Observations 2-20-13

Around 7pm tonight I went outside and noticed a very perfectly circular ring surrounding the moon.  It seemed not to be a cloud but im not sure what it was.  I believe the source of the light was the moon.

After coming inside I looked it up and found out that this 22 degree ring in the right conditions is always the same size.  It is caused by the refraction of moon light onto crystals in the upper atmosphere.

T Tauri Star

This is an Image of a T Tauri Star.  They are named after the T Tauri star in the constellation Taurus.  The stars are found inside of molecular clouds and are young pre sequence stars.  There are different types of T Tauri stars classified by their optical variability, and chromospheric lines.

APOD 3.4

Even though daily, small baseball like rocks quickly are destroyed in our atmosphere, there are still rocks that may pose a threat to Earth.  About every 1000 years a 100 meter rock will strike the Earth.  This can cause tsunamis if struck in the ocean and would have global problems anywhere on land.  The image is the long blue streak is taken in 1998 of an object passing by.  It is estimated that coming Friday a 50 meter asteroid will come in Earths orbit but is likely to have no effect on the planet.

APOD 3.3

This is a photo of LL Orionis interacting with the Orion Nebula Flow.  Very powerful winds are being produced and running into the slow moving gas and creating a shock front.  This shock front spans about half a light year across.  The gas from Orions Nebula is slowly flowing away from the very hot region of central star clusters.  The entire star nursery of Orion can be seen in the photo.

APOD 3.2

         Inside this photo of the Trifid Nebula, we can see clouds of gas and a star forming area.  The three lanes of gas that come together to meet in the center gave the nebula its name.  The large star in the center is what provides for most of the glow that is seen when viewing the nebula.  The nebula is huge and spans about 10 light years and is only about 300,000 years old.

APOD 3.1

        This is a photograph of Stickney Crater which is the largest crater on Phobos the martian moon.  The crater takes nearly half of the diameter of the entire moon which was discovered in 1877.  Even though it has a low about of gravity the streaks are thought to be caused from material sliding down the walls of the crater over a very long period of time.  The light blue areas could be newly exposed areas of the moon.

Moon Labels