APOD 4.4

This is a picture of Cygnus without the stars, except for Deneb which is still in the picture towards the top,(hold your mouse over the picture to make the stars appear), taken with a special camera lens to show the hydrogen atoms. In fact, all the red is hydrogen gas. You can also see the Pelican, North America, and Butterfly nebulas in this picture. Nebulas, nebulae, whatever. That's about it. It's not very exciting but it's still a really pretty picture.

APOD 4.3

This is a picture of M63, otherwise known as the Sunflower Galaxy for its yellow center and spiral arms. If it doesn't ring a bell, don't feel bad because it's not something we were ever required to learn for the constellation quizzes. M63 is found in Canes Venatici, the "loyal" constellation according to APOD. It's called an "island universe" but the link provided doesn't really explain what that is so I have no idea. This galaxy, however, is actually about the size of our own Milky Way galaxy (100,000 light years. Have you ever noticed how dumb sounding the name of our galaxy is? Who the hell named it?). Astronomers believe that this galaxy has gone through "bursts" of intense star formation, and they think that the extended features result from gravitational interaction between this galaxy and other surrounding galaxies. M63 is a dominant member of the M101 galaxy group.

APOD 4.2

This is a less than traditional picture of Orion. You can see the three stars of Orion's Belt in the upper lefthand corner of the picture (They look blue in this particular photo). If you look to the left of the leftmost star (Altinak)you'll see the Flame Nebula (which looks much cooler in the other picture they have of the Flame Nebula, when you click the link). If you look hard directly below Altinak, you'll see the Horse Head Nebula. If you look reeeallly hard. I personally am not sure that I see it. M42 is also in this picture, to the right and down of the Horsehead. Personally I think it's the least exciting of the nebulae in Orion, but hey that's just me. The really bright star along the bottom of the picture and towards the right side is Rigel. Right near Rigel is the Witch Head Nebula. I have no idea how it got that name because even when you click the link to get the close up it doesn't look like a Witch's Head. However! It does look really cool, kind of wispy and kickbutt. The entire red swirly surrounding the picture is Barnard's Loop. Yaaay Barnard.

Observation Monday March 24th

Place: Venice Beach
Time: It was about 9 30 to 11 or so.
Tools: I didn't come prepared :( I could only observe with my naked eye.
But! The moon was extremely slight, a waning crescent, and Venice beach is far enough from the city lights that the star gazing was extremely good. I didn't actually plan to do this when I went to the beach so I didn't have a star chart or anything, but these were the constellations I recognized from memory (or, as it were, from their first magnitude stars...): Auriga I could find Capella but not the kids. Gemini I could see Castor and Pollux obviously but also the general human-body outline. Seeing Orion was wicked cool because instead of only seeing the seven or however many major stars that I can see from my light polluted home view, I could see many many higher magnitude stars in between the major stars, especially in the area between the belt and the "feet." Sirius and Procyon were easily identifiable as well, as was Taurus. The weird thing was that I thought I saw another redish star in Taurus besides just Aldebaren? I did see the Big Dipper as well as a strange constellation I didn't recognize much lower in the sky on keel with Orion and Taurus that had a shape akin to the little dipper. I'm looking at a star chart right now and I still can't identify what the hell it was. I think then the sky got into the Spring Constellations because after identifying all the Winter Constellations I didn't recognize anything else in the sky...