APOD 3.8 Detailed View of a Solar Eclipse Corona

During a solar eclipse, the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, is visible. This faint, thin outer layer is not bright enough to be seen on a normal day, only during a solar eclipse. Its not that the corona is not bright, its just that the photosphere, the part of the sun that we see (the surface), is so much brighter than the corona that it overwhelms it and the corona is not visible. The intricate structure of the corona is easy to see with the naked eye, but when it is photographed, the structure is incredibly hard to capture. During the 2008 solar eclipse in Mongolia, this image was taken. This picture is a composite of many images and digital processing. You can easily see layers and the glowing caustics of an ever changing mixture of hot gas and magnetic fields. You can see the shape of the magnetic fields above small pink solar prominences.

Apod 3.7 Yukon Aurora with Star Trails

This image captures, in my opinion, two of the coolest features in the night sky: star trails and auroras. Star trails are created when a camera is attached to a tripod and the camera is left with an open exposure. The camera is centered on the north star, Polaris. As the Earth rotates, the stars slowly traverse the sky surrounding Polaris and when viewed in the camera, you can see the path of the star from the start of the image to the end of it. Auroras occur when reactions between charged particles from the sun and the magnetosphere send particles to the pole, where they interact with the atmosphere, creating colored streaks across the sky. Auroras occur mostly at high latitudes. In areas of high latitude, auroras often occur around the equinoxes. Both the spring and fall equinoxes offer excellent times to see auroras in these high latitude regions. In order to capture both the star trails and the aurora, many short exposure images were combined together to create the star trails so that the aurora could be captured as well.

Astronomy Night

Date: 3/6/2010
Time: 6:40-9:25
Location: Pine View School
Sky Conditions: exceptionally clear, very dark
Observations:
Helped to operate three different telescopes:
1. Operated a telescope directed towards M42. I explained that M42 is located in Orion in Orion's sword and is called the Orion Nebula. I explained how the three bright stars visible are called the Trapezium and provide the energy needed to excite the atoms in the gas cloud surrounding the stars, and that this excitation allows you to see the nebulosity.
2. I helped run the telescope pointed at Saturn. You could easily see the planet and its beautiful rings, and I informed people that you could also see two of Saturn's moons.
3. I also ran the telescope pointed at the binary pair of Rigel. I explained how the brighter star and the less luminous white dwarf are locked in orbit around each other but that the white dwarf is much smaller, so the light it gives off is much harder to see in comparison to that given off by Rigel. I also told people where the white dwarf was located (lower right of Rigel) in case they could not find it.
Also helped setup a few telescopes