an intense solar wind on the surface of the Sun. It is believed that the periodic regeneration of a spicule about every five minutes is caused by sound waves of a ring, much like that of a bell, being emitted  from the inside of the Sun. These sound waves form shock waves, which  make a spicule shoot out. Spicules may also contribute to the extrememly high temperature of the corona of the Sun, which is 1.8 milion degrees farenheight, much higher in temperature than the surface of the Sun. There is still  much to learn about the mysterious spicules that engulf the Sun.

Halloween and the Ghost head nebula

Today is Hallowen! Halloween is a "cross- quarter" day, or a day halfway in between the equinox and the solstice.With a span of about 50 light years, this Ghost head nebula has earned its name from it's ghostly appearance and is said to look like Casper the friendly ghost. The "eyes" of this ghost are the two bright lights in the middle of the photograph. These formations are named A1 and A2. Within  both A1 and A2 are large stars the green in the left of the picture is glowing oxygen. The glowing oxygen is produced by a strong stellar wind created by an enormous star that is not shown in the picture. The red and blue light shows the emitted hydrogen gas. It is located in the massive Megellanic cloud.

Prometheus rising through Saturn's F ring

In this picture is shown one of Saturn's 62 known moons. Saturn has 9 rings, named A,B,C,D,E,F and G(not in order from saturn) These rings are amazingly thin, being about only 100 meters thick, while they are thousands of kilometers wide. From a side view of saturn, the rings are seen as only a very thin line surrounding the planet. The F ring shown in this picture is held together by "shepard moons". Included in these mooons are Prometheus and Pandora. It is a very narrow and rather dim ring, but it has a diverse structure. This picture shows the trail of empty space created by the gravitaional force of Prometheus.

Christen Sorensen Longomontanus

Chritsen was born in the villiage of Lomborg in Jutland, Denmark. when he reached the age of eight, his father passed away. He studied at Lemvig until he was fourteen, when he then ran away to Viborg. He then started working so that he could provide for himself and started to attend the University of Copenhagen as well as grammar school. It was there that he met the well known Tycho Brahe. He became Tycho Brahe's valuable assistant. He left for three years to engage himself further in his studies, and then returned to Brahe. It was then that he assisted in developing the tychonic lunar theory. When he was done with this he went to Fraunberg and received his masters degree at Rostock. He became a professor at th University of Cophagen in 1607 and remained in this position until he died. Although Christen had his accomplishments, his beleifs were also very flawed. he saw comets as "evil" and went along with Brahe's theory regarding refraction. He also beleived that he had successfully "squared the circle."Squaring the circle was a problem that many ancient geometers tried in vain to find the solution to. This problem has been proven impossible today. He inaugrated the building of an astronomical tower. Christen was the true creator of is known as Brahe's geoheliogentric model. He created the Danish astronomy models in 1622. He also wrote a book entitled Astronomica Danica after the death of his master Tycho Brahe. In this book, Longomontanus integrated his observations and applied them to the motion of planets in the form of a "systematic treatise"