APOD 3.2

This weeks APOD is about these two supernova shells and wether or not they are related. To find out they used an 8 meter telescope, the Gemini Telescope, one of the biggest telescopes in the world, on top of a mountain in Chile. They used the telescope to look at the double-lobed cloud DEM L316. The image of the two shells is extremely detaild and led astronomers to believe that the two had nothing to do with eachother. The first supernova is a Type I which means it's the result of a white dwarf exploding. The seond supernova is a Type II which is the result of massive normal star exploding. Because the two processes are on two totally different time schemes the two most likely did not form together and are therefor not physically associated. The two clouds are now thought of to be superposed by chance!

Observation 2.3

Date: January 7th 2008

Time: 8:20 - 10:10 PM

Location: Boca Grande

Sky Conditions: Clear skies, an hour in partially cloudy

Instruments used: Naked eye, binoculars

Planets: Mars, Jupiter

Bright stars noted: Polaris, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Fomalhaut

Constellations noted: Andromeda, Gemini, Aries, Ursa Minor, Pegasus, Taurus, Cepheus, Pegasus, Cassiopeia, Pisces, Cetus, Pisces Austrinas

Sky objects: M82, M101

Other: Milky Way

Parts of Englewood as well as Boca Grande are excellent places to observe the sky. There is limited light pollution and there is almost always clear skies (at least every time I'm there). I started observing the sky in the West and worked my way to the North and then so on. It was much harder identifying contellations and stars I knew because there were sooooo many visible stars compared to any viewing I have ever done in Sarasota. After about an hour or so the clouds came out for about ten minutes or so and the only things visible were Orion's Belt and a few miscellanious stars. We should do a star gazing session around here sometime!

Giuseppe Piazzi

Giuseppe Piazzi was an Italian Theatine monk, mathematician, and astronomer. He was born in Ponte in Valtellina. He taught philosophy for a time at Genoa and mathematics at the new University of Malta while it lasted. In 1780 he was called to the chair of higher mathematics at the academy of Palermo. There he soon obtained a grant from Prince Caramanico, Viceroy of Sicily, for an observatory. He established his observatory at Palermo, and it is now called the Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo "Giuseppe S. Vaiana".
Giuseppe began observations in May of 1791, and the first reports were published as early as 1792. Soon he was able to correct errors in the estimation of the obliquity of the ecliptic, of the aberration of light, of the length of the tropical year, and of the parallax of the fixed stars. He also thought it was necessary to revise the exsisting catalogue of stars to determine their exact postitions. So in 1803 he published a list of 6784 stars and in 1814 he published a second catalogue containing 7646 stars. Both lists were awarded prizes by the Institute of France.
While looking for a small star mentioned in one of the earlier lists he made his great discovery of the first known planetoid. At first he thought it was a fixed star, but once he noticed that it moved, he became convinced it was a planet, or as he called it, "a new star". But since he was unsure of his discovery he announced to the scientific world he had discovered a comet. These few but exact measurements enabled astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss to calculate the orbit and to find that this was a new planet, between Mars and Jupiter. Piazzi's discovery confirmed the so-called "Titius-Bode's law", which predicted the existence of a fifth planet between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter.
Piazzi proposed the name of Ceres Ferdinandea, in honor of his king. Over 600 of these so-called planetoids have since been located within the same space. Ceres turned out to be the first, and largest, of the asteroids existing within the Asteroid Belt. However, under the terms of a 2006 IAU resolution, Ceres can be called a dwarf planet.
The king desired to give Piazzi a gold medal, in commemoration, but the astronomer requested the privilege of using the money for the purpose of a much-needed equatorial telescope. Then later in 1812 he received the commission to reform the weights and measures of Sicily in accordance with the metric system. Piazzi was a brilliant astronomer whose discoveries led to the discovery of Uranus as well as other asteroids near Earth.

Works Cited

Cunningham, C. J.. The First Asteroid. 2001. Star Lab Press. 7 January 2008.

Fox, William. "Giuseppe Piazzi." New Advent. 2007. Catholic Encylcopedia. 7 January 2008. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12072d.htm

APOD 3.1

IC 342 is a prominent beautiful galaxy that is hidden in our night sky by the Milky Way Galaxy. If the gas and clouds from the Milky Way did not cover IC 342 it would most certainly be very popular. Ic 342 is 7 million light years away and is located in the constellation of Camelopardalis. Its appearance in the sky makes his galaxy a prime target for studies of star formation and astrochemistry. IC 342 belongs to Maffei I group of galaxies. The galaxy was discovered by W.F. Denning in 1895. Without the Milky Way Galaxy covering it this galaxy would have been discovered much earlier because of its extreme brightness, about 2.4 magnitude.