Astronomy Biography #2: James South

 

 "South, James." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 12. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 551-552.Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Dec. 2014.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_South

The Observatory of the Late Sir James South
   http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1870AReg....8..196.

APOD 2.6: Aurora Shimmer and a Meteor Flash

           Northern lights, or aurora borealis, shimmered in the skies over the island of Kvaløya, near Tromsø Norway on  December 13, 2009. The picture also captures the flash of a fireball meteor from the Geminid Meteor Shower in December 2009, streaking past the handle of the big dipper. At the end of this week, the Geminid meteor shower will continue but be disrupted by the last quarter moon. 

APOD 2.5: The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud

The dark object to the right of the image looks like a seahorse, but it is actually a pillar of smokey dust about 20 light years long. the dust structure occurs in our neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud, in a star forming region near the expansive Tarantula Nebula. near the "neck" of the "seahorse" is NGC 2074.  The color image was taken in 2008 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in honor of Hubble's 100,000th trip around the Earth.

APOD 2.4: LDN 988 Dark Nebula in Cygnus

This picture is focusing on the dark nebula LDN 988 found in the star fields of northern Cygnus. the picture, composed with telescope and camera, is 2 degrees across. that corresponds to about 70 light-years at the estimated 2,000 light-year distance of LDN 988. 

APOD 2.3: Orion in Gas, Dust and Stars

This deep exposure picture of Orion shows dark nebula and star clusters in this extended patch of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the left are the most famous that make up orion's belt. Thee objects in this picture are about 15,000 light years away and span for about 75 years. 

APOD 2.2: Extra Green Aurora Over Norway

This extra green aurora was seen over the summit of the Austenesfjorden fjord close to the town of Svolvear on the Lofoten islands in northern Norway. This picture was taken in early March, but the sun has been creating many auroras because it is cose to ts maximum surface activity in its 11-year-magnetic-cycle.  

APOD 2.1: Iridescent Cloud Edge Over Colorado

 

When watching the eclipse on October 23, spotters in Colorado suffered from cloud coverage. Unexpectadely, the clouds tarted to show iridescence, the diffraction of sunlight around a thin screen of nearly uniformly-sized water droplets. Different colors of the sunlight become deflected by different angles and come to the observer from slightly different directions. The white streak on the right are the trails of an airplane.

APOD 1.8: Auroral Corona Over Norway

 

Auroras rarely reach below 60 kilometers off the ground, and can range up to 1000 kilometers. Auroras are made from prtons and electrons striking differeent atoms and molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. the uncommon auroral corona can happen when aurora happens directly above or is taken from directly under. This green and purple aurora exhibition occurred last month above Kvaløya, Tromsø, Norway. The Sessøyfjordenfjord runs through the foreground, while numerous stars are visible far in the distance. 

APOD 1.7: Eclipse At Moonset

 

     This half eclipsed moon lies over a bed of clouds covering the Pacific ocean and Chilean coast line. The curved edge of the earths shadow cuts across the middle as the Moon sinks lower in towards the western hemisphere. This eclipse began at the time of moonset and sunrise on October 8, it could only be followed for about an hour on the far west due to clouds.

Christian Severin, “Longomontanus”

b. Longberg, Jutland, Denmark, 4 October 1562; d. Copenhagen, Denmark, 8 October 1647

            Christian Severin was the son of two peasants, Søren Poulsen and Maron Christensdatter.  After Severin’s father died, his mother could now afford for him to go to school continuously, in result, having Severin finish school when he was twenty six. After servicing Tycho Brahe until 1597, he received an MA at the University of Rostock. He then returned home and became a college professor in 1607, teaching science and mathematics at the University of Copenhagan. He remained there until his death in 1647. When Tycho died in 1601, his program for the restoration of astronomy was unfinished. Two tasks were left: the selection and integration of the data of the motions of the planets, and the presentation of the results of the entire program in the form of a treaty. Severin, Tycho’s closest, assumed the responsibility and fulfilled both tasks in his Astronomia danica in 1662. Although Severin worked and wrote in the era of Kepler and Galileo, he didn’t believe in ellipses, heliocentrism, the telescope, and logarithms. Regardless of his knowledge as an astronomist, Severin’s reputation suffered in comparison to Kepler’s achievements. Severin’s prestige attached to his work saw it through two reprintings despite the appearance of Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae in 1627. In Severin’s honor, there is a massive inpact crater named after him, Longomontanus, located southwest of Tycho, another crater.

APOD 1.6 : The Butterfly Nebula From Hubble

 

This nebula has an estimated surface tempurature of 250,000 degrees C, named the butterfly nebula fot its dying center, making it look like two butterfly wings. this picture was taken in 2009 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 an has had its colors reprosessed. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the constellation, Scorpion (Scorpius). 

APOD 1.5: The Lagoon Nebula

 

This large lagoon nebula is home to many young star clusters and hot gas. This one spans 100 light years across and 500 light years away. It is so big, you can actually see it from earth without a telescope, towards the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. A bright knot of gas and dust in the nebula's center is known as the Hourglass Nebula. 



 

 

 

 

APOD 1.4: Aurora Over Maine

 

Earlier this month active sunspots rotated into view and unleashed a series of solar flares and plasmas into the Solar System. In particular, a pair of Coronal Mass Ejections  (CMEs) entered the Earth's magnetosphere toward the end of last week, creating the most intense geomagnetic storm (a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shock wave and/or cloud of magnetic field which interacts with the Earth's magnetic field) so far this year. the plasma clouds traveled all the way down to Wisconsin and the northern lights were viewed over Acadia National Park in Maine.





Biography Source Citations: Longomontanus

"Longomontanus." Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 3: 1450 to 1699. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 394. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Sept. 2014.

"Severin, Christian." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 12. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 332.Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Sept. 2014.

APOD 1.3: Milky Way Over the Northern Lights

 



        Aurora Borealis was seen over Östersund, Sweden with a large part of the Milky Way floating over it. The auroras were caused by the sun ejecting plasma clouds into the solar system. Auroras would continue do to a sunspot that moved into the solar system.

APOD 1.2: Airglow Ripples Over Tibet

 

       In late April, following a big thunderstorm over Bangladesh, giant colorful air ripples appeared over Tibet, China. The pattern is created by atmospheric gravity waves, which are waves of alternating air pressure as they rise higher up and the air gets thinner. Airglow is produced by chemiluminescence, the production of light in a chemical reaction.



APOD 1.1

     For my first blog entry, I chose an event that happened on August 27. This is a snapshot of the Milky way Galaxy over Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. the colors of the Milky Way were brightened by the steam and bacteria evaporating off of Silex Spring, which has a magma chamber located underneath.