Free writes? Yes please! (#1)

One of my favorite teachers posted that she's going to start up "free writes" on her blog and I think it's great because they really give you a chance to just think and write anything and everything that come to your mind on the subject and I figured that I would post them on here too (even though no one reads this). Mrs. Graham gets full credit for this idea :) Oh, and everything is just my opinion - if you actually read this somehow and think differently or like my opinion or anything feel free to comment!

Free write #1

Do you believe in ghosts or evil spirits?
Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a remote house that is supposedly haunted?

~Yes i believe in evil spirits but not so much ghosts - at least not in the traditional view of what a ghost is. My feelings toward this come more from my religion i guess? I believe in the second coming of Christ and that when a person dies they just go to sleep till Christ returns. This would mean that their soul stays with them (i get that it's a long time but we've all had the nights when we go to sleep for 2 minutes and it's actually been 8 hours...)Therefore, I believe that ghosts are - and this is probably going to sound stupid but - the devil and his demons and not actually the deceased person's soul lingering about. As for the haunted house - not unless i had to for some reason, and good luck giving me a good enough reason!

to be continued :)

Since I originally started this blog for my astronomy class (see all previous posts) I had stopped posting anything when the class ended - got an A by the way :) but I read someone else's blog post today and it made me think... if could have that much affect on me then maybe, just maybe, I could have an effect on someone else, hopefully in the same positive way. So i'm planning to continue blogging and hopefully if anyone even reads this they'll enjoy and take something positive along with them when they're done. I may not post everyday, I mean come on, I am a busy girl you know, six college classes will kill you - not to mention a job and volunteering stuff... but anyway, I will do my best to post something at least once a week, even if it's just a little quote I found and liked :)

Stardate

I found the website stardate.org and it's really cool and easy to navigate. It tells you all about upcoming events like the meteor showers and eclipses and when planets are visible. It showed that the next meteor show is the Perseid's and the peak of it will be August 13th. Also the next solar eclipse will be November but you have to go to Australia to see it. It also tells you about the constellations and moon phases, current astronomy news, it has other activities and some stargazing tips as well. Here's the link to the site: http://stardate.org/

Big Bang Theory

Even though I didn't make this up it still has a little to do with what we were taking about in class and it's really funny so I thought I would share it anyway... It's from the TV show The Big Bang Theory and they're talking about the Drake equation. 

Night sky: Moon illusion

Moon Illusion: Date: 6/27/12  


Time: 8:36pm - The moon looked white except for the craters which were more gray. Using the moon ruler it was about one line across. The altitude was almost 50 degrees. My drawings were pretty bad so I took pictures instead:

Time: 10:15pm - The moon still looked white with gray craters. It was also still about one line on the moon ruler. The altitude did change a little though, this time it was about 45 degrees. It also moved about 10 degrees to the west. Here it is: 

Podcast

Episode 12: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence - Astronomy Magazine

I watched this podcast/video about searching for life in space and thought it was very good at explaining the Drake equation. It went through it all step by step and showed examples. It also mentions some other things that we talked about in class like Stephen Hawking not wanting to search for life in space. It was kind of cheesy overall but still worth watching.

Poems

Ok so here is my attempt at a poem. I'm bad with rhyming so I wrote two Haiku's about the night sky instead... Here goes nothing:


The sky is gorgeous
So vast and mysterious
I could watch all night




When the moon is new
And the sun hides it's bright head
Stars control the night

Solar System

 

This week in class we had to do a model of the solar system. Our group got very creative. These are some pictures of what we were doing. The first one is Balbina writing the distance Neptune is from the sun. The other two show just how we got Pluto so high up on the wall :)

Night sky: moon maps

Moon Maps (night sky observation)
Date: 6/26/12
Time: 10:30pm
The greatest visibility of lunar details is when it's higher in the sky but not right overhead. In twilight, the visibility of the moon worsens right when the sun sets or is minutes away from setting because the light catches the clouds and atmosphere to make the colorful sunsets but this blocks visibility of the moon. Haze and the moon altitude affect the visibility because if the moon is lower and it's hazy you can't see very good detail on the moon but as the moon rises it gets out of the haze and more detail can be seen. The following is a drawing I attempted of how the moon looked. I could see the Sea of Crisis and a few other craters near the bottom. :)

Zooniverse

So for Zooniverse I did the moon project. For this I had to highlight craters and interesting objects, and also note if there were any boulders around the craters. It was interesting to learn the different kinds of craters on the moon and how they were made. I learned that the new craters show up white and that some craters aren't round because of the rock dragging across the surface of the moon. Overall, this was a pretty fun project. As you can see I got a little carried away with the classifications!

Movie review

I watched the new Star Trek (came out in 2009) movie yesterday and realized that the one part was wrong. There was a star that was dying and it went supernova. Spock was in charge of saving the nearby planet but was too late and the supernova destroyed the planet. Spock still had to contain the supernova though so he injected "red matter" into it and created a black hole inside the supernova and swallowing up the explosion. Then he and another ship got caught and traveled through a black hole and came out back in time. This can't actually happen because you wouldn't survive going into a black hole and it definitively wouldn't be a time portal. 

Night sky

Night sky observation:
What are the colors of the brightest stars? Why do you think that is?

• The brightest stars are the blue-ish ones and I think that because they are the biggest and the hottest. 

What colors were the most difficult to find? Why do you think that is?

• The reds and oranges were hardest and I think that's because they are much smaller stars and not as hot and therefore not as bright. 

What is the name of the least brightest star in which you detect a hint of color?

• The least bright star I used that still had a little bit of color was Castor. 

My classifications: (star; color; date/time)


Polaris; blue-white; 6/17/12, 12:47am
Deneb; blue-white; 6/18/12, 12am
Capella; blue-white; 6/17/12, 10:30pm
Castor; yellow-white; 6/17/12, 10:30pm
Pollux; blue-white; 6/17/12, 10:30pm
Regulus; white; 6/18/12, 12am
Vega; white; 6/18/12, 12am
Altair; yellow-white; 6/18/12, 12am
Spica; blue; 6/17/12, 10pm
Arcturus; blue-white; 6/17/12, 10:37pm

The Moon

Here are the moon pictures I promised. They didn't come out as clear as I was hoping but I was able to show how far the moon moved in only an hour. The first picture was taken at 10:30pm and the second two were taken at 11:30pm. On the last picture the moon is the dot on the right and if you measure about an inch to the left that's were the moon had been an hour before. 

Stars app

I have this app called Stars on my iPod touch. It is essentially a constellation chart. You can line it up with a star that you know and from there move it around to where you look and it has the constellations highlighted so you know where to look in the actual sky. I used it tonight actually and use it whenever I want to see how many constellations I can find. I like it because it's easy to use and right to the point. Also because it automatically updates your date and time, etc, and shows the line for the equator and the names of all the constellations. 



UPDATE: With this app I was able to observe the Big and Little Dipper, Cassiopeia, Bootes, and a few other constellations.  I wish this app had a feature where you could use a camera and it could observe the sky with you and highlight on the screen when the camera was facing a constellation and tell you what it was. (sorry for the poor quality of the pictures)

Moon, Mars, Saturn

I had my telescope out a little earlier and was able to find Saturn and Mars and get some cool shots of the Moon. I was able to see the red planet like a perfect round ball but couldn't get a picture of it. I could see Saturn's rings pretty well but couldn't get them on a picture but I could get them on a video, still not very well but you can kind of see it. The Moon was obviously very easy to find and get pictures of - they just aren't the best quality since they were taken through my telescope. I was using a 3x magnification and a zoom eyepiece as well as a regular eyepiece. Here they are and the video of Saturn (It's a little shaky but you can still see it): 

Telescope

I actually have a telescope. I think it's pretty cool, haha :) I was trying to take a picture through it of some brighter stars but you couldn't see them. You could see other stars though, ones that are too dim to see with your naked eye. Ironically, my telescope's brand or type or whatever is a Galileo even though he's not the inventor of the telescope.  

Transit of Venus

  

So Tuesday was the transit of Venus. It won't happen again until the year 2117. We all went out to try to see it.  The above picture was taken on June 5th, 2012 by NASA astronaut Don Pettit from the International Space Station. This was something like what we were hoping to see. 

The sky wasn't looking too good but everything was all set up and ready to go anyway. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get to see it although a few others did. The following are pictures I took on my phone. 

Hello

So this blog is for my Astronomy class. So, anyone see the moon last night? Looks like it's almost full. I'll try to get a picture of it tonight :)