3.8 APOD

Look, it's our favorite 1995 Hubble Telescope picture of the Eagle Nebula (M16, Serpens) that we studied in class! :D I actually really like this picture, and enjoy the idea of the EGGs in the columns and that's why I chose this picture. And it's just gorgeous. Things like this make people actually interested in Astronomy because they're just amazingly beautiful and almost spiritual.
This is obviously a fake color photo taken of the Pillar of Creation and Fairy, the two features named in the Eagle Nebula.

3.7 APOD

This is a long exposure photo of the March 3rd 2007 lunar eclipse. The photographer left his camera shutter open while on a tripod. The large line that gets slimmer and red in the middle is the moon. The reddish hue is common to lunar eclipses. The other trails are just star trails. APOD put this up in honor of the Lunar Eclipse that we didn't get to see due to clouds. Stupid clouds. The rest of the articles just comment on how lunar eclipses are watched by completely casual sky gazers, and well everyone, and that the next lunar eclipse won't be until December 2010. Suckfest.

Star Formation Links

1. http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0607-first_stars_in_the_universe.htm News article/video about discovering the first stars in our universe.


2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0508-space_tornado.htm News article/video about finding a space tornado that appears to be a part of star formation somehow.

3. http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Bima/StarForm.html NCSA's timeline and explanation of how stars are formed. Good pictures.

4. http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/iau221/ This is actually the best site I've found so far as far as information on how star formation actually happens.

5. http://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/auto2/?id=800 Interesting because it's information we haven't really talked too much on, but not a lot of info.

6. http://www.aip.de/groups/starplan/ Weird pictures.

APOD 3.6

This is a picture of the moon's surface, of the features called the Bay of Rainbows and the Sea of Rains. These names, which historically come from the latin words for sea and ocean, are ironic seeing as these formations are created by lunar lava and the landscape of the moon is largely arid and dry. The moon maiden, or Cape Herclides is also shown in this picture. That's essentially it. Just the irony of the naming. Ayup.

APOD 3.5

I found this APOD interesting because we were just talking about this in the last chapter. A new 11 year cycle is beginning on the sun, so this is one of the first sunspots of this cycle apparently. The two dark lines are cooler filaments held up by the sun's magnetic field. We're just not getting out of solar minimum (in 2007), with the last solar maximum being in 2001. This picture of the sun is the same as we've been looking about - darker regions are cooler regions. This picture was taken based on hydrogen. I would say more, but this is all just basically EXACTLY what we studied last chapter. Cool beans. And! I guess there's an annular solar eclipse tomorrow! Which Percy didn't tell us about. All though, since it's basically 'only for penguins' I guess it doesn't really matter much for us :( Well, at least the penguins get to enjoy it. I wonder if they act differently when the sun is freaking out...

APOD 3.4

Ok I don't see the color in this so much but apparently astronomers are very excited about it because they put color on it with infrared and red and violet filters. I mean I see a slight random blue tinge to some of the craters but that's about it. Apparently the blue craters are the newer ones, but it doesn't describe why they're blue. This picture was shot but the Messenger spacecraft. Perseus says that it's because the chemical composition is different in the new craters, which I understand because it's a false color photo, I just don't get why the newer craters would have a different chemical make up than new craters. However apparently astronomers can't figure it out either so whatevs :D