Gerard Kuiper

Gerard Kuiper was born on December 7th, 1905, and died on December 24th, 1979. He was born in the Netherlands and was the son of a tailor. In 1933 he immigrated to the United States, and became a citizen four years later. In 1944, he was the first to discover that Titan has a atmosphere, an astounding discovery because up to that point, it had been assumed that all the moon's in the solar system had no atmospheres. He seemed to have a knack of discovering atmospheres, because four years later he discovered Mars's CO2 atmosphere, and in the same year he discovered two moons: Miranda and Nereid, belonging to Uranus and Neptune respectively.

In the 1960's, he was part of the lunar Ranger program, and through a series of probes he was able to help pick the prime landing spots for the seven Apollo landers (although only six made it.) as well as the Surveyor missions.

He also was the first speculate that there was a disk of planet like icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune (TNOs), and he was correct, with this area now being called the Kuiper belt.
He has been greatly honored, with NASA's airborne telescope being named “Kuiper Airborne Observatory," as well as the minor planet 1776 Kuiper, he has craters named after him on Mercury, Mars, and the Moon, and of course, the Kuiper Belt.

APODs 4.1-4.4

APOD 4.4
The APOD from today (April 30), shows a brightly lit Mars, the star cluster M44, and the constellation Cancer. This picture was taken over a one minute exposure of Mars, which is 600 light seconds away, and M44, which is about 600 light years away. It interested me because due to the tree illuminated by the headlights, it is very similar to the conditions I usually observe with.

APOD 4.3
April 19
This image of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano is truly stunning. It shows volcanic lightning coming out of the cloud of ash that shut down European air travel for weeks. The contrast between the bluish lightning on the left and the reddish on the right almost creates a feeling of an epic battle, a la Highlander or Lord of the Rings, and truly shows the awesomeness (and I mean that in the old sense of the word) of nature.

APOD 4.2
April 17
The image of the service module of Apollo 13 struck me in many ways. The first of which was because Apollo 13 had been my favorite movie until I saw Children of Men, a solid 14 years (It is still in my top 10, and if it is on HBO I am there, even though I can probably go line for line dialog wise). Secondly, it was the first time I had seen the real image of the crippled space craft, outside of the movie. What I assumed were Hollywood special effects were clearly not, and the fact that they were able to make it back home is truly an example of human ingenuity and the ability for nerds to save the day.

APOD 4.1
April 9
I chose the APOD from April 9th for several reasons. First, is because as I saw the shuttle launch on my way to school, it is interesting to see it from another, fairly closer, position. Second, I recognize the rockets in frame from my multiple viewings of The Right Stuff, and Tom Hank’s miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, and I always like looking at the real version of something that I have seen in movies or TV shows. Lastly, the contrast between the fading shuttles exhaust trails hovering over the now obsolete rockets from the Mercury, Gemini and Atlas programs seems to show how the shuttle will be joining them in the not too distant future.

Observations/astronomy cast

AstroCast ep. 174: Mysteries of the solar system part 1

Out of the 174 episodes of astronomy cast, and out of the 100 or so that I have listened to, the series about the mysteries of the universe will most likely be the most interesting. While most of the shows play out with Cane acting as the listener, having a basic to intermediate understanding of astronomy and asking questions at that level to Gay, who has more advanced knowledge of the subject, with this one they were both at relatively the same level, although Gay did manage to provide many theories and hypothesis for the various mysteries brought up in the episode, such as methane on Mars (it may be alive, either tectonically or biologically), Venus and Neptune’s screwy rotations (large impact most likely). All in all, I plan on “tuning in” to the next several episodes (as much as one can tune into a podcast.)

AstroCast ep. 175: Mysteries of the solar system part 2

As above this episode switched the format than the regular episodes, providing more questions than answers. Two of the questions dealt with things that we have dealt with in class: the Sun’s corona temperature and Saturn’s hexagon.
Gay was able to provide better explanations about the corona problem than the history channel (nano-flares vs. sound waves [in space? Really history channel?]). With the problem of the hexagon, she was able to provide an explanation involving fluid dynamics, although her explanation did not explain the hexagon, but other polygons.

Henry Draper

Henry Draper was born in Virginia on March 7th, 1837. He was training to be a medical doctor, and graduated from NYU School of medicine in 1857. While traveling in Ireland, he met the Third Earl of Rosse, who got him interested in astronomy. In 1872, He took the first photograph of a stellar spectrum, using a custom built telescope and spectrograph to capture the absorption lines of Vega. In 1874 he organized an expedition to photograph the transit of Venus, a feat that he was later awarded a medal from congress for. Six years later, he took the first photograph of the Great Orion Nebula, the first time a deep sky object had been photographed, and two years later he took a much improved photo, both times using 50 minute exposures. In 1881, he took the first wide-angle photo of a comets tail, and also the first spectroscopic analysis of a comets nucleus. After his death in 1882, his widow funded a prize, the Henry Draper Medal, given to those who change the understanding of astrophysics, and a telescope which was used to catalog the spectra of as many stars as possible, which were put into a catalog bearing his name which was completed in 1924, and later updated once in 1936, and again in 1949. The catalog listed the spectral analysis of nearly all the stars visible up to a magnitude of 9, totaling 359,083 stars.

APOD 3.3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100203.html

The APOD from February 3rd shows an object that appears to be a collision between two asteroids, although it is not known for certain. If it is the debris of a collision, the impact occurred at 15,000 km/p, which released an incredible amount of energy. This is astounding to me because the shear size of space means that impacts between objects are very rare, especially objects of this small size.

APOD 3.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100127.html

The APOD from the 27th of January shows Saturn's moon Titan occulting a small portion of the other moon Tyths. The image was taken from the Cassini orbiter which I wrote about in my quarter 2 project. Titan appears to be out of focus, but this is most likely caused by the hazey atmosphere. On a superficial level, the creator Odysseus on Tyths makes the gray moon look like the Death Star coming around the gas giant Yavin to destroy its forested moon.

3.1

The APOD from the 19th shows sand dunes on Mars covered in frost. The image is striking because it shows something as mundane how frost sublimating on sand dunes can create a magnificent scene of natural beauty. One of the main problems that astronomers seem to face is that some people simply don't care about a "dead hunk of rock." But when an image like this is released, it shuts them up. At least for two or three weeks.

APOD 2.6

The APOD from the 17th of January shows the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis. The image and the description makes it seem as though space travel is simultaneously awe inspiring (it being space travel and all) and almost mundane (there is a launch about once a week). This situation is interesting to think about. We are at a comparable point with space travel that aviation was at in 1905, where people know the very basics of the technology, but few have experienced it, so it is still exciting, but not that mysterious. While this stage will probably last 50 to 100 years at the most, I doubt that space travel will ever reach the point of 2001, where one could sleep through a flight from Earth to a space-station in the L1 point between the Earth and Moon.

APOD 2.5

The APOD from the 11th of January shows astronaut Dale Gardner capturing the Westar 6 satelite. The image is striking because it shows a man with no tether floating in the vacuum of space, with only a small back-pack to get him back to the relative safety of the space shuttle Discovery, and a few layers of rubber and fabric to protect him from the harshness of space.

Joseph-Louis Lagrange

Joseph-Louis Lagrange was an Italian mathematician and astronomer. He lived from the 25th of January 25, 1736 to the 10th of April, 1813. Born of a French father and Italian mother in Turin, Lagrange lived in poverty for much of his early life due to his father squandering the family wealth on bad investments. He was educated in Turin, and at age 17 he showed his interest in mathematics. In the 1750’s and 60’s, he developed calculus of variations and well as many other problems such as the reason for the moon showing the same face to the Earth at all times. In 1766 he moved to Berlin from Saint Petersburg. There he did his work with full support of the king, who would frequently have him as a guest. While in Berlin, he modified Newtonian mechanics, making them simpler to use. These became known as Lagrangian mechanics. While attempting to solve the three-body-problem, he discovered the Lagrangian points, places where an object will remain in stable orbit between two other objects. By a lucky coincidence, these points were already named after him. Along with the discovery of the L-points, he published several astronomical papers. In 1786, Lagrange accepted an offer from Louis XVI to move to France. He quickly rose through the scientific ranks, and was given housing in the Lourve and was admitted to the French academy of science. Every form of government created by the French revolution, all the way through Napoleon, supported him fully, which surprised him as he was planning to escape during the first part of the uprising.

APOD 2.7

The APOD from the 3rd of January shows a small (.1 mm) metal ball that moves slightly in a vacuum due to energy fluctuations. When I first read that, I thought of the defunct Aether theory, that a substance fills every where in space. Another thing that struck me was the fact that normally the APODs are of very very large things, the smallest I had seen before this was a cloud formation. The fact that a ball invisible to the naked eye could prove that the universe is expanding is quite extraordinary in my view.

Observation log,

Date:12/30/09
Time:11:30 PM-12:10 AM
Objects observed:
The practically full moon, which was directly overhead, and had great views of the Tycho and Clavius craters through my telescope.
Mars, but only for a minute or so due to clouds moving into view.
The double cluster in Perseus.
M44 in Cancer.
Constellations:
Orion, which was slightly south of the moon.
Cancer, which was slightly west of Mars.
Perseus, which was north west of the moon.