The Sun in Hydrogen Balmer - Alpha

For those of you still following this blog.  You may remember from class that looking at the Sun at a wavelength where the absorption cross section is high means that we are seeing a shallower surface of the Sun.  Well Astronomy Picture of the Day has a great shot of the Sun in Hydrogen - Balmer Alpha (6562.8 Angstroms).  Check it out!

Regulus to Disappear Next Wednesday (for some)

This is really cool.  A very bright (m_v = 1.4) star is going to disappear because of an asteroid occultation.  That in itself is cool, but the science that can be done with it is exceptional.  This occultation will only happen for people around New York and points NW and SE of it.  Now, imagine if you had thousands of people at different points all looking to determine when the star disappeared. If they all record the time (and their GPS position) of the disappearance and reappearance of the star, they can essentially map the structure of the asteroid.

Check out the records from previous occultations (of a double asteroid 90 Antiope and a single asteroid 704 Interamnia.  The different lines show when different people could see the star.  The dark spots show when they couldn't.  So now we know the shapes of those asteroids!  Much more good information at Sky and Telescope.

Scale of the Solar System

I don't think I've ever seen such a great demonstration of the scale of the universe!  Check it out!

COSMOS Remix

There is a mini-series called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey which begins Sunday (9/8c on Fox, 10/9c on National Geographic).  If you're not familiar, this is redoing an incredibly successful 1980 mini-series by Carl Sagan.  The science, and the graphics have changed a lot since then.  This appears to be a big, expensive, flashy, production (Seth McFarlane is the executive producer).  Every question on the final will be from the mini-series.  That's not really true, but I really want you to watch it.

Lots of New Planets

The NASA Kepler mission just tripled the number of confirmed Kepler planets with an announcement this morning.  715 new planets!!

Michelson's Famous Experiment in the San Gabriel Mountains

KCET has a nice article about Michelson's clever experiment to measure the speed of light.  The experiments happened nearly 90 years ago by sending a beam of light from Mt. Wilson to Mt. Baldy and reflecting it back.  More info here.

Type Ia Supernova in M82

M82, a very close by "starburst" galaxy, just had a Type Ia supernova go off a few days ago.  This is the closest Type Ia in a long time.

http://www.universetoday.com/108386/bright-new-supernova-blows-up-in-nearby-m82-the-cigar-galaxy/

Your Blogs

Here is a list of your fellow student's blogs:

Gerardo Alvarez
Javier Fajardo
Melina Fuentes
Te-En Lee
Vincent Luong
Salvador Martinez
Jacob McNevin
Hieu Nguyen
Oscar Osario
Ziqi Pi
Ethan Roeder
John Stephens

Interactive Scale of the Universe

Here's a nice interactive graphic attempting to help you visualize the massive range of scales of the universe.  As you zoom in and out, the scale is on the bottom, right (as an exponential).  There are a few inaccuracies (the galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field were NOT 12.7 billion light years away 12.7 billion years ago).  But the graphics are really nice.  Zoom out!  Our class deals with everything > 10^7 meters across. 

Prof.'s Research in the News

Here is the press release from the Space Telescope Science Institute (the place that runs the Hubble Space Telescope).