APOD 3.2

Hidden Treasures of M78

About 1,600 light-years away and nestled in the constellation Orion, the large, bright reflection nebula is well known to people who gaze at the sky via telescope. This image was a winner from the ESO's Hidden Treasures 2010 astophotography competition. The details of this picture is amazing - especially within its blueish center. Yelllowish and compact, you can see McNeil's nebula below and right of center.



Observation 1/19/11

The other night there was a fantastic full moon. As it rose in the sky it was a deep orange color and the higher it got it turned into a nice yellow color. From my perspective, the full moon looked really really close. I pointed it out to some of my friends and family and they were impressed by its gorgeous color and great presence in the sky. :)

I was also able to spot Orion and Cassiopeia.

APOD 3.1

Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka

These bright blueish lights from east to west mark the belt of Orion. What might come as a suprise to those who know little about astronomy is that these blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie about 1,500 light years away, born from Orion's interstellar clouds. Clouds of dust and gas adrift in this region have some interesting shapes including the Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula. This spectacular image spans about 4 degrees across the sky.

APOD 2.8

A Sun Halo Beyond Stockholm

Above, it looks like you are looking at the Sun through a lens. However, there are actually millions of lenses! In the form of ice crystals. Small, flat, six-sided ice crystals are formed as water freezes in the upper atmosphere. When these crystals flutter to the ground much of their time is spent facing flat, parallel to the ground. When an observer passes through the same plan during sunrise or sunset and during this alignment, each crystal acts like a minature lens, refracting sunlight into our view and creating phenomena like parhelia. (Sundogs)

Astronomy Cast

Ep: 108: The Life of The Sun (9/30/2008)


4.6 billion years ago+  Cold cloud of gas&dust- somehow caused to contract into a bunch of baby stars
Sun started out 10 times brighter as it is right now, sun got fainter as it contracted
then started nuclear burning in its core
during early parts of sun's life- very violent and active, powerful magnetic fields, flares
Sun settles down to main sequence (hotter in the past then today) 
Overtime our sun is heating up again (very gradual process, billions of years) 
the sun will stay a main sequence star for another 5 billion years 


About 5 billion years from now we start to run out of Hydrogen that is readily available for fusing in the center of the Sun.  When this happens the Sun is going to start contracting because there is not going to be as much pressure from the light supporting the outer layers of the Star.


in tiny stars, the burning process is able to create what we call convective mixing.  The entire Star essentially acts like a Lava Lamp, it’s able to constantly refuel the center of the Star.  


In a magical moment when it reaches a temperature ten to the 8 degrees, suddenly the Helium in the center of the Sun is able to ignite.  We call this a Helium Flash.  At this point the Sun becomes what we call a Horizontal Branch Star.


This is part of why so many of the really bright Stars that we see in the Sky are these red Stars.  We can just see red Stars at a much greater distance and this is a common phase for Stars to go through.  


We refer to the Main Sequence as the majority of the Star’s life and that’s exactly what it is.  Then it goes off and does all these really cool things but those happen essentially in the blink of a Cosmic eye.  Once the Star hits the Mira phase, just maybe four or five hundred million years after leaving the Main Sequence, at that point it starts losing its Atmosphere.

It starts transitioning from being a Star that’s burning and doing all the Star-like things to blasting its Atmosphere away starting to form a Planetary Nebula.  A Planetary Nebula is nothing more than the Atmosphere of a Star that’s been exhaled and hasn’t yet drifted so far away from its starting point that we can no longer see all the gas associated with one another.


I really like this astro cast! Hearing so much in depth about the sun clarifies many things and yet confuses me (so much info!) at the same time! 

David Rittenhouse Biography

McBride 1

Megan McBride

Astronomy Honors

 Percival 3

11 Jan 2011

David Rittenhouse Biography

            David Rittenhouse was born the son of farmer Matthias Rittenhouse in Germantown, Pennsylvania on April 8^th 1732. He is often cited as America’s second foremost scientist of the 18^th century only after Benjamin Franklin. What is an exciting fact is that Rittenhouse is on of the first great American astronomers! Almost entirely self-taught, he studied books inherited from his uncle, a furniture maker, and used his uncle's tools to construct clocks as a teenager. At a young age, Rittenhouse showed a high level of intelligence by creating a working scale model of his grandfather's paper mill. When Rittenhouse was nineteen, he started a scientific instrument shop at his father’s farm. He married Eleanor Coulston, and then after her death, Hannah Jacobs. He showed great ability in both science and mathematics and mastered Newton’s Principia. 

            Over the next thirty or forty years he made many highly-prized and innovative mathematical and astronomical instruments, most famous of which were two orreries he constructed for the Colleges of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania). These orreries show the solar and lunar eclipses and other phenomena for a period of 5,000 years either forward or backward. After moving to Philadelphia in 1770, Rittenhouse used both astronomical and terrestrial observations to survey canals and rivers and to establish the boundaries between many of the Mid-Atlantic States. He held the post of city surveyor of Philadelphia in 1774.

           

His scientific thinking and experimentation earned Rittenhouse considerable intellectual prestige in America and in Europe. He built his own observatory at his father's farm in Norriton, outside of Philadelphia. Rittenhouse maintained detailed records of his observations and published a number of important works on astronomy, including a paper putting forth his solution for locating the place of a planet in its orbit. He was a leader in the scientific community's observance of the transit of Venus in 1769, which won him broad acclaim. He also sought to solve mathematical problems, publishing his first mathematical paper in 1792, an effort to determine the period of a pendulum. He also experimented with magnetism and electricity.

Rittenhouse was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1768, serving over the years as curator, librarian, secretary, vice president and, from 1791 to 1796, its president. He was elected to its committee to observe the transits of Venus and Mercury in 1769 based on plans he had made. Over the years he received a number of honorary degrees including those from the Colleges of New Jersey and Philadelphia. In addition he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London

Rittenhouse used his scientific skills for practical purposes during the American Revolution. In 1775 he began his service on the Committee of Safety as an engineer supervising local casting of cannon, improvement of rifles, supply of ammunition and selection of sites for gunpowder mills and magazine stores. In the late 1770s Rittenhouse was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1776, and the Board of War. From 1779 to 1787 Rittenhouse was Treasurer of Pennsylvania, and from 1792 -1795 he served as Director of the U.S. Mint. He later worked as Penn's Professor of Astronomy at Philadelphia from 1779 to 1782.

David Rittenhouse was a great man who put his intelligence to use and for the benefit of the scientific community as well as the people. We take pride in our fellow American and recognize what immense contributions he made throughout his lifetime. Rittenhouse passed away June 26^th, 1796. 

APOD 2.7

The Cosmic Web of the Tarantula Nebula 

Located in the Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy orbiting our Milky Way galaxy is the largest and most complex star-forming region in the entire galactic neighborhood! This "tarantula"is about 1,000 light-years across. The spindly arms of this nebula surround NGC 2070, a star cluster that contains some of the brightest, most massive stars known, visible in blue on the right. I've never seen anything like this before and it really just bolsters that fact that space is beautiful. 

David Rittehouse Bio Sources

David Rittenhouse (1732-1796), University of Pennsylvania University Archives."University Archives and Records Center, University of Pennsylvania. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.archives.upenn.edu/people/1700s/rittenhouse_david.html>.


"David Rittenhouse (American Astronomer and Inventor) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/504662/David-Rittenhouse>.


"David Rittenhouse." The Robinson Library. 4 Aug. 2009. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.robinsonlibrary.com/science/astronomy/biography/rittenhouse.htm>.

Observation 12/21/10

On the day of the Total Lunar Eclipse, Dec 21st 2010 (the winter solstice) I was in Breckenridge, CO. I set my alarm and awoke to see the moon. It entered the Umbra at about 12:30 am mountain time. It was quite a sight seeing the red moon over the mountains - something I will never forget!