APOD 1.4

The picture I chose is of the Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula spans over a distance of a bout 300 light years, and is about 7500 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Carina. The brown clouds are dense clouds of molecular dust and gas, and are so thick and full of gas and dust that they have become this dark brown color. I chose this photo because I find it amazing that a nebula can span over 300 light years, and it amazed me when I thought about it that this picture could very well be a picture of mulitple light years of this same nebula in space. It is beautiful and expansive, and sort of unfathomable.

Observation 9/23/10

So, the sky was really cloudy tonight. And because of that I couldn't really see much :(
I saw the full moon tonight sort of, it was covered and dimmed by all the clouds.
There were some stars out tonight that were visible, but very few, all first magnitude stars basically.
The summer triangle was very visible. It is composed of the three stars Altair, Deneb, and Vega in the constellations Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra respectively.
Also, one of the only other stars in the sky tonight was the North star, or Polaris. It and the summer triangle were some of the only stars I was able to observe tonight.

APOD 1.3

The picture I used was from today, September 17. The reason I picked this picture is because it has always been a dream of mine to see the northern lights, or aurora borealis. The picture in itself is beautiful, the colors of the aurora borealis are truly amazing especially in contrast to the dark landscape. However I really like how this picture was taken as a panorama. It really captures the beauty of it in an even better day.  Aurora borealis becomes more and more regular as the autumnal equinox approaches.

APOD 1.2

This is a picture of what astronomers believe to be a black hole. Black holes are very hard to photograph, as such there has never been a direct photograph of one. So far, this is the closest they can go. The red outside is a spinning whirlpool of hot gas, rotating very fast. In the middle is the giveaway for a black hole, the bright light emitted from the center of the whirlpool. It has also been estimated that this particular black hole is very large, with a mass seven times that of the sun.

APOD 1.1

I picked the Bubble Nebula from September 2, 2010. I chose it because I really liked the colors and shape of it. I have never seen something like the bubble nebula before, and it is really amazing. I also like how it has multiple colors in it, like the reds and yellows and blues. When most people think of space they think of black, a black abyss but this proves them wrong! And me because I did not know things like this existed in space.

-YAY ASTRONOMY!