Great World Wide Star Count

At 27.01368,-82.38721 (Latitude and Longitude)
Englewood, Florida
Magnitude 3 (used Cygnus)
*I already reported my findings on the website*

Quarter 1 / Observations #2

Oct.23,2011
Stargazing (8 P.M. - 10P.M)
We started off the night by looking up into the southwestern sky and observing Scorpius just above the horizon with Sagittarius pouring out over it. Using the binocular stand, we could observe a plethora of stars that ran through both constellations and comprising the Milky Way galaxy. Directly west, Delphinus and Job’s Coffin were visible over the shell parking lot. Opposite of Delphinus, lying in the eastern sky was Jupiter and Hercules. Jupiter had four moons that were visible through the telescope along with two weather bands going horizontally across its surface. Shortly thereafter we observed the Hubble Space Telescope orbiting above us at about 8:20 P.M; as the satellite came closer to us it got gradually brighter, peaked in brightness when it was directly overhead, and gradually decreased in brightness as it orbited away from us and through the constellation Pegasus. Approximately five satellites were spotted that evening: two on the binocular stand and three with the naked eye. Using a green laser pointer, we proceeded to star hop and identify constellations. We identified Cepheus by first finding Polaris in the northern sky and then we spotted Cassiopeia - which looks like a “lazy M or W” - in order to find Andromeda. Throughout the night we constantly referred back to Deneb, Altair, Vega, and even Alberio to find the Summer Triangle and identify the different Messier objects within their respective constellations. For example, in the constellation Lyra there were two binary star systems, one was vertically oriented and the other was horizontally oriented in the nighttime sky. Other observations include Fomalhaut, Ophiuchus, Serpens, Scutum, the Coathanger cluster(in Vulpecula), and Sagitta. Also the sky around Pine View was determined to be forth magnitude. The stargazing group collectively saw a meteor flash by at approximately 8:45 P.M. I personally managed to catch a glimpse of a meteor as it briefly streaked across the sky just as we were getting ready to begin observations.

APOD 1.8

2011 October 20
Tails of Comet Garradd

With binoculars or a small telescope, the Comet Garradd, which was discovered back in 2009, will be passing through the constellation Hercules over the next few months. The comet sports several tails and has a green glow about it, so it should be interesting to observe in the nighttime sky. Additionally the comet is 2 A.U. (186,000,000 miles)away from us and is intrinsically large. Perhaps the Comet Garradd will be visible this coming stargaze Sunday night.

This article got me wondering, what are the differences between a comet and an asteroid? After doing a bit of research I have found a few of these differences. A comet is a celestial object believed to be composed primarily of frozen space dust and gases. A comet follows an orbit around a star and as it approaches a star it will melt, releasing its frozen space dust. On the other hand, a meteor does not follow an orbit. Also a meteor is not a meteor until it enters Earth's atmosphere - until then it is a meteoroid. I also found that there are other celestial objects that I did not account for until I finished reading, including  the differences between asteroids, meteors, comets, and meteorites.

APOD 1.7

MAGIC Star Trails
2011 October 14
On the Canary island of La Palma there are a pair of MAGIC telescopes that capture air showers of high-energy particles that results from high energy gamma radiation/photons impacting the atmosphere! Of course these telescopes are not truely "magic", they are really quite scientific.These Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov telescopes were the collaborative effort of about 150 researchers from Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Finland, Bulgaria, Armenia and the United States. Today only MAGIC-I is the only one that is operational, but it stands as the largest gamma ray telescope we have! Most gamma ray detectors require the use of a ballon or satelite to get above the Earth's gamma-ray-absorbing-atmosphere; however, the MAGIC telescope uses this problem to its advantage, by making the atmosphere part of the detector! The radiation shower is picked up by the satelite by means of using Cerenkov light reflected from its mirror, detected in the focal plane by one or many photomultipliers, and then converted from optical signal into an electronic signal to record the gamma-ray event.

John Flamsteed

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Richard Fuerst

Mr. Percival

DE Astronomy

14 October 2011

John Flamsteed

            John Flamsteed was born in Denby, England, 19 August 1946 to Stephen and Mary Flamsteed. His father was a prosperous businessman who abhorred John's desire to be an astronomer. Additionally, John's mother and stepmother both died early on in the young astronomer's childhood. Coupled with a serious rheumatic condition at age 14 and frequent incapacitation,  John's father denied his sickly son the chance to attend university in 1662. The father's decision turned out to be a mixed blessing for John Flamsteed as he was left to his own interests, namely the stars above.

            John made his debut into the field of astronomy in 1669 when he anonymously submitted his lunar occultations for 1670. This would lead to his meeting with Sir Jonas Moore, a man with connections to the King Charles II. Together the two astronomers would convince the king that there was a strong need for accurate measurements of celestial objects for navigation; afterwards the king would setup an observatory in Greenwich and designate John Flamsteed as "Astronomer Royal". In 1684 he was granted a place to stay in Surrey, which was not far from Greenwich, and later in 1692 he would marry a lovely lady by the name of Margaret Cooke. From his new

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position, Flamsteed decided to rectify the tables of the motions of the heavens, a feat originally taken on by Tycho Brahe a century earlier. With his data he constructed three different tables: one supported Horrox's lunar theory, Doctrine of the Sphere (1680) which came close to predicting the sun's true eccentricity values of .01675, and Whiston's Praelectiones astronomicae (1707). All these represent Flamsteed's refusal for his predecessor's inaccuracies and his adoption of more modern astrological ideas. In the years following 1689, Flamsteed achieved the precise latitude of Greenwich (51° 28' 38"), the obliquity of the ecliptic, the position of the equinox, and then the method he used to observe absolute right ascensions. Using matched occasions at which the sun had identical meridian altitudes near each equinox, he measured the time intervals between the passage of the sun and a bright star across the meridian. Halving the difference between the two time intervals then located the solstice and gave the star’s right ascension. He used this method to determine the positions of forty stars that he would use as references, Flamsteed found the rest of his 3,000-star catalog from readings he had taken previously with a sextant.

            John's accurate fundamental astronomy would not go by unnoticed and beginning in 1704 there were two famous astronomers who wanted more than anything to pry the unverified observations from John Flamsteed, Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley. Eventually the two cohorts managed to publish a pirated version of John's observations in 1712. Later in 1714 John was able to have the pirated version burned except for seventy-nine pages. Unfortunately he died in Greenwich on Dec.31,1719 and he never got to see his work get published; however, his wife

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managed to see his work released in Historia Coelestis Britannica (1725) and in its companion Atlas coelestis (1729). Despite a rough childhood, crippling health problems, and the animosity of his colleagues, John Flamsteed managed to accomplish a great deal for the field of astronomy through his meticulous industry and phenomenal mathematical ability.

APOD 1.6

2011 October 1 Asteroids Near Earth
There is good news for everyone on Earth; the inner solar system has less asteroids in the mid-size range than previously speculated. This means there is less of a chance we will collide with an asteroid and end up like the dinosaurs from 65 million years ago. Thanks to NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, we can more easily detect asteroids using infrared imaging. Using this technology astronomers now know that there are 40% less mid-size asteroids than indicated by visable light searches. All asteroids are heated by the sun so they all are displayed equally well in infrared imaging; however, the previous technique of visable light searches gave incorrect data since an asteroid's individual albedo was based on the metallic composition of it outer layer. In short the shiner the surface the brighter and larger the asteroid appeared, and visa versa. Now that this bias has been dispelled I feel a bit safer knowing that science has found more evidence against our imminent demise in 2012.