Observations

On 1/7/15 i saw the iridium flare around 7 35 pm
on 1/28/15 i saw another iridium flare.
on 2/3/15  the HST is visible. Also was keeping and eye out for the space station which is brighter than the HST. But i did not see the space station.
I look up every night and i watch the different phases of the moon and i try to point out constellations. Their is a cool app someone told me about where if you point your phone in the sky it tells you what constellation those starts are in and where they are located. I am going to keep trying to familiarize myself with the night sky more by always looking up.

3.3 APOD

Titan seas reflect sunlight. The sunlight from the liquid seas of titan. Saturns moon has many smooth lakes made of methane,when the angle is right it reflects the sunlight as if they where mirrors.This picture is falsely colored and the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn image captured titian last summer in different bans of cloud piercing infrared light.The reflection is so bright it saturated Cassini infrared cameras. The reflection regions confirms that northern titans houses a wide complex array of seas with geometry that indicates periods of evaporation.This is on of our most mysterious moons. Cassini has revealed titan to be a world with active weather. The times it raids on Titan it rains a liquefied version of natural gas

3.2 APOD

IN this picture you can see the beautiful exposure on the northern winter sky.
The starts and skylight includes orions belt the orion nebula and the Pleiades stat cluster.
Betelgeuse and Rigel are part of the constellation orion.  The belt of starts of orion are nearly vertical in the central line between the horizon image center. The lowest star of the belt is kinda skewed due to the red glow of the flame nebula. Bernards loop is to the left right by the bright orange start Betelgeuse.Belts right is the Orion nebula and Rigel. The blue cluster of starts in Pleiades and the red nebula to the left is the California nebula. The Bright orange dot about the image is Aldebaran which is a star in the constellation Taurus the bull. This picture was taking near Palau village in Spain.

2.9 or 3.1 apod

Comet love joy is putting on a show for comet watchers. You can see it with binoculars and visible to the eyes. The comet went across Taurus the bull in this picture. This picture was taken January 12th from Jackson hole. The head of Taurus formed by the v shaped Hyades start cluster. The comet has a greenish color and a tail that is traveling away from the sun. Seems to be heading towards orions bow. This comet is one of the brightest ones we can see with the naked eye . 

2.8 apod

The milky way galaxy runs though a beautiful and complex sky. The the NW edge of Veal the frame is 10 degrees wide. Its goal is the get the brightest glowing filaments from the vela supernova remnant. The debris from the cloud from the death explosion. Light from this supernova created the vela remnant reached earth abut 11,000 years ago. The filaments of glowing gas and the chaos left behind a very dense rotating stellar core. This is called the Vela Pulsar, 800 light years away the vela remnant is embedded in gum nebula.

2.7 apod

the core fur of a fox and a Christmas tree are all part of the constellation of the unicorn. This picture is a star forming region cataloged as the NGC 2264. This cosmic gas and dust is about 2700 light years away.  This mixes withe the emission nebulae which is excited by light from new starts with dark interstellar clouds. The obscuring dust clouds are close to the hot young starts and it reflects the light forming blue reflection nebulae. This picture spans about 30 light years. ON the left is the cone nebula and the NGC 2264 is also know as the Christmas tree cluster. The triangle shape traveled by the stares is the appex of the CN. It also has a broader base near the S mon. This picture captures the true beauty of outer space. 

Friedrich bessel Bio

Noah McClannahan

Mr. Percival

DE Astronomy

January 8 2015

Friedrich Bessel Biography

            The Astronomer I have received for this project is named Friedrich Bessel. Friedrich Willhelm Bessel was born on July twenty second 1784. Bessel was born in Minden Germany. He was born at the Minden Ravensberd Administrative. He was the second son of a civil servant. At the age of fourteen Bessel sought an apprentice ship. He found the import and export concern of Kulenkamp at Bermen. The business was a cargo ship business and that led him to use his math skills to solve problems with navigation. This lead to Bessels interest in the heavens as a way of determinty longitude.  Bessel realized a major figure around this time named Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers. Olbers was a major figure of German astronomy at the time.  He was known for orbital calculation of halies comet in 1804. He used old observations taken by Thomas Harriot and Nathaniel Torporley in 1607. A few years passed  and Bessel decided to leave kulenkamp.  He became the assistant to Johann Hieronymus Schröter's  at Lilienthal observatory in Bremen Germany.  While he was assisting he   worked on James Bradleys stellar observations to get the positions of 3222 stars.  January of 1810 Bessel was promoted to director of the observatory at age 25 by kind Fredrick William iii of Prussia. Bessel then decided to publish his atmospheric refraction derived from Bradley’s observations. This won him the Lalande prize for the French Academy of Sciences in 1811. Bessel decided to intricate the fundamenta Astronomiae based on the observations of Bradley while the observatory was being worked on.  Königsberg observatory had its grand opening and operation in 1813. Around 1819, Bessel determined the position of 50000 different starts by used the Meridian circle created by Reichenbach. With this Bessel was able to achieve what he is best known for. Bessel was the first to use parallax in calculation the distance to a star. Bessels measurements allowed him to realize the motions of Sirius and Procyon. He realized that the motions of those where caused by gravitational attraction. His Dark companion claim in 1844 was the first correct claim. This also lead to the discovery of Sirius b. Bessel showed how to solve to Geodesic problem. He observed easy Prussia and combined the Prussian and Russian triangulation networks. This lead to him obtaining an estimate of the figure of earth and is referred to today as the Bessel ellipsoid. Bessel did not have a university education but became a major impact in the astronomy community. He was elected to the royal society and became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1823. Also the largest crater in the Moon's Mare Serenitatis is named Bessel after him. Bessels contributed in the discovery of the planet Neptune. Bessel won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1829 and 1841. Bessel developed what are now known as Bessel functions. This was key in solving differential equations. This method is also used in quantum physics. This also made him a very influential mathematician. Bessel got very sick of illness. Bessel then died in March 1846 in his Observatory. He died from retroperitoneal fibrosis. He died just before the discovery of Neptune by his friends and colleagues at the Berlin Observatory. Overall Friedrich Bessel was a very influential astronomer and mathematician of his time.

Sources:

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Bessel.html

https://cosmology.carnegiescience.edu/timeline/1838

http://messier.seds.org/xtra/Bios/bessel.html