Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

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Expand view Topic review: Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

Re: Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

by Celestial » Sat Jun 04, 2011 2:26 am

One cannot compare a picture to any other for this week, each of these APODs represents marvelous things. My first choice was the Crab Nebula and the second was the Supernova sonata, although the Shuttle plume and the Messier marathon make voting difficult.

The Crab nebula and its supernova have been amazing and instructing us beginning almost one thousand years ago. This object is Messier 1...there is distinction in that selection. Even though the properties of its pulsar are only grasped resorting to the imagination (rotation, for example), this object still exhibits properties we do not yet understand well.

The visual appeal of the Crab nebula flare APOD may be limited, but the explanation supplies the marvel; we may be looking inwards, not outwards when judging the merits of this APOD, I think.

And the Supernova sonata got my vote, for two reasons. First, its novelty: the composers convey the frequency of supernova events engaging our senses, without words; and second, the composers extend the tradition of artistic representation of stellar things (Moonlight sonata, or all poetic references to the Moon, for example). The method Parker & Graham used to assign notes to each supernova is very original.

I thought supernovae are rare, but watching the animation while listening to the sonata, I understand that observing deep space (a look back in time) for three years revealed 241 Type Ia supernovae in only four small fields of sky, this may be a correlation between frequency of supernovae and the composition of the early universe.

Re: Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

by islaser2 » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:57 pm

I am not in ORNITH corner. Kudos to all the responders who work so hard to contribute to this wonderful site, APOD.

Re: Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

by owlice » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:51 pm

Why does asking people which of last week's APODs they liked best bother you? Or asking which image they would like to see as APOD?

I'm not being challenging here; I'm truly curious why this bothers you, why you think this is dummying down. Please explain. Thanks!

Re: Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

by Ornithikos » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:32 pm

Really, do we need yet another poll, of the sort with which everyone is already deluged in popups, by email, by smail, by phone, and at the behest of wandering poll takers on the street, most of whom are actually salesmen? You've got a good thing going. Why dummy it down?

Re: Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

by biddie67 » Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:51 pm

Most of the time I am content with voting for only two APODs; but once in a while, I'd like to have a coupon that allowed me to also vote for a third APOD ...

Re: Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

by Cal » Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:19 pm

I voted for the Crab Nebula because it tells me something about astronomy that I didn't know. I also voted for the Arches, because that picture is both astronomical and artistic. The shuttle launch picture is interesting but not really astronomical, so I eliminated that one from my potential vote-getters.

Poll: Astronomy Picture of the Week for 2011 May 22-28

by owlice » Sat May 28, 2011 9:07 am

_______________________________________________________________

Please vote for the TWO best Astronomy Pictures of the Day (image and text) of May 22-28, 2011.
(Repeated APODs are not included in the poll.)

All titles are clickable and link to the original APOD page.

We ask for your help in choosing an APOW as this helps Jerry and Robert create "year in APOD images" review lectures, create APOM and APOY polls that can be used to create a free PDF calendar at year's end, and provides feedback on which images and APODs were relatively well received. You can select two top images for the week.

We are very interested in why you selected the APODs you voted for, and enthusiastically welcome your telling us why by responding to this thread.

Thank you!
_______________________________________________________________

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Why does the Crab Nebula flare? No one is sure. The unusual behavior, discovered over the past few years, seems only to occur in very high energy light -- gamma rays. As recently as one month ago, gamma-ray observations of the Crab Nebula by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope showed an unexpected increase in gamma-ray brightness, becoming about five times the nebula's usual gamma-ray brightness, and fading again in only a few days. Now usually the faster the variability, the smaller the region involved. This might indicate that the powerful pulsar at the center of the Crab, a compact neutron star rotating 30 times a second, is somehow involved. Specifically, speculation is centered on the changing magnetic field that surely surrounds the powerful pulsar. Rapid changes in this field might lead to waves of rapidly accelerated electrons which emit the flares, possibly in ways similar to our Sun. The above image shows how the Crab Nebula normally appears in gamma rays, as compared to the Geminga pulsar, and how it then appeared during the recent brightening.
How many arches can you count in the above image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah, USA, then two. But since the above image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance -- that of the overreaching Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are situated in the midst of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the central disk appears all around us. The sandstone arches of the Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water. The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across. The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea. A dim flow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.
What's that rising from the clouds? The space shuttle. If you looked out the window of an airplane at just the right place and time last week, you could have seen something very unusual -- the space shuttle Endeavour launching to orbit. Images of the rising shuttle and its plume became widely circulated over the web shortly after Endeavour's final launch. The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft and is not copyrighted. Taken well above the clouds, the image can be matched with similar images of the same shuttle plume taken below the clouds. Hot glowing gasses expelled by the engines are visible near the rising shuttle, as well as a long smoke plume. A shadow of the plume appears on the cloud deck, indicating the direction of the Sun. The shuttle Endeavour remains docked with the International Space Station and is currently scheduled to return to Earth next week.
Image
To create a sonata from supernovae, first you have to find the supernovae. To do that composers Alex Parker and Melissa Graham relied on the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) Legacy Survey data of four deep fields on the sky monitored from April 2003 through August 2006, adopting 241 Type Ia supernovae. Enchanting to cosmologists, Type Ia supernovae are thermonuclear explosions that destroy white dwarf stars. Then, they gave each supernova a note to play, the volume of the note determined by the distance to the supernova. Fainter, more distant supernovae play quieter notes. Each note's pitch was based on a stretch factor measured by how fast the supernova brightens and fades over time relative to an adopted standard time history. Higher stretch factors play higher notes in pitches drawn from the illustrated Phrygian dominant scale. Of course, each supernova note is played on an instrument. Supernovae in massive galaxies were assigned to a stand-up bass, while supernovae in less massive galaxies played their note on a grand piano. Click on the image or follow these links (Vimeo, YouTube) to watch a time compressed animation of the CFHT Legacy Survey data while listening to the Supernova Sonata.
Click to view full size image 1 or image 2
In this action scene, red night vision lights, green laser pointers, tripods and telescopes in faint silhouette surround intrepid sky gazers embarked on the 10th annual Iran Messier Marathon. Completing the marathon requires viewing all 110 objects in 18th century French astronomer Charles Messier's catalog in one glorious dusk-to-dawn observing run. As daunting as it sounds, there are often favorable weekend dates for northern hemisphere marathoners to complete the task that fall on nearly moonless nights near the spring equinox. With the Milky Way as a backdrop, this group of about 150 astronomy enthusiasts conducted their 2011 marathon on such a night in April from the desert area of Seh Qaleh, in eastern Iran. Placing your cursor over the image will map the stunning night sky above their remote and very dark observing site. Follow the green laser pointer toward the Messier catalog objects (for example, M8) near the galactic center. Astronomer and former Messier Marathon organizer Babak Tafreshi also composed Sky Gazers, a time-lapse movie of this year's event.
If you're driving down a dark road on a starry night, you might want to check the odometer. Earlier this month, when traveling astronomer Dennis Mammana did he was greeted with the significant mileage reading of 186,282 miles. That's the number of miles light travels in one second. Or, if you prefer kilometers, the number you are looking for is 299,792. Mammana muses that in driving to countless observatories, star parties, and night sky photo shoots it has taken his 1998 vintage sport utility vehicle over 13 years to cover that distance. Of course, he considers his next important mileage milestone to be the distance to the Moon.

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