APOD 2.1

Black holes. The ultimate nightmare, the unknown, the "once you go in you'll never come back" of  the universe. The picture above is a computer generated image of what it would look like to confront a black hole straight on. The gravity of a black hole is so powerful that it bends light and sends it back towards you. Black holes are the densest state of matter in the universe (that we know of). This particular image's background is form the 2MASS infrared sky survey, and the stars used are from the Henry Draper catalog.

The Great World-Wide Star Count

Date: 10/28/14
Local Times: 8:30
Magnitude Limiting Magnitude 3 (Cygnus)
Lat: 27.26
Lon: -82.46
Country: United States of America

It was extremely cool to be apart of something this big!

Stargazing (10.18.14)

The brave souls that fought off the mosquitos got to opportunity to see many abnormalities of the sky. Judging by the ability to see all 7 stars of Ursa Minor- tonight was what astronomers call a "severe clear".
Some of the astronomical objects we saw:
M27
M57
M11
The Summer Triangle
Ursa Minor
Alberio (the binary)
Epsilon Lyrae  (the double double)
Job's Coffin
5 Satellites
1 shooting star (meteor)
Cepheious
The Northern Cross
Antares
Around 6 1st magnitude stars
Mars
Saturn

Nights like these are a great time to keep looking up!

APOD 1.8

Some of the astronomical happenings that we've observed we cannot yet fully identify and understand. One of those phenomena is the allusive 'lighting sprite". An APOD member was lucky enough to catch a video of the sprite (at 10,000 frames per second). The clip is seconds long; but the lighting is unusual. Instead of usual, clean, streaks- the lightning sprite more resembles bombs dropping to the ground. Only certain thunderstorms carry lightning sprites, which is why it's so difficult for those who try to be able identify their origins. Like many astronomical occurrences- our technology will have to catch up to the universe before we can get a full understanding,.

APOD 1.7

A picture-perfect example of a natural wonder. Natural sandstone monoliths the "Temple of the Sun" (left) and the "Temple of the Moon" (right) are 'connected' by a Milky Way Galaxy 'bridge'. The Temples stand in Capital Reef National Park of Utah in the US. The Temples have been around since the Jurassic period (160 million years ago), mere babies in regards to the stars, including the Andromeda Galaxy that seems to connect them. The sight is awe-inspiring.

APOD 1.6

NGC 7635- The Bubble Nebula. Like many things of nature, the most innocent of appearances is linked to the most violent. The bubble itself has a diameter of 10 light years, with an O star in the center. The O star alone is over 100,000 times for luminous and 45 times bigger than our Sun. The Bubble Nebula is a result of violent winds from a massive star. The wind combined with the radiation blasted the Bubble Nebula into its shape. The Bubble is surrounded by a dense molecular cloud containing ionized hydrogen and oxygen. From Earth, the Bubble Nebula is 11,000 light years away- just little bigger than the bubble itself.

Observation Post (10.2.14)

Due to the unfortunate weather conditions this week- I have not been able to do very much observing. So I took Mr. Percival's advice and went onto www.astronomycast.com and listen to one of their episodes. The episode I chose was Episode 351: Asteroid Adventures.

Episode 351: Asteroid Adventures
This episode focuses on Rosetta's arrival at Comet 67/P. They're landing Rosetta on the Comet- something scientists didn't think there was enough gravity to do. Comet 67/P is beyond Mars. It is making an elliptical orbit around the comet, which it will eventually harpoon and land on. Solar power here is almost non-collectable and it takes 10-11 years to get the correct orbit and ability to land. Rosetta will approach Comet 67/P at 2 miles an hour until it touches, then it will eject 2 harpoons to anchor itself. Comet 67/P is about the size of Texas, meaning it has extremely low gravity.
Comet 67/P will only get aobut 3 AU from the Sun. The goal of the mission is to collect samples of what comes off of the comet, and what to comet does, as it passes perihelion in December of 2015.