The Antennae Galaxies in Collision

Located in the Constellation Corvus, The Crow, are two galaxies colliding. When two galaxies collide, their central stars seldom take part in the destruction. The reason behind this is that galaxies are comprised of a vast amount of space, mostly containing gas and dust. The churning up of the gases between the two galaxies will inevitably spark the birth of millions of stars. 

Biography: Karl Schwarzchild

Life

Karl Schwarzchild grew up in a well off home in Frankfurt, Germany. Brought up in a Jewish home in early 20th century, Schwarzchild attended primary school until the age of eleven and had a father who was very active in the community. After primary school, Schwarzchild studied at two universities. One at Strasbourg and another at Munich. He developed a keen aptitude in physics and astronomy. At the age of twenty three he obtained a doctorate and began working at the Kuffner Observatory as an assistant in 1897.

Starting in 1901, Schwarzchild was a professor at the institute of Gottingen. He quickly rose from this position and became the director of the Gottingen Observatory in 1909. This led to a job as the director of the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam.

During the heat of World War I in 1914, Schwarzchild developed a skin disease that made him extremely ill. Regardless of the struggle this presented for him, Schwarzchild was still able to produce three papers. Two of the papers were on the theory of relativity and the third was regarding quantum theory. These papers showed explicit solutions to the Einstein field equations. It was the work on these three papers which yeilded what is not commonly known as the "Schwarzchild metric".

Work and Legacy

Black Holes: Schwarzchild predicted that the spacetime of a black hole is curved in a way that caused the future light cones to tip inward. This was shown vividly through the image below.

Event Horizon: From the discovery of light curves came the discovery of event horizons in black holes. What the event horizon does is show a distinguished line between where light can and cannot escape from a black hole as a cause of the light curve and gravitational pull of the mass itself.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity: Applied successfully to Schwarzchild's predictions.  

Prominence

This prominence from the sun was captured last week. Prominences can last roughly one month and also have the potential to spark a Coronal Mass Ejection which would push hot gas into the solar system and cause auroras to be visible from Earth.

Star Gaze at Pine View School, Service Road

March 1st marked the date of yet another Star Gaze on the Pine View Campus. Mr. Chap Percival and Steven Dacey led the Gaze by setting up telescopes for the student to use in order to view an array of space objects up close. During the star gaze we pointed out constellations that we went over in class during the preceding few weeks. We also were shown Canopus, one of the brighter stars in the night sky that is shown in a constellation which we have yet to go over in class, Carina, The Keel. Mr. Percival used his laser pointer to help guide the other students and myself through the constellations by using a process called "star hopping". Other astronomical objects viewed included two emission nebulae and Jupiter through the smaller telescope. In the telescope with Jupiter, four moons were visible at the start of the night. Later on, Mr. Percival changed this view to show a binary star system.

The Long Jet of the Lighthouse Nebula

The Lighthouse Nebula was formed by the wind of a pulsar, a rapidly notating neutron star that rotates at speeds faster than 1,000 km/sec. Located roughly 23,000 light years away towards Carina the Keel near Canopus and Eta Carinae, the image of the wind nebula are clearly shown on the lower right hand side of the X-ray image taken from the Chandra Xray Observatory.

Messier 63: The Sunflower Galaxy

Messier 63 is about 25 million light-years distant in the constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, the island universe is nearly 100,000 light-years across. Roughly the same size as the Milky Way Galaxy. Known as The Sunflower Galaxy, M63 sports a bright yellowish core. Its has expansive blue spiral arms and pink star forming regions. A dominant member of a known galaxy group, M63 has faint, extended features that could be the result of gravitational interactions with nearby galaxies. 

Double Cluster in Perseus

Depicted in the lower center of the photo are two double clusters which are seen spanning roughtly 3.5 degrees across the constellation Perseus. The names of these clusters are h and Chi Persei. The contents of the clusters are much hotter and younger stars than we have in our sun. We estimate that the clusters are roughly 7,000 light years away from us. The stars in the clusters are probably 13 million years old. The red areas in the photo represent the hydrogen clouds surrounding the stars. The hydrogen is emitted from the stars.