APOD: Massive Stars in Open Cluster Pismis 24

Yah an APOD entry (late I know). This one is for December 19 -my Birthday!
In Open Cluster Pismis 24 there is a star that is at over 200 times the mass of our sun. It is the brightest object located above the gas cloud in the picture. This star gets its brightness from three other stars all over 100 solar masses, making them some of the more massive stars on record. The gas cloud is actually an emission nebula NGC 6357 and you can see some stars forming in the nebula.
The Nebula is lcated in the constellation Scorpius

December 28 2006

It has been a while since I posted a blog entry-been BUSY and SICK. Also the wheather has been crappy, clouds and rain. Tonight at 7:00 pm the sky was clear, however it was still too light to view the stars. But 1 hour later the clouds had rolled in. I did get to see the moon through the telescope, but all I know about the moon is that it is a whaning gibbous. I also saw a bunch of craters and 'seas' but I dont know any of the names. The winter constellations are rising now. I saw Orion just above the horizon at 7pm.

Tuesday Dec. 12

At 9:00am during my Astronomy Class, I, with my classmates, went out to look at a sunspot. Using a pair of glasses made for observing the sun, I could see a dark spot on the sun. The spot was small and looked like a dot, but I could see it! I thought it was so cool, the last time I looked at a sunspot was when I was young with my dad and we used a screen.
Here is a picture of the sun and sunspot from orbiter SOHO.

APOD: The Outskirts of M77

M77, also known as NGC1068, is a spiral galaxy like our Milky Way. Like the Andromeda galaxy, M77 is fairly close only 60 light-years away and is far bigger than our own galaxy. It is over 100 light-years across. M77 is about the same distance as the Virgo Cluster, a clustering of nebulae and galaxies in Virgo, but it is rapidly moving away from us at 1100 km/sec. It's own gases and clouds is moving away from its center at 100km/sec. This rapid movement shows that the galaxy is fueled by an enormous energy source. Scientists have found massive black holes in it's core. The galaxy is massive-the cores mass is about 27 billion solar masses while the whole galaxy is about 1 trillion solar masses.

The picture is of the galaxy is a visible light image with enhanced data to show the subtle arms and other details.

APOD: M31- The Andromeda Galaxy

This beautiful picture is the Andromeda Galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. M31 is the closest galaxy that can be seen with the naked eye. In fact M31 with our own galaxy are the main ones in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group is the name of the group of galaxies our own Milky Way is in. M31 is a spiral galaxy, but in its center it has two nuclei. The second nuclei could be the remnants of a galaxy that was "eaten" by Andromeda. Other than the unusual center, our own Milky Way is thought to look like M31, though the Andromeda Galaxy is much bigger. It is over 65000 light years across and 2 million light years away. The stars around the galaxy in the picture are actually stars in our galaxy.