observation 2.2

Thursday, December 13th
approx. 11:15 pm
Clear skies
looking east
2 hrs

As i was sitting in my back yard last night studying, i saw what you explained to us today is mars. My backyard faces east, so i was able to look straight ahead and see it. It looked like a small reddish-orange dot in the sky. It was relatively bright and i was able to focus my eyes on it without too much strain. it was interesting to see something in the sky that is not just a bright white light and actually has some color!

Note: i just wanted to remind you that my apods and observations are not numbered correctly and you told me just to leave them and not worry about it. Just so that you count all the ones i have. thanks!

apod 2.4

this is a picture of the jets and waves that are emitted from the sun. I think it is amazing that there is so much activity on one single planet and that space probes are able to take photographs of this activity. The description said that the jets and waves are created by magnetic reconnection events. Even though space travel is probably my greatest fear, i think it would be very cool to be able to see the sun from a closer distance and see some of the energtic activity on the sun from that close.

observation 2.1

Friday, December 7th
approx 7:10 am
clear skies, early morning, just getting light
30 mins

This morning, as i was driving to school, I saw a small light about 15 degrees above the moon. Apparently, this light was the planet Venus. The moon also looked very cool. it was a tiny crescent and almost could not be seen. I looked it up online and it said that the new moon should be occuring on December 9th.

apod 2.3

This is a picture of the double cluster in the constellation Perseus. Since we had this constellation this week and learned that there was a double cluster in it, it was interesting to see what it actually looks like. it is also cool to know that this is the only double cluster that has been found in the universe. I found it strange how in the picture the 2 clusters look relatively close to each other, yet in the description it said that they are actually several light years away from each other!

apod 2.2

This picture is so cool looking. I have never seen a cloud that has different colors in it or that looks kind of smeared like this one does. It looks like it is a rainbow within a cloud. The discription of the picture makes it sound like it is the same thing that happens with rainbows, yet is a lot more difficult to find and occurs much more rarely.

apod 2.1

for last week

The explanation for this picture is very confusing. I am not really sure what all of it means, but I really like the picture. From what i can gather from the explanation, it sounds like there are new results coming from the Auger observatory about high energy cosmic rays that had never been calculated before.

observation 2.0

Wednesday, November 7th
approx 9:30 pm
clear skies, very dark
looking due east
2 hours

Tonight when i was sitting outside in my back yeard, I was able to clearly see the summer triangle. All 3 stars, Deneb, Altair, and Vega, were very bright. They were making an obvious triangle shape. There was one star (the one on top) that seemed to be brighter than the other 2 stars. I am guessing that star was Vega. I had never seen the asterism before so it was very neat to finally be able to notice it.