APOD 4.1

Messenger at Mercury

 

 

On March 17tth, the Messenger Spacecraft started orbiting our inner most planet, Mercury. This is the first time that any ship has been in orbit around this planet, which means many pictures will be taken. This project has been very exciting for me because I've been following it on Nasa.gov and to see these kinds of pictures are great. Mercury almost looks like our Moon, but there are some other colors near the craters like red and blue if closely observed. Overall, viewing pictures of the planets in our solar system is one of my favorite things to do in Astronomy because I can feel even our solar system becoming "smaller" if you will as we have spacecrafts travel to each planet. Soon we will be saying "Its a small solar system" instead of "Its a small world".

Astronomy Night Observations

Recently I attended the Astronomy Event that is held yearly at Pine View School. With very clear skies and little light pollution (thank god that light near the campus police officer's house can be turned off now) I was able to see the sky very clearly. Among the constellations I observed was Orion, which was visible even before the sun's glow faded. With the naked eye I clearly saw Betelgeuse's orange glow, and even the sword of Orion that hangs off the belt. Next to Orion was Canis Major with the bright star Sirius, that was quite a sight. To the North was Polaris in Ursa Minor. The best sight of the night was Saturn as it rose in the East, that was really great to see through a telescope, the rings were amazing!

APOD 3.8

Kepler's Suns and Planets

 

This image shows all of the 1,235 candidates for exo-planets. Exo-planets are found by observing slight the slight dimming that a star exhibits when one of the planets passes in front of its view. Most of the exo-planets found are gas giants, but there are still a few being found that are rocky in nature and could very well be like Earth. I find this to be very fascinating because if planets around stars are this common, life probably is as well.

APOD 3.7

Video Link: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110315.html

Cassini Approaches Saturn 

The spacecraft Cassini approached Saturn in 2004, taking thousands of pictures. Those pictures were compiled and edited into an amazing video that shows the perspective of a ship approaching Saturn. The video really interested me because the spacecraft even went to some of Saturn's moons. In addition it was astoundingly high quality and just overall awe inspiring. But I guess that's what you get for studying the most photogenic planet in our solar system.

APOD 3.6 - Observation

Jupiter and Mercury at Sunset

Over the past week when I went out at sunset, since its much later occurring now and H.W. really doesn't get in the way, I always saw two stars before the sun's light completely faded. My guess was that one of them was Jupiter, but I did not know what the other was. Well APOD fixed that for me, releasing this great photo of the sunset and explaining how the two stars are actually Jupiter and Mercury.