Observation Quarter 4 Part 2

Wednesday May 23, 2012
2 hours
mars
saturn
bootes
gemini
virgo
ursa minor
leo
gemini
cancer
hydra
hercules
cassiopeia
ursa minor
cepheus
cygnus

APOD 4.8

M6: Butterfly Cluster (NGC 6405)

The Butterfly Cluster is a Messier object located in the constellation Scorpius.  It is a an open cluster, a relatively young group of stars that were born at the same time.  This cluster is about 1200 light years away from Earth.  Its name comes from its shape, because it looks liked a butterfly to astronomers; however, I don't see the butterfly.  The blue color comes from the stars which are very hot, blue-white stars.  However, the brightest star is an orange, supergiant star called BM Scorpii.  The overall brightness of this cluster is 4.2 magnitude.  It is easiest to see this cluster on a dark night, and I will look for it next time I look up to observe the stars.

Zooniverse

I first started working and doing the section that said "How Galaxies Work" and after I worked on it for 2 class periods, I began to work in the climate section of Zooniverse.
I have so far spent 2 class periods analyzing and documenting the varying pattern changes as the "ship" moved through oceans and various parts of the globe.

Sources Biography

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMBPC2PGQD_index_0.html
http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/brucemedalists/oort/

Jan Oort Biography

(1900–1992)

A Dutch astronomer who made major contributions to our knowledge of the structure and rotation of the Milky Way Galaxy. More or less as a sideline, Oort studied comets as well and provided evidence for his theory, now widely accepted, that the Sun is surrounded by a distant cloud of ice-rock objects that has become known as the Oort Cloud. Oort studied stellar dynamics under Jacobus Kapteyn at Groningen and worked at the University of Leiden from 1924 to 1992. In 1927 he confirmed Bertil Lindblad's hypothesis of galactic rotation by analyzing motions of distant stars. During World War II Oort started his compatriot Hendrik van de Hulst on the successful search for the 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen and after the war led the Dutch group that used the 21-cm line to map the layout of the Galaxy, including the large-scale spiral structure, the galactic center, and gas-cloud motions. In 1950, based on his analysis of the well-measured orbits of 19 long-period comets, Oort proposed the existence of a vast repository of frozen cometary nuclei. He later showed that light from the Crab Nebula is polarized, confirming Iosif Shklovskii's suggestion that the emission is largely due to synchrotron radiation.

APOD 4.7

M6: Butterfly Cluster (NGC 6405)

The Butterfly Cluster is a Messier object located in the constellation Scorpius.  It is a an open cluster, a relatively young group of stars that were born at the same time.  This cluster is about 1200 light years away from Earth.  Its name comes from its shape, because it looks liked a butterfly to astronomers; however, I don't see the butterfly.  The blue color comes from the stars which are very hot, blue-white stars.  However, the brightest star is an orange, supergiant star called BM Scorpii.  The overall brightness of this cluster is 4.2 magnitude.  It is easiest to see this cluster on a dark night, and I will look for it next time I look up to observe the stars. 

APOD 4.6

This is a picture of M106.  It is an active spiral galaxy located in the constellations of Ursa Major and Canes Venatici.  It is 30 thousand light years wide and 21 million light-years away from earth, receding 537 km/sec .  Similar to the Andromeda galaxy, it has dust lanes and spiral arms.  The reddish parts are stellar nurseries that are filled with young bliue stars.