Sources:
http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/
Friday, December 4, 2015
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Big Bang By: James, Tyler, and Javin
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-K5bFeZC2HKM19XamtaVVdNYkU/view?usp=sharing
Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Friday, November 20, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Cupcakes!
Many thanks to Carson Davis ( carson996@live.missouristate.edu ) for providing solar system themed cupcakes for the class on Monday 11/9! If you are interested in Carson making cupcakes for you or an event, please contact her at the email address above. - Dr Plavchan
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Star Paths( red giants,white dwarfs, supernovas, black holes) Anthony Orazio, Anthony Borthacyre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGTNVJYWx5Q
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Life of a Star: Supernova by: Dlija Brown, Briana Miller, and Tionna Murphy
Works Cited
"Chandra X-ray
Observatory - 15 Years of Wonder." Chandra X-ray Observatory –
15
Years of Wonder. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.
"Hubble Spacecraft
Instruments." NASA. NASA, 30 July 2015. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.
"What Is a
Supernova." NASA. NASA, 4 Sept. 2013. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
"About." NuSTAR.
Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
"Pics
about Space." Dark Energy Supernova Type 1A. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
"Kelsey
Reppert." Turbulence Effects On Supernova Neutrinos. Web. 4
Nov. 2015.
"Novae
and Supernovae." Novae and Supernovae. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
"Hubble
Telescope Views Shrapnel from the Veil Nebula Supernova
Remnant." SciTech Daily. 24 Sept.
2015. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
"Chandra
:: Photo Album :: Cassiopeia A :: November 15, 2013." Chandra ::
Photo
Album :: Cassiopeia A :: November 15, 2013. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
"What's
A Supernova and Where Can I See One?" YouTube. YouTube. Web. 4
Nov.
2015.
"Supernova
Explosions in the Universe| Space Documentaries| How the Universe
Works." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
May, Sandra. Bernoskie, Brandi. Deiss, Heather & Miller,
Denise. “What is a Supernova” NASA Knows, Nasa.gov, 16 Sept
2015. Web. 25 October 2015
Thompson, Andrea. “What is a Supernova” Space.com, 21 Jan 2014,
Web. 25 October 2015
October 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
Friday, October 23, 2015
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Friday, October 16, 2015
The Sun and Stars - Aubrynne Russell, Jonathan WIlliams, and Ryan Parker
http://prezi.com/psiwndib0vqe/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
10 seconds per slide
Amazing new views of Enceladus
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/closest-ever-views-of-saturns-moon-enceladus/
Thursday, October 15, 2015
The Sun and Stars: by Emma Crosswhite, Zakary Banks, and Adam Bruns
Presentation link below. Prezi.com
http://prezi.com/pi69-korm0hv/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Works Cited links below
Comins, Neil F. Discovering the Essential Universe. Sixth ed. New York City: Katherine Parker, 2015. 268-313. Print.
Wikipedia
article on Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin
Excerpt
from Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge
The Sun and Other Stars
Presented by Chris Buehrig, Jackson Giebler, and Robert Stonner.
Sorry for the low quality. I can't upload anything bigger.
Sorry for the low quality. I can't upload anything bigger.
Sources
Comins, Neil F. "The Sun: Our Extraordinary Ordinary Star." Discovering the Essential Universe. New York: W.
H. Freeman, 2015. N. pag. Print.
H. Freeman, 2015. N. pag. Print.
"What Elements Are in the Sun? Ask a Chemistry Teacher." About.com Education. Web. 08 Oct. 2015.
"Windows to the Universe." Windows to the Universe. Web. 08 Oct. 2015.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin
Adam Bruns
Astronomy 113
Dr. Plavchan
October 8, 2015
The Brilliant Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin
Propose an
unsure conclusion about something that has been the standard since ancient
times. Then watch as your career begins to fold at the edges and your
colleagues begin to judge your work, while it has merit and is wonderfully done,
they disagree with the findings that you state are true. Only to find that
several years later, a colleague performs his own study regarding yours,
through his own experiments figures out that you had been right all along. Thus
was the early career of Cecelia Payne, later Cecelia Gaposchkin. A brilliant
woman by her own right, determined and curious and only through a moment of
hesitant questioning of her own discovery did she fail to receive the attention
and credit that should have been hers in total.
Cecelia
Gaposchkin was an astronomer who based her thesis on the contents and molecular
makeup of the suns and stars that dot the observable universe. Beginning her
long tour to her fame, Cecelia initially began to lean towards botany as her
choice of career even though she chose to keep physics and chemistry on the
schedule as well (Bartusiak 36). However, as fate would have it a particular
lecture given by Arthur Eddington regarding his expedition to observe the 1919
solar eclipse. As he explained how his observation proved Einstein’s Theory of
General Relativity, Cecelia felt the rush of her world changing and her eyes
opening to the heavens (Cosmic Horizons). In the time after that lecture
Cecelia attended the Cambridge Universities Observatory open night and hounded
the employees with enough questions that they decided to take her to Professor
Eddington himself. To whom she exclaimed how her eye opening convinced her to
pursue her opportunities as an astronomer (Cosmic Horizons).
Her life
only truly opened up before her when she made her trek “across the pond” in 1923
in order to follow a greater opportunity for a fellowship through Harvard
University Observatory. On her arrival she was introduced to a group of women
who worked to catalog stellar bodies by the spectrum of the light they
produced, these women were known as the “Harvard Computers, or alternately
“Pickering’s Harem”. They were overseen by Edward Charles Pickering (Cosmos).
Among these women was Annie Jump Cannon, the mastermind behind the stellar
classification system (Cosmos). Which at the time was directly up Cecelia’s
alley, she was “more intrigued by the physical interpretation of stellar
spectrums” (Bartusiak 36). With the assistance of Ms. Cannon and the work of
Indian physicist Meghnad Saha, Cecelia would proceed to use the vast collection
of spectra the Harvard Observatory had in order to understand the composition
of the stars (Bartusiak 37).
Cecelia
Gaposchkin was convinced by Dr. Harlow Shapely to pursue a doctoral degree,
which she was the first person ever to receive one from the Harvard University
field of astronomy (Wiki). Her doctoral thesis was titled "Stellar
Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in
the Reversing Layers of Stars" (Wiki). The basis of her thesis stood on
the recent decoding of Annie Jump Cannons stellar classification system, which
since its creation scientists failed to determine the purpose of and what each
category represented. Initially the classification was crafted by one Wilhelmina
Fleming, where the stars were placed into categories alphabetically according
to the intensity of the spectral lines of their hydrogen (Chown). Ms. Cannon rearranged this sequence to allow
a smoother transition of spectral line intensity. Which Payne discovered was a
temperature sequence where one end was the hottest and the other end was the
coolest (Chown).
Cecelia
Payne spent some time pouring over Ms. Cannon’s system of classification,
thinking hard over the letters. Then a revelation occurred to her, at the solar
temperature of 5600 kelvin hydrogen and helium would be stripped of an
electron. However those elements produced the most intense signature lines of
the spectrum (Chown), which lead her down the rabbit hole. Cecelia came to the
conclusion based on her calculations that hydrogen and helium showed such
strong signatures due to the fact that there was such a vast quantity of the
elements inside the stellar bodies and “they made up 98 percent of the mass of
the sun” (Chown).
Cecelia’s
doctoral thesis was based on her calculations and the conclusions she had come
to establish due to them. Her findings of the immense proportions were frowned
upon by one Henry Norris Russell, who stated that “It is clearly impossible
that hydrogen should be a million times more abundant than the metals”, the
metals referring to the other elements on the periodic table that were found on
the Earth (Bartusiak 37). In order to proceed with her career as planned,
Cecelia needed the approval of Russell and Harlow Shapely who could make or
break a young graduate student’s future. In her reluctant moment of hesitation
Cecelia doubted herself just enough to tack on one statement at the end of her
thesis, that her calculations of hydrogen and helium were “improbably high, and
is almost certainly not real” (Bartusiak 37). Since then, a number of
astronomers have claimed that Cecelia’s doctoral thesis was the most brilliant
one ever to be written by anyone.
Cecelia
Payne-Gaposchkin’s findings would later be reiterated in a different format by
Russell himself, who became the spearhead for draping the understanding over
the astronomical community. However he failed to mention his influence in Cecelia
backing away from her findings concerning the stellar bodies. On the other hand
Edwin Powell Hubble often joked that Cecelia was the “best man at Harvard”
(Bartusiak 38). Cecelia was initially denied her doctorate, then later reviewed
and given the degree she had worked so tirelessly for and even after that she
was denied her proper position in the university and was given the title of
Technical Assistant under Professor Shapely. In 1956 she was granted the
position she truly deserved as full professor and chair of the Astronomy
Department. This made her Cecelia the first woman recognized as such by Harvard
University (Cosmic Horizons).
Cecelia
Payne-Gaposchkin passed away on December 7, 1979. Having written many articles
and papers and even books over her studies, Cecelia left a massive impact and
crafted a path by hand for other women in not only the astronomy community but
the sciences in general. Before her passing she received a great number of
honors and awards based upon her merit and intelligence, including honorary
degrees from several other colleges besides Harvard. However, beyond those
awards Cecelia even had an asteroid named after her (Wikipedia). Cecelia
Payne-Gaposchkin left a great shoe to fill behind her in the scientific
community, and with that great leaps and bounds have been made after the
understanding that the key to discovery is to never stop questioning.
Works Cited
Wikipedia
article on Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin
(Wiki)
Wikipedia
article on Sisters of the Sun as seen on Cosmos
(Cosmos)
Excerpt
from Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge
Editors:
Steven Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Academic Search Complete
The
Star Who Unraveled the Sun
By: Marcus
Chown
(Chown)
Academic Search Complete
The
Stuff of Stars
By: Marcia Bartusiak
(Bartusiak)
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