Observation

Observed the moon during the day, with  plane flying through it, leaving a trail of smoke across the moon.
Sadly, I was not quick enough to catch it.

I have made a digital recreation.

Apod 1.8

The above image shows NBC 2623. While it may look like one spiral galaxy, it is actually two galaxies colliding. These galaxies have almost finished merging.  This is similar to what may happen to our milky way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy, far in the future. While it's certainly not a concern anytime soon, it is interesting to see a preview of what may happen to our galaxy in the future.

John Bayer

      John Bayer wrote the star atlas, Uranometria, and having introduced a star nomenclature. Bayer was born in Bavaria, Germnay, in 1572.  He became a lawyer and astronomer, and published his work in Italy.  Bayer was a layer professionally, but his attempts at astronomy wound up being highly succesfull, as he produced the very beneficial book, Uranometria.

      Uranometria was a first of its kind book. It was a star atlas, or a directory of the stars in the sky. This allowed astronomers to have much greater accuracy when scanning the night sky than before, and greatly advanced astronomy. Now, astronomers all had a reference they could use for measuring the sky. The Atlas was originally engraved on copper plates by Alexander Mair.  It contains 51 star charts.  It uses a grid to show the location of stars, to high accuracy. 

      As a lawyer, Bayer studied in Augsburg and Ingolstadt, and worked for the city council in the former.  During this period, he made his most important contribution, which happened to be in the field of astronomy, and the legal system, his Uranometria.  He drew from primarily from Tycho Brahes wok for this, and copublished it with Giovanni Gallucci.


Swerdlow. "1986JHA....17..189S Page 189." 1986JHA....17..189S Page 189. Harvard, n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2012. <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1986JHA....17..189S>.

Hockey, Thomas. "Bayer, Johann." Bayer, Johann. Springer Reference, n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2012. <http://www.springerreference.com/docs/html/chapterdbid/58130.html>.

Wikipedia contributors. "Johann Bayer." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 30 Sep. 2012. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.

"Johann Bayer, Uranometria, 1603." Johann Bayer, Uranometria, 1603. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2012. <http://www.lindahall.org/services/digital/ebooks/bayer/>.

Apod 1.7

Shown here is a massive, high resolution image of the cosmos. This impressive photograph spans six times more degrees than the width of the full moon.  It is aimed at Sagittarius, one of the first constellations we learned about on our weekly quizzes. Hydrogens red emissions have been changed to green, and the starlight colored red.  The camera which took this image has 1.4 gigapixels.  The purpose of it is to scan for asteroids that may endanger earth.

Apod 1.6

The image above depicts a star dying.  Its death has created the spectacular looking nebula shown in the center of this image, the Helix Nebula. This picture was obtained with a very high exposure, 58 hours, to gain this effect.

Observations

Saw full moon from Pineview parking lot.  The moon shown through a thin cloud, which made a halo appear around it.