APOD 3.2

28 January 2011
When I first saw "NanoSail," I thought the sail would be a large device for collecting light samples or heating or something like that. When I read on and realize it was actually a solar wind-driven spacecraft, I was blown away! It was so amazing that the sail spontaneously unfurled itself, it's almost suspicious. The NanoSail D is more than just the plaything of a group of NASA engineers; solar sail technology could be used in the future to slow down descents of satellites and reduce space debris.

Stargaze 01/23/11

At the service road, we observed M42 through the binoculars, which was in Orion southeast of the belt. We observed Jupiter and its moons in the telescope on low power, and on high power the red stripe was easily visible. We also saw the double cluster in Casseopeia by following one of the arms of the worm asterism. Through the telescope, we saw M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, and could make out the elliptical shape. The Almaak binary star revealed differences in chromatic perception, since the bigger star was reported as both red and gold, while the smaller was blue or purple. We saw Murphak, Algol, and a cluster that resembled a butterfly in Perseus. We looked at Trapezium and, while we could easily see the 4 vertices, the 5th star was hard to discern. Finally, we saw the Eskimo Nebula in Gemini. Total time: 2 hours

APOD 3.1

January 18 2011
This picture depicts a garden in Kona, Hawaii that was designed as a microcosm of the Milky Way galaxy. At first when I saw it, I thought "that's cool that they made arms out of plants from the real galaxy," but I didn't realize they were so thorough as to grow specific leaves that represent stars. That is an incredible testament to our mastery of both astronomy and botany. I found it funny that the peaceful-looking fountain represented a violent, spaghettifying black hole.

APOD 2.6

14 December 2010
The Delta IV Heavy rocket makes liftoff in this photo, so named because it uses three boosters, and delta is the third Greek letter. After watching a video of the launch preparations, I was fascinated by how the Air Force managed to move one of the service towers on a track to get it out of the way. It just seemed amazing how something could be sturdy enough to tower hundreds of feet in the air and still be movable.

APOD 2.7

January 3 2011
The colossal, cross-constellational asterism known as the Winter Hexagon is shown here. This geometrical shape comprises the stars Capella, Aldebaran, Rigel, Sirius, Procyon, and Castor/Pollux. While this isn't as distinguishable to me as the Summer Triangle, it is impressive for such a large shape to exist naturally in the cosmos. This picture was taken in a relatively dark part of Colorado, but I think it would be even easier to recognize in a brighter area: even though the vertices would be darker, there would be fewer visible stars surrounding them.

APOD 2.8

14 January 2011
This picture shows the Quadrantid Meteor Shower, which emits over 100 meteors per hour from 2003 EH1, a radiant meteor near Polaris. The Quadrantids were named after the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis. Two of the meteors show up in the time exposure as crossing star trails, which I found interesting because the stars were visible for hours on end, yet the meteors lasted only seconds and still seem as bright as the star trails.

Sun Images

3D sun

Sun in infrared

Sun in radio

Sun in x-ray

William Rutter Dawes

Alex Kiefer

Mr. Percival

Astronomy

11 Jan 2011

William Dawes

        William Rutter Dawes was born March 19 1799 and died February 15 1868. He was British, born in London and raised in West Sussex. He was named after his father, who was a mathematics teacher. His father wanted him to be a clergyman in the Church of England, but Rutter Dawes opted instead to be a physician.

        Dawes’ interest in astronomy began when he met William Lassell upon moving to Liverpool in 1826. He wrote a letter to John Herschel explaining how he used a 1.6 inch refractor, Flamsteed’s Atlas and Rees’s Encyclopedia to draw diagrams of all known binary stars. In 1829, he took up astronomy as a profession after observing with Lassell. He also became a friend and apprentice of John Herschel. Dawes upgraded Herschel’s telescope to a 3.8 inch Dolland refractor which greatly improved the resolution for identifying binary stars. Dawes thus earned the nickname “eagle eye Dawes.” Dawes was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1830.

        Dawes was influenced to return to religion by Rev. Thomas Waffles of the Independent Chapel on Great George Street in London. Dawes led his own congregation in Ormskirk. But when his wife died in 1839, he renounced his own congregation and joined that of George Bishop in London. Bishop’s observatory had a 7 inch refractor telescope, which Dawes used freely until 1844. He married a rich woman in 1842, and built his own personal observatory with a 6.5 inch Merz refractor. He discovered Saturn’s crepe ring along with W.C. Bond, but the latter worked at Harvard and his news didn’t cross the Atlantic before Dawes announced his discovery. Lassell attempted to observe the crepe ring with his 24 inch reflector, to no avail. However, when he visited Dawes and used the 7 inch refractor, making it out in a few minutes.

        After winning the RAS’s Gold Medal in 1855, he moved to Haddenham in 1857 and provided free medical service to its residents. His second wife died in 1860, and he observed until 1865, making drawings of Mars during its opposition in 1864. In 1867, Richard Proctor made a map of Mars based on them. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and died 4 years later.

        Dawes’s legacy consists of multiple craters on Mars and the moon and a gap in Saturn’s C ring which are named after him. Also, the Dawes limit, a formula used to calculate the resolving power of a telescope, is named after him because of its importance in observing binary stars, a focus of Dawes’s.

Works Cited

Oates, Michael. "William Rutter Dawes (1799 - 1868)." The Home of Amateur Astronomy in the UK. 30 Nov. 2009. Web. 11 Jan. 2011. <http://www.mikeoates.org/astro-history/dawes.htm>.

"William Rutter Dawes." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 8 Sept. 2010. Web. 11 Jan. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rutter_Dawes>.