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