Form a National Astronomy Olympiad: Sign the Petition

My friends and I are trying to get this petition going in order to form an American team for the International Astronomy Olympiad. America is slacking! We don’t have a team!! Show your support by signing. Once we have enough signatures, this will be sent to the director of the American Astronomy Society. We are appealing to gain their support in order to make this happen!

kenyatta:

wtf-blanket:

The Pronunciation of GIF

Let it go people.

Let. it. go.

No. Let. it. jo.

This is my friend in our Robotics Shop
View Separately

This is my friend in our Robotics Shop

Still life drawing I did last year:) Black and white
Pop-upView Separately

Still life drawing I did last year:) Black and white

Before today ends, just want to say Happy Birthday to Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who fights for science! You go dude!

Colors of Stars

Why are stars different colors? Why don’t we perceive these colors? Check out this vid on a brief explanation of that! You should really subscribe to this person!! Their videos are awesome!:)

String Theory Song


You all need to subscribe to this awesome guy! I does more science songs like this song about String Theory! He will be coming up with more over time and he doesn’t have that many subscribers, but he should!

The Barking Dog Reaction


The guy from Vsauce appears in one of the PeriodicVideos on the Barking Dog Reaction which Nitrogen dioxide decomposing into Nitrogen gas and Oxygen gas. Carbon disulfide reacts with the Oxygen in the products to make a mixture of Carbon dioxide, Sulfur dioxide and solid sulfur. It is at this point that the reaction needs to be heated up to be so violent as it is in the video.

Michio Kaku: The Universe in a Nutshell


Michio Kaku discusses the universe, where it start, where it is now, and where it is going. He also talks about man’s involvement in the pursuit of science and what we are studying today! (Including the now infamous Higg’s). He also talks about our search for a Theory of Everything that would explain our entire universe, and I believe even a little bit of String Theory. It’s about 40 minutes long but definitely worth watching! (Or at least having on in the background while you go on Facebook).

Even if you don’t want to watch the whole informative aspect of this video (I mean who wants to learn anyway? haha), just take a couple minutes to watch the first few minutes of this video. They consist of footage of the Very Large Telescope in Chile recording the night sky, and it’s beautiful! Simply beautiful!

You can see the Magellanic Clouds of the Southern Hemisphere so well!:)

Astrochemistry Enters a Bold New Era With ALMA

If any of you have watched tonights episode of Doctor Who yet, then you may be freaking out like I am because BRIAN COX WAS IN IT!!! <3

I have a slight obsession with him.

Quasars: Centaurus A If you&#8217;ve been following me for a while, then you will know this isn&#8217;t my first quasar to post! I love quasars:) And if you don&#8217;t know what a quasar is, then I will tell you! It is an active galaxy in which the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy is eating material so fast, that large amounts of matter get shot out into space. This creates two large jets on either side of the galaxy itself as the matter travels thousands of light years! Most, if not all galaxies, have supermassive black holes at their center that can be billions of solar masses. Quasars typically are younger galaxies and will quiet down as the galaxy itself gets older. Our Milky Way is believed to have been a quasar once (as have most galaxies are believed to be). This is because when looking deep into space a few billion years,  quasars appear to be much more frequent when the universe was younger (including galaxies). They were first discovered to be extremely bright objects and little was known about them. They were originally named quasi-stellar radio sources, but later shortened and termed as quasars in the 1970&#8217;s in a copy of Physics Today. This quasar here is my favorite image of any quasar. If you look it up on the Chandra Database, you will see that it is Centaurus A in the constellation of Centaurus. Other images of this galaxies will not reveal the jets, but as I said in a previous post, the wavelengths captured are different than only optical light. This photo in particular is a composite of x-rays (blue), submillimeter (orange), and optical (white, brown). Centaurus A is about 11 million light years away from Earth.
Pop-upView Separately

Quasars: Centaurus A

If you’ve been following me for a while, then you will know this isn’t my first quasar to post! I love quasars:) And if you don’t know what a quasar is, then I will tell you!

It is an active galaxy in which the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy is eating material so fast, that large amounts of matter get shot out into space. This creates two large jets on either side of the galaxy itself as the matter travels thousands of light years! Most, if not all galaxies, have supermassive black holes at their center that can be billions of solar masses. Quasars typically are younger galaxies and will quiet down as the galaxy itself gets older. Our Milky Way is believed to have been a quasar once (as have most galaxies are believed to be). This is because when looking deep into space a few billion years,  quasars appear to be much more frequent when the universe was younger (including galaxies). They were first discovered to be extremely bright objects and little was known about them. They were originally named quasi-stellar radio sources, but later shortened and termed as quasars in the 1970’s in a copy of Physics Today.

This quasar here is my favorite image of any quasar. If you look it up on the Chandra Database, you will see that it is Centaurus A in the constellation of Centaurus. Other images of this galaxies will not reveal the jets, but as I said in a previous post, the wavelengths captured are different than only optical light. This photo in particular is a composite of x-rays (blue), submillimeter (orange), and optical (white, brown). Centaurus A is about 11 million light years away from Earth.

Oxygen

A video in which Hank Green, one of the amazing Vlogbrothers, talks about oxygen and it’s connection to organisms. He talks about where oxygen first appears on our planet and where people see it in dangerous circumstances such as when we see oxygen in a form of free radicals.

Oxygen is highly electronegative, so it really likes to bond with reducing agents that will donate electrons to it (metal oxides). When oxygen is in the form of a free radical as it comes out of cell respiration without a complete octet, it will bond with proteins and other macromolecules within your body. This can change their chemical structure as well as function, sometimes damaging them.

There are so many different ways in which we take photos of our universe! Forget the visible spectrum! Most telescopes that take pictures of different space objects are often in different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum depending on what the physicists want to see. For example, if scientists want to detect molecular hydrogen in a galaxy, they will switch to detecting microwave or radio waves (I&#8217;m not positive which, I think it&#8217;s radio for atomic hydrogen, but I&#8217;m not sure!). Anyhow, this can help physicists detect what different galaxies are made. This information can help them figure out the different conditions and processes occurring in these regions based on when such substances would be detected. By understanding how we can detect different substances and what they mean, it opens up the universe as well as the beautiful variations of the image above. Many images of space objects that we see today are even composites of these images. Not all but some of them are and they include beautiful colors! My next post will be an example of one such image. :)
View Separately

There are so many different ways in which we take photos of our universe! Forget the visible spectrum!

Most telescopes that take pictures of different space objects are often in different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum depending on what the physicists want to see. For example, if scientists want to detect molecular hydrogen in a galaxy, they will switch to detecting microwave or radio waves (I’m not positive which, I think it’s radio for atomic hydrogen, but I’m not sure!). Anyhow, this can help physicists detect what different galaxies are made. This information can help them figure out the different conditions and processes occurring in these regions based on when such substances would be detected.

By understanding how we can detect different substances and what they mean, it opens up the universe as well as the beautiful variations of the image above. Many images of space objects that we see today are even composites of these images. Not all but some of them are and they include beautiful colors! My next post will be an example of one such image. :)