Observation 2

Going against the typical observations in the night sky, there was an unusually active lightning storm over sarasota the other night. It was the 23rd, and the lightning storm spanned almost 10 miles at certain points.  The unrelenting amount of lightning was caused by the overwhelming opposite charge in the lower atmosphere with relation to the ground charge. This type of lightning is more commonly known as heat lightning, where the static charge is caused by temperature differentials in the lower atmosphere. Personally, I found it to be really cool because I was able to take really good photos with a long exposure on my Nikon D5000. Great photos, needles to say.

Observation 1

Roughly a week ago, Venus underwent a period of transition across our sky. It was able to be seen as a spot on the sun during the day. Due to the position of venus with relation to our moon, the light that was shone on Venus from the sun caused Venus to be seen as a crescent from Earth.

Zooniverse Stuff

     For our Zooniverse experience, my primary choice of work was galaxy mergers. Galaxy merger showed participants 64 images of each set of galaxies that were merging. The object of the experiment was to narrow down the best computer models that accurately depicted the merging galaxies. I completed around 75 sets of the mergers over the course of the first week.

APOD 4.9

 Tomorrow, May 20, the Moon's shadow will race across planet Earth. Observers within the 240-300 kilometer wide shadow track will be able to witness an annular solar eclipse as the Moon's apparent size is presently too small to completely cover the Sun. Heading east over a period of 3.5 hours, the shadow path will begin in southern China, cross the northern Pacific, and reach well into North America, crossing the US west coast in southern Oregon and northern California. Along the route, Tokyo residents will be just 10 kilometers north of the path's center line. Of course a partial eclipse will be visible from a much larger area within North America, the Pacific, and eastern Asia. This safely filtered telescopic picture was taken during the annular eclipse of January 15, 2010 from the city of Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India.

Description from NASA

APOD 4.8

 It was really not about superheroes as on May 6 the much touted Super Moon, the largest Full Moon of 2012, rose over this otherwise peaceful harbor. And no super villains were present either as boats gently rocked at their moorings near the checkerboard La Perdrix lighthouse on the coast of Brittany, France. But the rise of the Super Moon was preceded by a Green Flash, captured in the first frame of this timelapse video recorded that night. The cropped image of the frame, a two second long exposure, shows the strongly colored flash left of the lighted buoy near picture center. While the Super Moon was enjoyed at locations all around the world, the circumstances that produced the Green Flash were more restrictive. Green flashes for both Sun and Moon are caused by atmospheric refraction enhanced by long, low, sight lines and strong atmospheric temperature gradients often favored by a sea horizon.

Description from NASA

APOD 4.7

What's that in the background? Two famous New York City icons stand tall in the above photo taken last week. On the left looms the Statue of Liberty, a universal symbol of freedom, while on the right rises the Empire State Building, now the second largest building in the city. What's unique about this once-in-a-lifetime photograph, though, is the third icon that appears to Lady Liberty's left. High in the air and far in the background flies the space shuttle Enterprise -- perched atop a 747 jet -- on the way to its new home. New Yorkers and visitors to the Big Apple can visit the test space shuttle at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on the West Side of Manhattan starting July 19.

Description from NASA

APOD 4.6

Although its colors may be subtle, Saturn's moon Helene is an enigma in any light. The moon was imaged in unprecedented detail last June as the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn swooped to within a single Earth diameter of the diminutive moon. Although conventional craters and hills appear, the above image also shows terrain that appears unusually smooth and streaked. Planetary astronomers are inspecting these detailed images of Helene to glean clues about the origin and evolution of the 30-km across floating iceberg. Helene is also unusual because it circles Saturn just ahead of the large moon Dione, making it one of only four known Saturnian moons to occupy a gravitational well known as a stable Lagrange point.

Description from NASA

Q4 Biography: Grote Reber

     For my final biography, I am studying Grote Reber, a noted radio astronomer that lived during the 1900's. Grote Reber was born in Wheaton, Illinois on December 22, 1911 to a fairly normal family. When Reber entered college, he studied at the Illinois institute of technology and decided to take up electrical engineering. Reber graduated in 1933 with a degree in electrical engineering and immediately entered the field of radio applications. For years, Reber worked as an amateur radio operator with many small companies, which provided an outlet for Reber to enter the true field of radio science. At the peak of the Great Depression, Reber learned about  a scientist named Karl Jansky, and subsequently applied to Bell Labs, where Jansky worked. 

     Four years after Reber applied to Bell labs, Reber began a foray of his own into the world of radio astronomy. In 1937, Reber built his very own radio telescope in his backyard. His telescope was 9 meters in diameter and utilized large sheets of reflective metal. This first telescope he built operated at around 3300 MHz; not low enough to detect radio waves from space. On his second attempt, he reached 900 MHz which was still not low enough. It was not until Reber built a telescope that was able to reach 160 MHz that would allow him to see into space. When reber was able to confirm Jansky's previous discoveries, he got published in the Astrophysical Journal and was offered research positions, which he later declined. Due to his findings and creation of a radiofrequency sky map, he subsequently triggered a radio astronomy explosion.

     During the latter years of Reber's life, Reber dedicated his studies to finding perfect spots and methods for optimizing radio astronomy. With the support of the Research Corporation in New York, Reber moved to Hawaii to build a better telescope, however, the Earth's ionosphere foiled those plans. Due to this inability to observe space on a radio based level, Reber moved to Tasmania where the ionosphere permitted intermittent windows of time to observe space without any interference. In his final years, Reber worked on perfecting a perfectly thermally insulated house, but never quite finished it. In the end, Grote Reber died two days before his 91st birthday on December 20th, 2002 in Hobart Tasmania.