APOD 1.8

This picture, "Moon and Planets in the Morning" caught my eye for several reasons. First off the picture itself is almost surreal looking, and does not even appear to be possible to find on any place on Earth. This is the beauty of the celestial world, and modern photography however, which is improving daily. The picture is also very unique in that it captures on film a rare phenomenon that can only be viewed at this time of year. This event is the positioning of Mercury, Venus, and Saturn such that they can all be viewed in the sky at the same time. However this event is now fading in its intensity, as the 3 planets are beginning to drift apart and Mercury is becoming invisible against the horizon as it slowly moves down in the celestial sphere. This event was of particular interest to me even, as I was able to catch a glimpse of this planetary setup on one early morning several days ago. As I was driving to school, I saw three oddly bright pinpricks of light in the morning sky, which I found out later that afternoon from Mr. Percival, were Mercury, Venus, and Saturn.

APOD 1.7

This post "Giant Dust Ring Discovered Around Saturn" is a very interesting one for several reasons. Specifically it interests me because of all the planets, Saturn is by far my favorite, what with its peculiar rings that surround it and make it unique in our solar system. This uniqueness is increasing everyday in the Astronomical world though according to this APOD post. According to this article, there has been a new ring of Saturn discovered, enormous in size and made entirely of dust particles. The ring itself is 200 times Saturn's radius. As I perused the relevant links in the article, I learned that scientists hypothesize that this newest ring resulted from impact material ejected from one of Saturn's moons, Phoebe. This is partly due to the fact that Phoebe orbits directly in the dust ring's middle.

Galileo Galilei BIography

Galileo Galilei Biography
In the history of the civilized world, few have contributed more to the wealth of scientific technical knowledge that we have today than the legendary Galileo Galilei. Most notably however he contributed the most to the intriguing subject of Astronomy and our knowledge of the celestial world. Born in 1564 in a time when technology was at best rudimentary and almost everything had to be done by hand, Galileo was far ahead of the learning curve for his time. His true potential and greatest accomplishments did not start however until the coming of the 17th century. The number of groundbreaking discoveries, inventions, theories, and furthering of accepted works during his time period made by Galileo is incredible. For the purposes of this biography however, the focus of his work will be his contributions to the astronomical realm.
To begin with, Galileo was a strong supporter of the Copernican theory, which at the time was a highly shunned and rejected stance by the general population. While this stand made Galileo unpopular with quite a number of powerful figures at the time, all of this negative feeling would soon be turned around by the upcoming magnificence of his greatest contribution of all time to the world of Astronomy, the telescope. In the spring of 1609, Galileo heard a rumor that a device which could view objects at great distance as if they were closer had been created in the Netherlands by a spectacle maker there. Hearing of this, Galileo rapidly changed his pace of work and focus, and on August 25th of that very same year presented the fruits of his labor to the Venetian Senate. In this short span of time, Galileo had created an optical telescope using 3 lenses of specific thickness to magnify objects at great distances. The telescope would eventually be perfected by Galileo into a magnification of 40 times at one point, which was quite the powerful instrument for so long ago. His greatest ‘invention’ however is quite controversial, as it was not truly an original creation by him. Since he had heard of the idea from someone else, he actually stole their idea. Although in his defense he did create his own telescope completely from scratch with no help or blueprints from anyone. It was this creation of his own telescope, that allowed Galileo make some of the most groundbreaking and largest additions to our astronomical knowledge ever. With his telescope, he was able to closely examine the Moon in greater detail than ever before. Galileo’s findings that the Moon was a rough, uneven, and pockmarked orb of rock in the sky were highly disputed by many scientists of the day. Some even claimed that if Galileo was seeing a rough surface on the Moon through his telescope, then the Moon actually must be covered in a smooth and transparent crystal. Making further use of his new device, Galileo then turned his attentions to Jupiter in 1610 with his then 30 magnification telescope. He immediately noticed what appeared to be 3 stars which were very close to the planet, 1 in the west and 2 in the east, and all in a straight line. After keeping careful watch over these new celestial objects, Galileo came to the conclusion that they must be satellites of some kind orbiting the planet. This conclusion was made with his observations over the coming months that the 3 objects were often in different positions relative to the planet, but always in the same line relative to each other. Galileo did not stop there though. He went on to observe that the planet Saturn had some very odd bumps next to it, which were later affirmed to be rings surrounding the planet itself. These new celestial discoveries continued over the years due to his incredibly useful telescopic instrument. He was even able to observe that Venus, like the Moon, goes through phases and cycles. While all of these discoveries were remarkably groundbreaking and changed the face of Astronomy forever, they all lead up to a final conclusion that was irrefutable in Galileo’s opinion. This was that the geocentric theory which was held as the truth by the Church and most of the scientific world at the time was completely false. Instead Galileo sided with Copernicus’ postulation of heliocentricity in the solar system. His findings in support of this theory were published and touted widely by Galileo, which ultimately led to his prosecution and condemnation as a heretic by the Church (Galileo was a religious man in fact, he just believed that the Bible could be misinterpreted). He was eventually arrested by the authorities for his ‘lies’, but ultimately only put under house arrest due to his old age and very famous scientific work. It was there that he died in 1642 at the venerable age of 78. Up to this time though he continued to conduct scientific work and stay true to his beliefs, even managing to publish a book on motion while blinded by an eye infection.

APOD 1.6

This picture, "Target Crater Cabeus", is a very interesting photo for numerous reasons. Although at first the picture itself is not very eye catching, the information that it deals with is quite intriguing. The article talks about NASA's impact mission to the Moon. The general idea behind the mission is to slam the upper stage of a rocket into the crater, and then 4 minutes later to crash the acutal LCROSS mothership into the crater. The hope is that debris and material will be blown out of the crater, and analyzed by the LCROSS mothership as it flies into the crater on its course of impact. NASA also hopes that this rather unorthodox method of 'moon-digging' might reveal some signs of water hidden beneath the surface of the Moon. The most interesting thing about this entire mission, is that the two impacts on the Moon actually took place earlier this morning, and so are very recent news and current with celestial events.

Galileo Galilei Sources

http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Galileo.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/C005358/galilei.htm

http://www.crystalinks.com/galileo.html

http://galileo.rice.edu/

http://www.answers.com/topic/galileo-galilei

http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventors/a/Galileo_Galilei.htm

Night Observations 2

In the past couple of weeks, the sky has been very clear, thus making nighttime observation of the moon and celestial objects quite east. Jupiter has remained high up in the sky in a South-easterly direction and is consistently visible each time I walk into my driveway to observe. The Moon however has been shifting across the sky nightly now, having started out in the Southwest-West it has now moved over to almost directly East, and even approaching the Northeast. The Moon itself has been very bright and clear each night. Each night for the past 3 days even the Moon has appeared to be at its Fullest phase, although this is obviously not true. Tonight in particular as I was leaving my neighborhood headed directly East, the Moon was just off the horizon by about one fist length. It was very round and appeared incredibly full, and it also had a yellow-orange tint.

APOD 1.5

The picture 'Water Discovered on the Moon' is a very enticing picture to me, although at first it does not seem terribly interesting with its dull color. The picture itself is not what makes this APOD day so unique though. The content of the article and what it represents for us as people is what is so captivating. The idea of life off the Earth has been idealized for decades as a possibility for humans sometime in the future. This discovery of water on a celestial object other than the Earth is truly groundbreaking, and gives hope to us that there might be a possibility of finding a planet someday that is at least semi-hospitable for humans. The APOD article does specify however that the water layer that has been found on the Moon, in the best possible scenario, would still leave the Moon drier than the driest area on Earth. Also while browsing the embedded links ni the article, I learned that the oxygen-rich minerals have been discovered before on the Moon's surface. This is significant because the oxygen that is contained in these minerals is relatively easy to extract, and thus could possibly be used someday to help astronauts breathe during space missions