APOD 4.5

This APOD is a total lunar eclipse sequence of multiple different images layered over each other. The very scenic view is from Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada on the 15th of April. Each of the images of the Moon are separated by 10 minutes of movement. You can clearly see when the Moon is completely in the shadow of the Earth by how red the lunar surface appears. Also in the image, you can see the progression of Mars (above the Moon) and Spica (below the Moon).

Margaret Geller Biography

Margaret Joan Geller is an American astrophysicist born December 8, 1947 in Ithaca, New York. She was encouraged by her mother, Sarah Levine Geller, to study science and mathematics. Geller did not receive any specialized education until she was in college. In 1970, Geller received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. The second university she would attend would be Princeton, where she would spend four years until she received her Ph.D. in Physics. After graduating she moved to Cambridge, England to study at the Institute of Astronomy. In 1980, she moved back to the United States of America to become an assistant professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. It was at this time where she and John P. Huchra, a coworker, began carrying out a red-shift survey for the Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The survey's purpose was to map all galaxies above a certain brightness at a maximum distance of 650 million light years in a particular part of the sky. According to the Big Bang Theory the sky should be homogeneous and uniform in the distribution of galaxies, but that is not what Geller observed. She first observed this in the constellation Bootes in 1981. There was a 100 million light year gap between galaxies in the area. After being an assistant professor for two years, she joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory as a permanent scientific staff. In 1988, she became the head professor for Astronomy at Harvard University. Up until the 1990s, she continued her survey of galaxies with Huchra. Their first published observations of a 135 degree slice of the sky showed a thin layer of galaxies that appeared to line the walls of a "bubble-like" empty space. They would later call this the "Great Wall." This wall of galaxies is five times denser than the average density of galaxies spread out across the sky. What blew the minds of Geller and Huchra was the fact that the wall was only 15 million light years thick compared to it's 500 million light years in length. Even though they discovered this phenomena, they were not able to explain it. One theory is that areas in space before the Big Bang were "clumpy," so when the the Big Bang occurred they were distributed unevenly. Another theory is that unusually high amounts of dark matter hold the galaxies in place. Even though they continue to survey the sky, they still do not know how to explain this phenomena.

In 1990, she won the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Newcomb-Cleveland Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; two of her most important awards. Her most recent and notable award is the 2014 Karl Schwarzchild Medal of the German Astronomical Society. To this day she continues to study galaxies and their evolution and she has taken up an interest in X-ray astronomy.

Micro-observatory Image 4.9

This processed Micro-observatory image is of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) located in the constellation Serpens. At the center of the nebula is a young, open cluster of stars. Around the stars are clouds of dust from which the stars are "born" from. In the image you can sort of see the dust clouds and their pillar-like shape. When processing, I did not reduce the noise of any of the RGB pictures so it is minimally adjusted. This attempt at processing an image of the Eagle Nebula was much more successful than my last attempt. The images I received last time were distorted by clouds so they were blurry.

Micro-observatory Image 4.8

This Micro-Observatory image is of the Crab Nebula (Messier 1). You are not able to see the distinctive filaments of the object, but you can make-out it's prolate spheroid shape. The Crab Nebula eminates more blues and greens in the visible spectra, so those are the colors that dominate the image. All I did in terms of processing it are automatically adjusting all three parts of the image via log and reducing the noise of them. In the lower right corner of the image you can still see some noise so there may have been a cloud there at the time the pictures were taken.

Micro-observatory Image 4.7

This Micro-Observatory image is of the sun. All I did to is was sharpen it so you can see a clearer outline of the sunspots on the photosphere.

APOD 4.4

This brilliant image of the Milky Way Galaxy was taken March 27th by the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert. The clear, dry sky of the area provides optimal conditions for observations. At the top of the image you can see a very bright moon paired with the "morning star," Venus. In the plane of the galaxy you can see the bulge, halo, arms, and the very distinct dust clouds. I selected this APOD, not only because of it's magnificence, but also because we are currently studying galaxies.

APOD 4.3

This APOD was taken on April 3rd when Mars was near opposition. This means when Mars was opposite the Sun in the sky. At this time it appears to be very bright and is at the best time to be viewed by telescopes from Earth. On the Martian planet you can see the north polar ice cap and the clouds of water vapor forming around it's towering mountains and volcanoes. For a picture of Mars at opposition, but seen from the naked eye, look at the post "APOD 4.2."