Astronomy Picture of the Day

Shown here is the recent meteor shower that occurred within the contellation Camelopardis. The meteors are called Camelopardalids. Although a few meteors were visible on Earth, it was not an active shower because Earth happened to pass through the debris trail of a periodic comet. 

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Shown here is the "star factory" Messier 17. It is about 5,000 lightyears away from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The view here spans almost 100 lightyears. M17 has a large stock of cosmic gas which contributes to its large amount of stellar birth. M17 is also known as the Omega Nebula and the Swan Nebula. 

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Shown here is the Cone Nebula. Stars are currently forming here in its stellar nurseries. The Cone Nebula lies in the region NGC2264 and this particular photo was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Nebula is approximately 2,500 lightyears away from Earth, is 7 lightyears long, and can be found in the constellation Monoceros. 

Astronomer Biography: Kip Thorne

Kip S. Thorne was born in 1940 in Logan, Utah, and later received his Bachelors of Science from the California Institute of Technology in 1962. He went on to receive his Doctorate from Princeton University in 1965 and went back to CalTech in 1967 to become an Associate Professor in Theoretical Physics and worked his way up to become the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1991. His contributions to modern astronomy have been focused mainly on gravitation physics and astrophysics with an emphasis on black holes, relativistic stars, and gravitational waves. His research in the late 60s and early 70s set the basis for the theory of pulsations of relativistic and their emission of gravitational waves. In the 70s and 80s, he worked with other astrophysicists to develop mathematical formalism and the analysis of the generation and detection of gravitational waves. He is the cofounder of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO, which works mainly in identifying the source of gravitational waves. In the realm of gravitational wave detection, Thorne has invented the back-action-evasion approach to quantum nondemolition measurements of the quadrature amplitudes of harmonic oscillatorsn which has been used in association with other astrophysicists to interpret relativistic theories of gravity. Thorne also predicted the existence of red supergiant stars with neutron-star cores. He developed the general relativistic theory of thin accretion disks around black holes, and using this theory he deduced that with a doubling of its mass by such accretion a black hole will be spun up to 0.998 of the maximum spin allowed by general relativity. Thorne then formulated the hoop conjecture in 1972, which states that any object of mass M, around which a hoop of circumference 8 pi GM/c² can be spun, must be a black hole. He aided in the development of the membrane paradigm for black holes and which was used to clarify the "Blandford-Znajek" mechanism in which black holes may power some quasars and active galactic nuclei. He went on to show that the entropy of a black hole of known mass, angular momentum, and electric charge is the logarithm of the number of ways that the hole could have been made. Thorne has also identified a universal physical mechanism that may always prevent spacetime from developing closed timelike curves. His research with astrophysicists Mike Morris and Ulvi Yurtsever has showed that traversable Lorentzian wormholes can exist in the structure of spacetime only if they are threaded by quantum fields in quantum states that violate the averaged null energy condition and this has lead to the exploration of of quantum fields and their ability to possess extended negative energy. Furthermore, Thorne has invented tools for visualizing spacetime curvature, such as frame-drag vortex lines and tidal tendex lines. Combining these tools with numerical simulations, Thorne and colleagues are currently exploring the nonlinear dynamics of curved spacetime, triggered when spinning black holes collide. Thorne was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972, the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, and the Russian Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society in 1999. He has been awarded the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the German Astronomical Society, the Albert Einstein Medal of the Albert Einstein Society in Berne, Switzerland, the UNESCO Niels Bohr Gold Medal from UNESCO, and the Common Wealth Award for Science, and was named California Scientist of the Year in 2004. For his book for nonscientists, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (Norton Publishers 1994), Thorne was awarded the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, the Phi Beta Kappa Science Writing Award, and the (Russian) Priroda Readers' Choice Award. In 1973 Thorne coauthored the textbook Gravitation, from which most of the present generation of scientists have learned general relativity theory. Fifty-two physicists have received the PhD at Caltech under Thorne's personal mentorship.Most recently, Thorne has worked with filmmaker Christopher Nolan in the production of the film Interstellar which his based on his publication of astrophysical research.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~kip/scripts/biosketch.html

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~kip/scripts/shortbio.html

Thorne, Kip S., Charles W. Misner, and John A. Wheeler. General Relativity. N.p.: n.p., 1968. Print.

Astronomer Biography: Henrietta Leavitt

Henrietta Leavitt

Born in 1868 in Massachusetts, Henrietta Leavitt is often known as the forgotten astronomer. At the age of 20 Leavitt entered the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, now known simply as Radcliffe. While there, she studied a wide variety of topics ranging from differential calculus to philosophy. Thanks to the largely male scientific community, entering her job at the Harvard College Observatory was very taxing, and she ended up with a position called a "computer" whose sole duty was to record the brightness of stars. Leavitt worked alongside other highly educated women who were known as the "Pickering's harem" after their supervisors often misogynistic and bigoted management practices. Despite her lack of recognition, Leavitt worked tirelessly on her research of Cepheid variables. Cepheid variables are stars that shift brightness and dimness over given periods. In 1912, during her vast amounts of research, Leavitt discovered that she was able to relate the period of a given star's brightness cycle to its absolute magnitude. This discovery made it possible to measure the distance of these objects from Earth. Leavitt's breakthrough allowed for many subsequent discoveries to be made, such as Edwin Hubble's assertion that the Andromeda spiral nebula is really not at the edge of our galaxy but nearly 1 million lightyears away, or the method of the parallax measurement of Cepheid variables. Despite this integral contribution to modern astronomy, Leavitt was not given appropriate accolades or credit for her work. Pickering, her supervisor, published her findings under his own name, claiming it was his given right guaranteed by his superiority. Little is known about Leavitt's personal life or her feelings about her lack of recognition. This complacency and timidity was characteristic of well-educated women at the time. A rare breed, they were often shut away by their male peers and very rarely given a real voice in academia. Leavitt died quietly in 1921.

http://www.aavso.org/henrietta-leavitt-%E2%80%93-celebrating-forgotten-astronomer
http://cosmology.carnegiescience.edu/timeline/1912

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Pictured here is the Polar Ring Galaxy, found in the constellation Ursa Major. It contains stars, gas, and dust orbiting in rings perpendicular to a flat plane, which is a configuration very rarely found in our universe. This composition suggests that the galaxy is extremely old and very stable. In total, the galaxy is approximately 50,000 light years away and about 40 million light years form Earth. 

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Shown here is the center of the Rosette Nebula, found in the constellation Monoceros. The red shades are caused by sulfur, the blue by oxygen, and the green by hydrogen. The center is about 50 light years across and is nearly 4,500 light years from Earth.