APOD 4.4 (Rio Morning Moonset)

Here, we see how quickly the moon moves across the sky, how quickly the light reflection off of it changes as its light passes through the low-hanging dust clouds in the atmosphere, and how quickly the city of Rio springs back to life each morning (since all the birds in the photo were only captured in the last frame).  When the moon is almost directly overhead, its reflected light doesn't pass through much dust between the Moon and your eyes, giving you the full spectrum.  However, as the moon approaches the horizon, it passes through a lot of dust before it reaches you.  The dust absorbs the darker colors, only letting a small amount of the redder light through.  By the time the moon actually sets, there is so much dust blocking the light that the moon becomes almost invisible.

APOD 4.3 (Otherworldly Planet Rise)

I chose this one because it might become as familiar a sight to people of the future as sunrises are to us today: your day starting when a small little dot of intense light rises up in the sky and illuminates the world more than any other surrounding visible star.  This amazing photo was made on Earth, taking an early morning picture of Venus underneath a natural rock formation.

APOD 4.2 (The Milky Way Over Tenerife)

In this picture, you get a clear panoramic view of all the circumpolar constellations, as well as many of the spring constellations.  To give you an idea of just how dim the stars and galactic features actually are, that bright light illuminating the entire photo is the moon, which has been significantly overexposed in order to capture the dim light from the surrounding constellations.  Also, the band that covers the sky almost like a purple rainbow is half of our view of the galaxy we are currently traveling through: the Milky Way.

APOD 4.1 (It's Raining on Titan)

I chose this picture because Titan is the only object other than Earth that has shown evidence of stable bodies of surface liquids.  The only difference is that, while Earth's stable liquid is water, Titan's temperatures around -290 degrees Celsius mean that the processes of evaporation,, cloud formation, and rain are applied to liquid methane.  While this might mean we would have to look elsewhere for a second Earth, it does prove that Earth's water cycle could happen elsewhere naturally, making our hopes of finding a home after Earth much more likely.

Observations 2-27-11

Tonight, I located Capella, The Kids, M35, M36-8, M1, M45, Aldebaran, Taurus, Castor, Pollux, M35, the Hyades, Gemini, Auriga, Orion, Orion's Belt, the Horsehead Nebula, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Sirius, Procyon, Rigel, Betelguese, Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, Ursa Minor, and the Little Dipper.

Observations 2-14-11

8-10 PM

Tonight, I observed stars with a full moon partially obscuring Gemini (it was the first night in days without lots of clouds).  I identified the stars Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran, Sirius, Capella, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Procyon, and Polaris.  I noticed a few spring constellations (which I couldn't name), as well as Perseus, Orion, Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Auriga, Gemini, Taurus, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Lepus, and Columbo.  Finally, I noticed the miscellaneous objects Horsehead Nebula, Orion's Belt, The Kids, M42, M35, M36-8, M1, and M45.

APOD 3.3 (Six Worlds for Kepeler 11)

NASA scientists recently discovered a new technique for finding planets that is already proving itself to be extremely effective: immediately after locating 6 planets orbiting around the star Kepler-11 (with most of them being larger than Earth and inside Mercury's orbit!), they applied this technique to a much larger area of the sky, and found 1,200 planets in their view.  The most amazing part was that this "larger area" was only equal to about 1/400th of the sky, so the actual number of inhabitable planets that we might someday colonize could be astronomical.