The Helix Nebula, God's Eye, And The Eye Of Sauron

Magnus Chase and the gods of Asgard: The hammer of Thor, Rick Riordan is an adventure packed Fantasy and Mythological novel. After reading this book I have been able to explore more into the Norse myths and legends world. In my opinion, after reading this book you might just want to never stop reading the humorous and adventurous book.

The autumn constellations Andromeda and Perseus, along with Cetus, Pegasus, Cassiopeia and Cepheus, are richly intertwined in mythology, but are vastly diverse in the objects they present to astronomers. While Perseus lies along the Milky Way, and offers many dazzling open star clusters and diffuse nebulae, Andromeda lies away from our galaxy's plane, and introduces us to the inhabitants of intergalactic space. Some of the finest celestial objects reside in these constellations, and it is well worth braving cool autumn nights to observe them.

Mayall’s object (also known as Arp 148) is the stunning result of an encounter between two galaxies resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion, located almost 465 million light-years away within the constellation Ursa Major. The pair extends across 80 thousand light-years.

I chose the Orion constellation because after doing some research, I found that the history of this constellation was very interesting. The Orion constellation looks like a man holding a weapon and a dead lion, so it was named after a hunter in Greek mythology. The Orion is located on the celestial equator and it consists of seven stars known as Betelgeuse, Rigel, Bellatrix, Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak, and Saiph, but it's brightest stars are Rigel and Betelgeuse. This constellation is most visible between January and March at evening time and can be seen all across the world.

The cloud contracted under its own gravity and our proto-Sun formed in the hot dense center. The remainder of the cloud formed a swirling disk call the solar nebula. A solar nebula is a gaseous cloud. The nebular hypothesis has become the theory of the origin of our solar system. We can relate this to the vermiculite solar nebula lab. These are related because in the lab it showed us how gravity pulled most of the materials toward the center of the water which the water was representing gravity and the vermiculite that got pulled to the center was modeling the heavier more dense planets. The vermiculite that was pushed away from the center represented lighter less dense

The Cone Nebula (NGC 2264) is found in the constellation, Monoceros. This dazzling nebula is part of a much larger star-forming region, called the Christmas Tree Cluster. Both, fall under the name of NGC 2264.

The Orion Nebula is one of the closest stellar regions to the Earth. Using parallax measurements, it has been estimated that this nebula is only 1,500 light years away. In addition, the Orion Nebula is a

The Pacman Nebula is an H II region or a large gas cloud where a star has recently formed.

A nebulae as described in Fraknoi’s Voyages to the Stars and Galaxies is “all objects that were not sharp points of light” (Fraknoi, page 384). The Sagittarius Triplet is a group of three nebulae’s famous for their bright red and blue hues, which is a main reason I choose this picture. There are three nebulae in this picture and each is spectacular on its own but together the Sagittarius Triplet creates a visual buffet for the eyes. The dark reds in particular are beautiful to behold and take up the majority of the visual landscape. These red colors are created by the emission nebulae by hydrogen gas that is heated by the intense temperatures of present stars. The image made me feel the vastness of space and the endlessness of time. The interesting layout of the nebulae creates a long stardust highway across the image, connecting the NGC 6559 and M8 nebulae. These three nebulae are so bright they are routinely featured in telescopic tours of the Sagittarius constellation and the central Milky Way galaxy. M8 or the Lagoon Nebula and M20 or Trifid were first cataloged in 1764 by Charles Messier (Kronberg).

The Carina Nebula is located in the Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Carina in the Carina-Sagittarius Arm. It is sometimes referred to as the Eta Argus, referencing the former constellation, Argo Navis, which represented Jason and the Argonauts. It has been estimated at around 7500 ly (light-years) from earth. It was discovered in 1751-52 by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and was later found to be one of the largest emission stars in the galaxy. Its entire mass is around 900,000 solar masses which is equivalent to 270 million pounds. It contains several open clusters of stars along with many O-type stars. It used to contain thousands of more stars than it does today, but many self-destructed. It is home to the Trumpler 14 and Trumpler 16

The constellation of Andromeda is pretty interesting. Not only does it share it's name with the galaxy closest to the Milky Way, it is also one of the 48 constellations listed by the Greco-Roman astronomer, Ptolemy. It is said that this constellation is ten times the size of Crux, the smallest constellation, and a little over half the size of Hydra, the largest constellation. The brightest of Andromeda's stars, Alpha Andromedae -a binary star- is also shared by the constellation Pegasus. Andromeda is best viewed in the month of November, North of the 40° South latitude.

William Herschel was an amateur astronomer. “During the day his house was a school of music. Suddenly, it was a telescope factory as well. During the night it was an observatory” (Littman, 6). In 1781, while completing his “second all-sky survey with one of his home-made telescopes”, he saw something he couldn’t specify as a comet or a nebula.

For my observing project I chose to do Messier 98 (M98). I chose M98 because I am absolutely fascinated by galaxies, and I think spiral galaxies look the coolest. M98 is located in the constellation Coma Berenices and it is in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. A French astronomer, named Pierre Mechain, on March 15th 1781, discovered M98 and then Charles Messier measured its position and catalogued it on April 13, 1781. M98, also known as NGC 4192, is located at a Right Ascension of 12h 13m 48s and at a Declination of +14° 54’ 2’’. This means M98 rises at approximately 16 PDT and sets at approximately 4 PDT, and is right overhead at approximately 22:00 PDT. It has apparent size of 9.8’ by 2.8’, an inclination of 74°, an apparent magnitude of 11.0, and it is located approximately 44.4 million light years away. Also M98, unlike most other galaxies, which are usually red shifted and travelling away from us, is actually blue shifted and approaching us at about 140 km/s. Also M98’s maximum rotational velocity, which is at the very edge of its radius, is approximately 280 km/s.

This model, known as the nebular hypothesis, was first developed in the 18th century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Its next development has interwoven a variety of scientific disciplines including astronomy, physics, geology, and planetary science. Since the dawn of the

A galaxy, also called a nebula, consists of billions of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter which are all bound to form a massive cloud in which we live in. Although it cannot be very well explained, dark matter makes up at least 90% of a galaxy’s mass.