Kip Thorne – Biography

                Kip Stephen Thorn, a renowned American theoretical physicist was born in Logan, Utah in 1940. From his early life, he had exposure to the magnificent world of science which later on, he himself would be an influence in. He obtained his higher education at both Caltech and Princeton University for his BS and PhD, respectively. After doing so, he dedicated his time completing research and becoming a professor at Caltech. His subject area is theoretical physics. As professor since 1970, Thorne has advised and served as a mentor for over 50 physicists who have received their PhD under Thorne. Thorne’s research alone and with his students is focused around gravitation physics and astrophysics, especially with concentration on relativistic stars, black holes, and gravitational waves. With his own work alongside the work of students like Carlton Caves, Anna Zytkow, and James Hartle, Thorne has posed some important questions and research in recent times. This includes: Is there a dark side of the universe populated by objects as black holes?, Can we observe the birth of the universe?, and will 21^st century technology reveal quantum behavior in the realm of human-size objects?

                With those questions in mind, Thorne has dedicated his research to physics and has contributed to the science community with his extensive work with general relativity. However, he is best known to the general public for his theory that wormholes can be used for time travel. He was one of the first people to conduct scientific research on whether space and time can be multiplied and connected, thus can time travel be possible through wormholes. Thorne’s research on this indicated that simple masses passing through traversable wormholes could never engender paradoxes. Some of Thorne’s other research dealt with tools for visualizing space-time curvature, in relation to black holes causing so. Thorne’s work with black holes extends to his Hoop Conjecture which describes that an imploding star turns into a black hole when the circumference of the designed hoops can be placed around the star and set into rotation.

                Thorne has won many honoring awards for his achievements and contributions to the science community such as awards by the country’s most prestigious universities, the Lilenfeld Prize, the Albert Einstein Medal, th e UNESCO gold medal, and on NASA’s science board. He currently is not retired from research nor from the science community but now dedicates his time in possibly producing science fiction movies with famous figures like Stephen Spielberg. He hopes to develop and possibly direct his own released film in the near future. Thorne also enjoys writing in his spare time.

APOD 4.7

The APOD I chose for this week depicts both the Milky Way Galaxy and cosmic dust from the Comet Halley. The image depicts the annual meteor shower known as Eta Aquarids, that is why both the milky way and the comet is depicted. During this shower, meteors move incredibly quick and enter the atmosphere at about 66 km/second. I chose this APOD because it included the Milky Way in its title and we had just learned about it in class. However, I also learned about the annual meteor shower and look forward to the next one I can gaze at. 

APOD 4.6

The APOD for the date of May 1st is titled, "Brisbane Sunset Moonset". The majestic photograph was taken in the southeastern corner of Australia: Brisbane. The photograph shows the beautiful relationship as the sun and new moon set together on April 29, creating a sort of  partial solar eclipse. These rarities of nature have been posted on the APOD's archive before like this one from April 30th:

In order to capture such event, the image was taken from a stack of images taken 5 minutes apart in length with telephoto lens and a solar filter. The reason I chose this image was because after reading the description, I began  thinking of the time and effort put into producing these images. I have mild experience with the images I process from the micro-observatory satellite images and it gives me a good insight into how one can produce such wonderful photographs taken from nature.

APOD 4.5

This week's APOD shows Messier 5, a globular star cluster located between the constellations Libra and Serpens. This globular cluster was thought to be a nebula, discovered by 18th century astronomer Charles Messier. It contained more than 100K stars, bound together around a 165 light-years in diameter length. According to this APOD, M5 is one of the oldest globulars in the milky way. I chose this photo for this week's APOD because we have studied the constellations Libra and Serpens so I found it interesting to learn about a new M object located between both. I also found it incredibly interesting that  in the 18th century, so long ago, Messier was able to observe this cluster with the naked eye or telescope. 

APOD 4.4

The APOD that I chose for this week depicts the recent lunar eclipse seen over from the chilly Waterton Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park in Albert, Canada. Recently, we have been working with a lot of astronomy photography and it is something I have grown to understand and become interested in more. In this photo of the lunar eclipse, there is an exposure of 10 minutes which allowed for the capture of the moon's eclipse phase's position over a period of 80 minutes.The photograph also depicted the star Spica from the constellation Virgo. Something interesting that I learned from this entry was that as early as 270 BC, a greek astronomer by the name of Aristarchus measured the duration of a lunar eclipse. I find it awesome that someone in such an early civilization could do that without the aid of modern clocks and cameras but rather algebraic math.

Contributions to N + S of Milky Way

Galileo: Galileo observed the Milky Way, which was previously believed too be nebulous, He found it to be a magnitude of stars packed extremely dense instead of what people thought to be simply nebulas.

William Herschel: Helped establish the shape of the milky way with the large telescopes. He helped establish that we in fact live in the milky way and that the fuzzy patches observed were nebulae. By measuring the stars, he helped establish that we live in what he called a disk of stars. 

Harlow Shapley: Helped expand our knowledge on the shape of the milky way. He began by studying globular clusters around the time when the shape of the galaxy was unknown. But after his research was published, the shape and the position of our solar system in the galaxy was known. 

Edwin Hubble: He helped understand that the cloudy patches observed were not nebulae but other nearby galaxies. This helped understand the size of the universe. He also helped by stating that the universe was in fact expanding.

Immanuel Kant:  Believed the milky way was disk shape but never achieved much work on it.

Henrietta Leavitt: Discovered the period luminosity relation.

The Great Debate: Between Curtis and Shapley, Shapley held the position that the spiral nebula we call galaxies were inside the milky way. Curtis argued they were outside.

The end of a high mass star: Pulsars and Neutron Stars

Like we have learned in class, many of the stars found in the universe have similar properties to our own star, the sun. However, some stars are different and like we learned in the star formation unit and these stars are of high mass. These special stars are destined to end in supernovas. Compared to our sun they are 10x heavier and 4x as large. Due to this high mass, their fuel is burned at a greater rate, in about 10 million years. One can put into perspective this with our own sun whose hydrogen will  burnt out after 10 billion years, the difference is clear. When this happens to our stars like our sun, they become a white dwarf: small, dense, and whose temperature cools down eventually. These high mass stars on the other hand no longer support the outward pressure that balances with their inward gravitational pull its immense mass requires. Compared to the slow and calm death of the other stars, the death of this high mass stars becomes much more dramatic. The core shrinks, burns up in temperatures to about 100 billion degrees and becomes more dense with the iron atoms crushing together. This dramatic explosion of energy lead to a shocking wave that expands to about 1 billion kph. This is the death of the high mass star, this is a supernova.  The material pushed away by the explosion forms into a ring shape known as the supernova remnant. What remains from the original high mass star in a much smaller dense core of only neutrons, known as a neutron star. If the neutrons radiate, a pulsar forms. However, something else could happen. If the original high mass star was greater than 15x the sun, the neutrons would not survive the collapse of the core and the stars would become black holes.

The following diagram, visually demonstrated the life cycle of a high mass star:






  

APOD 3.8

This week's APOD is titled Glubules in the Running Chicken Nebula. The title was interesting so that's why I picked. This nebula is named after it's shape. The image was taken from an observatory in Australia called the Siding Spring Observatory. The globules in the nebula are called Thackeray's Globules (pictured below). These globules referred to as egg are potential sites for the gravitational condensation of new stars. I thought this was a pretty since we just recently learned about the formation of stars so I  understand how it occurs. I also decided to choose this APOD because I was able to see the chicken head and found it amusing. I am also intrigued by the visualization of nebulas in photos. I find it very impressive we can see them and photograph them with the telescopes we have.

APOD 3.7

This week's APOD of the week for the date of 27 February depicted is titled Daytime moon meets morning star and depicts that exactly. What it depicts is something we have been told in class and something I have been able to observe in the morning skies. It shows venus as the brightest object in the early morning and it is seen as if it were a star. I think this picture for one was very interesting and it gave a nice viewpoint of what we see. I liked the way it was presented with the colors and of the clear crescent shape. My favorite part of this picture is that is clear to the naked eye from Africa and I find it awesome that we as humans have that opportunity to simply look up and observe our universe.

APOD 3.6

The APOD I chose for this week from above depicts the lighthouse nebula. I chose it because we have been learning about nebulas in class and thought I might as well try to learn a few. This nebula was forms from the wind of a pulsar, rotating around with the speed of over 1000 km/second. This is something I found incredibily impressive.

APOD 3.5

This weeks APOD is titled Downtown Auriga which I chose to learn more about the constellation Auriga which we have to learn about for our constellation quizzes. This APOD entry depicts a deep telescopic mosaic view of the constellation while showing off Auriga's most popular sights for cosmic tourtists. This picture was taken in january. From the persepective of the picture, the zodiacal constellation of Taurus the Bull can be seen near the bottom. I enjoy choosing APOD which give me a new more realistic viewpoint of the constellations we learn so I can know what they look like beyond the bright dots I can only see with my naked eye.

APOD 3.4

This weeks APOD I chose depicted above shows a panoramic viewpoint of the moon from the perspective of the Chinese Yutu robotic rover. This robotic rover arrived in mid-december of 2013 and has been exploring Mare Imbrium on the moon. The reason I chose this APOD is because i did not know what Mare Imbrium was. In Latin it means  sea of showers or sea of rains and it is a large lunar mare on the moon. Apparently, it is one of the larger craters in the solar system. Its origin is said to come from a flood of lava. Depicted below is the extent and location of the mare imbrium. I am glad I know now one more fact about the moon's surface.

APOD 3.3

The APOD I chose for this week comes from the entry put in on Jan. 31 titled, "Light Pillars from a Little Planet" in which this interestin photograph gives an interesting viewpoint of what one can hardly believe to be planet earth. The photograph is a sphereical panoramic image  from the viewpoint of eastern finland. What is the most interesting thing about this photo and gives the title to the beautiful image are the pillars of light reflected from the crystals. The reason I chose this image is because I enjoy whenever the APOD image entries create a new viewpoint with the collaboration of astronomy's reach and the potential of changing photography.

APOD 3.2

The APOD for this week that I chose depicts the double cluster celestial object found in the Perseus constellation. I chose it because I remember the Perseus constellation from the weekly quizzes and I also remember it is Mr. Percival's favorite constellation. This picture goes under the category of Astrophotography which I also thought was pretty cool. This APOD entry says that this starfield stretches seven full mons (3.5 degrees) across Perseus, which I think is pretty impressive because I was not aware of its massive extension. One thing I learned about the clusters themselves is that they are 7000 light years away and the stars are much hotter and younger than the sun. The entry also speaks about the clusters' age which are around 13 million years old. The most interesting thing I found about this entry was that the cluster is apparently visible to the naked eye under the right conditions. I hope to be able to identify it as I continue to look up and observe the skies.

APOD 3.1

The APOD for this week that I chose is titled M83 Star Streams. To be honest, I chose it because I know it is the title of an indie-pop band and I never realized it was named after an M object. I think this galaxy is very interesting looking and according to the entry it lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. The M83 Star Streams pictures were gathered by the Hubble Telescope and date from a european telescope from the European Southern Observatory. I learned that M83's northern stellar tidal stream is actually debris from the gravitational disruption of a smaller, merging satellite galaxy.

APOD 2.8

For this week, I chose an APOD who's picture depicted the Helix Nebula in the constellation of Aquarius. I chose it because I remembered it was an object we had to know from the contellation quizzes but I never really had seen a picture of it. I think the nebula is very cool looking and I was not expecting it to look like that. According to the APOD entry, it took 28.5 hours of exposure to create the image which is very impressive. I also learned that apparently Aquarius is a sun-like star that is dying, this is new information.I also learned about the complexity of the nebula regarding it's geometrical features.

Biography - Pierre Méchain

Pierre Méchain

Pierre Méchain was a renowned French astronomer who was recognized for his in-depth work on deep sky objects, comets, and aided the establishment of the meter. Pierre Méchain was born on August 16, 1744 in Laon, France to parents Pierre-Francois Méchain and Mari-Marguerite Roze. He was married to Barbe-Therese Marjou and had two sons and one daughter.

From a young age, Méchain demonstrated great skill for math and physics but was forced to leave his college education due to financial difficulties.  His advancements in the scientific world however were not detained, Méchain worked with figures like Jerome de Lalande. This aided Méchain’s advance in the world of astronomy later on.

Méchain’s astronomical career began with his job as a calculator with the Depot of the Navy. He surveyed France’s coastline and observed an occultation of Alderbaran by the Moon. Later on, he presented his observations to the Academy of Sciences. From then on, Méchain became devoted to the art of comet observation and hunting. He discovered eight new original comets and co-discovered an additional three. The span of these discoveries was covered from 1781 to 1801. Méchain not only devoted his time to comets but deep sky objects as well. From 1779 to 1782, Méchain discovered thirty of these objects, of which twenty-six were original firsts. At the time, Méchain was close friends with Charles Messier, a fellow astronomer who added the discoveries to his catalog of Nebular and Star Clusters. Besides simply discovering the comets, Méchain with his mathematical gift, calculated the orbits. He went on to calculate orbits of comets discovered in previous centuries, helping him disprove that they were the same object. He went on to win the “Grand Prix” of 1782 of the Academy of Sciences.  Méchain also helped revolutionized the metric system. In 1792, while working on maps, he was determined to measure the meridian arc from Dunkirk to Barcelona. This lasted uo to 1798 where there was finally a basis for the unit of length in the metric system: the meter.

Pierre Méchain died on the twentieth of September in 1804 in Castellon de la Plana, Spain. He will always be remembered as an important figure in the astronomy community. In June of 20013, Asteroid 21785 was named in his honour.

Biography Sources

http://messier.seds.org/xtra/history/pmechain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Méchain