APOD 4.8

I am writing about the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour. This Monday the spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It is on a docking mission with the International Space Station. The space shuttle is carrying a variety of detectors for dark matter and antimatter that have strong evidence supporting their existence. This is the second to last space shuttle launch that NASA will conduct as the project is being scrapped because of budget cuts and other factors. This picture clearly shows how large the shuttle is and gives some kind of an idea of how much energy is required to launch this and to get it up to escape velocity, which is about 8 kilometers per second. Overall this picture captures the awesome power that can be harnessed right here on Earth.

Robert Kirshner Biography

Robert Kirshner was born in 1949 and is currently alive. He is a professor at Harvard's College of Astronomy and Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard. At the age of 21 he graduated from Harvard and then studied at Caltech where he received a Ph.D. in Astronomy. He then went on to do post doctoral work at the Kitt Peak ?National Observatory. Kirshner served on several scientific boards and was chairman of the Harvard Astronomy Department for 7 years. In the scientific world he is best known for his work with deep sky objects, mostly supernovae and their remnants. He has written over 200 research papers on these topics and his most famous discovery came about when he was on the "High-Z Supernova Team." Kirshner and his team were studying a large collection of supernovas when they came to the conclusion that the Universe is actually expanding at an accelerating rate, not a decelerating one as would be expected. This discovery implies the existence of dark matter, which until then had almost no evidence in support of it. This discovery was dubbed tbhe science breakthrough of the year for 1998 by Science Magazine. The team also received the Gruber Prize for Cosmology in 2007. Along with this discovery he has also served as president of the American Astronomical Society for 2 years and was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004 by Caltech. He has also written a book called "The Extravagant Universe" and is currently teaching Science A-35 at Harvard for undergraduates.

Robert Kirshner Bibliography

Kirshner, Robert P. "Robert P." Harvard University. Harvard. Web. 16 May 2011. <https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~rkirshner/>.

 

"Robert Kirshner." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 16 May 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kirshner>.

 

APOD 4.7

I chose to write about the panoramic view of the night sky as seen from the Very Large Telescope site in Southern Chile. Many celestial objects can be seen in this image as well as several easily identifiable constellations. The zodiacal light, sometimes called a false dawn, can be seen towards the left of the image. Venus can be seen as a very bright sphere of light while Saturn can be seen as a slightly fainter one. The constellations are also much easier to identify here because there is almost no light pollution. Among these constellations are Orion, Leo, and Hydra. The band of the Milky Way can also be seen as it stretches across the sky in a semicircle.

APOD 4.6

I chose to write about the Farther Along picture, which depicts the various satellites that have left our solar system and where they are relative to the Sun. The farthest one was launched over 30 years ago and is over 17.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, however this is only slightly more than 16 light hours. The closest stars are several light years, so at this speed it would take millenniums to reach even these close ones, however they are able to reach the outskirts of our solar system and continue their journey to reach interstellar space.

APOD 4.5

Today I chose to write about The Antennae, which is actually two very large galaxies that are colliding. This celestial event is taking place about 60 million light years away towards the constellation Corvus the Crow. This collision, unlike many on Earth, takes hundreds of millions of years to occur. During this time the massive amounts of molecular gas collide which creates very large areas of star formation. Long trails of gas can also be seen in this picture, which are the result of the combining tidal forces and gives this event the name The Antennae.

APOD 4.4

This photo is about M101, which is a massive spiral galaxy that lies about 25 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The sheer size of this galaxy is breathtaking, it is over twice the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, or about 170,000 light years across. The amount of stars that our contained in this galaxy is equally astounding as it contains many more stars than our own and therefore greatly increases the possibility that it contains planets that are suitable to life or perhaps even planets that already have life forms on them. Galaxies such as this one provide much hope that there could be life other than our own.