APOD 2.4

This picture of spiral galaxy M66 puts in perspective the size of various objects of our universe. In the picture a few stars from the Milky Way Galaxy can be seen and they are only a few hundred light years away at the most. The galaxy M66 is about 35,000,000 light years away. At this distance it should be infinitesimally small, but compared to the stars, which are much closer, it appears massive and dwarfs them. This shows how large it truly is, if it is 35,000,000 light years away and still appears gigantic compared to the much closer stars of our own galaxy. In the caption it is stated that it is about 100,000 light years across, which is indescribably large. Other galaxies can be seen in the background as only small specs of light, which displays their distance as almost immeasurable.

APOD 2.3

I chose to write about this picture because of the facts that were provided along with it and because of how it looks. Not only does this picture simply look amazing but what is actually going on in it is even more amazing. This is a picture of Centaurus A in multiple parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is even better though because it is the result of 2 galaxies colliding and one being annihilated by the other. The simple of thought of this ever occurring is ridiculous, but due to the fact that it actually did occur and can be seen in this picture is astounding and that is why I chose to write about it.

Worldwide Star Count

On Monday November 18 I observed the Constellation Cygnus and was able to see up to 3rd magnitude stars from my house.

APOD 2.2

Today I chose the picture "Star Trails and the Captain's Ghost" to talk about. I chose this picture for a few reasons, but mainly because of the time lapse effect that can be very clearly seen. This time elapse shows how stars become brighter as they move higher up into the sky, as can be seen by the widening trail of light as they move higher. This picture also demonstrates how stars appear to move to us, and it can be seen that the stars on the right frame of the picture are closer to north because they have more circular paths, which means that they are close to north. This picture also makes it very easy to tell which stars have brighter magnitudes because many of the dimmer stars fade in and out with the time lapse, but the brighter ones stay constant, if not brighter. These are the reasons as to why I chose to write about this picture.