APOD blog: NGC 1499 The California Nebula

The nebula looks like the state of California, thus its name, and lies in the constellation Perseus. It was discovered in 1885 by Edward Barnard. It can be found in the Orion arm of the Milky Way, the same arm where we, Earth, are located. In fact, the nebula is only about 1500 light years away. The nebula is an emission type nebula and is red because of its ionized hydrogen. The illumination of the nebula is also caused by Xi Persei the brightest, bluish star in the picture. Because of the distance, the star has a luminosity of about 6300, or -4.7 magnitude, the same brightness as our sun.
The nebula extends about 100 light years across space and is about 240 arcmins and is the only bright nebula in the region.

September 23,
From 8pm-10pm I went to Pine View for a teacher held observation secssion. We used a 100-160 power microscope. The skies was clear, transparency fair and the seeing was 2 out of 5.

We saw Jupiter and three of its moon. One moon was going behind the planet, we also saw dark line bands on the disk of the planet. We also saw Uranus and it was a blueish-white in color. I also saw one meteor going southwest.

These are the constellations and/or their alpha stars that I saw: Scorpius and Antares, Sagetarius and the "teapot," Opiuchus, Cygnus and Deneb, Lyra and Vega, Aquila and Altair, Ursa Minor and Polaris, the handle of the Big Dipper, Bootes and Arcturus, Hercules and the "keystone," Pegasus, Cassieopia, Cephius, Delphinus, and Andromeda.

In Lyra, I saw Epsilon Lyra a double,double star. The double's double star (south) was parallel and the north star was perpendicular to the line between the double stars. All four of the stars were white in color. I also saw another binary star-Beta Cygni or Albireo, one of the stars was blue while the other one was white.

I also saw M-57 the ring nebula, M-11 the wild duck cluster, M-13 a globular cluster, M-8 the lagoon nebula and M-31 the andromeda galaxy.
M57 looked like a ring through the telescope, while M11 and M13 looked like a bunch of stars clumped together. M8 is an emission nebula but I only saw its star cluster and maybe a jint of blue. M31 was an ecliptical fuzz in the telescope.

APOD post: Central IC 1805

This picture is the central part of what is populary called the Heart Nebula. IC 1805 is an emmision nebula, and you can see emmisions from hydrogen (green), sulfer (red), and oxygen (blue). Also shown are hot star clusters also known as Melotte 15. The shape of the nebula is shaped by stellar winds and radiation from its star clusters.
The view spans about 15 light-years while the whole nebula is about 180 light-years across. The nebulae is found in the constellation Cassiopeia, which is about 7,500 light-years away in the Perseus arm of the galaxy.

Apod: Saturn at Night
It is the sunlight that reflects off Saturn's rings that causes the planet to glow at night. The Southern hemispere glows because of the reflected light from the rings. The light, however, does not penetrate the rings enough to brighten the northern hemisphere theirfore the northern hemisphere remains dark. Although the rings are bright, part of the rings are cut off by the planet's shadow, but if you look closely enough you can see the C-rings, the second most inner set of rings of Saturn.
This image is taken from the Cassini spacecraft which is now orbiting Saturn. The craft was 592,000 miles from saturn at an angle of 124 degrees.

APOD post: Dusty Spiral M66
M66 is the 66th object found by Messier. It is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo. Throughout its disk, new born stars are clustered. In the center, active star-formation is also occurring. The galaxy is about 35 million light years away and is part of what is called the "Leo Triplet." Two other galaxies are neighboring M66, (M65 and NGC3628) and it is thought that the gravity interactions between the galaxies is what gives M66 its odd and distorted appearance. Of the three, M66 is the largest galaxy with an apparent diameter of 8x2.5 arc min or 100,000 light years across.

Apod Blog: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300

NGC 1300 has a bar spanning the center with two arms at both ends. It is located in the constellation Eridanus. It is 69 light-years away and spans over 100,000 light-years or 5.5 arcmin. It is one of the largest Hubble image of a complete galaxy. At the center, there is spiral shaped design that might be caused by gas from the bars spiraling inwards. Only barred galaxys have these spiral designs in the center. The spiral means that the galaxy does not have a black hole or it is quiescent as most galaxys do have a central black hole. New observations show that our own Milky Way might also be a barred spiral galaxy, but the bar is small compared to NGC 1300.