APOD: Reflections of The Planet Earth

I find this picture from January 2nd, 2014 to be really neat.There are plenty of quality self portraits on Earth but this self portrait is probably the coolest I have ever seen. Astronaut, Micheal Fossum snapped this photo of himself while the Discovery Orbiter was docked at the International Space Station, capturing his fellow missioner, Piers Sellers, and one of the space station's gold-tinted solar powered arrays along the top and in the background, the horizon of planet Earth.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140102.html

Quarter 2: About My Astronomer- William R. Dawes

William R. Dawes was born on March 19, 1799 in West Sussex, England and grew up constantly moving, raised by relatives and friends. His mother had died when he was young and his father was, William Dawes, an astronomer who would became the governor of Sierra Leone for his success as an astronomer and was often away. Dawes originally studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and afterward worked a country practice in Berkshire. In 1826, following the death of a sister, He moved to Liverpool, and there he came under the influence of a Dissenting minister who persuaded him to take charge of a small congregation in Ormskirk. In 1830 Dawes was elected a Fellow of the RAS. He gave up his congregation in 1839 because his first wife died and it affected his already poor health. He next moved to London to take up the post of as George Bishop's assistant at his observatory there. William Lassell, a very wealthy man, became a patron of science and built an observatory in 1836 with a seven inch refractor and allowed Dawes to continue his astronomical work there until 1844.

Dawes, from a very young age, had always shown interest in astronomy, while at Liverpool he often observed the stars through an open window with a small but excellent refracting telescope. This refractor brought his focus to double stars, and at Ormskirk he constructed an observatory with a five-foot Dollond refractor that had an aperture of 3.8 inches, which he used to make careful micrometrical measurements of double stars. His measures of 121 double stars made in the period 1830–1833 were published in 1835, and those of 100 double stars in the period 1834–1839 were published in 1851. In 1842, Dawes remarried and moved to Kent, his new wife was wealthy so he was able to build his own observatory and install a 6.5 inch Merz refractor. With it, he discovered Saturn's crepe ring. W C Bond at the Harvard Observatory had also found the ring but Dawes made the claim before word of Bond’s discovery made it across the Atlantic. He became known as William "Eagle-eyed" Dawes, craters on Mars and the Moon are named after him. Dawes discovered Saturn’s Crepe ring with a 6.5 aperture telescope. He discovered more about Saturn than the crepe ring, including a white spot on Saturn and Mimas, the smallest of Saturn’s innermost moons. Dawes had an eye for details that many other astronomers missed, such as; the great Ellipse of Jupiter, white spots on Jupiter's southern hemisphere, markings on Jupiter's satellites III and IVand the companion of Sirius. His name is also used to describe an optical phenomena that he discovered; the Dawes limit, a formula to express the maximum resolving power in a microscope and/or telescope. Dawes notably won a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1855.

In 1857 William moved to Haddenham and continued his observations. He made extensive drawings of Mars during its 1864 opposition. His health was already worsening and his second wife died shortly after the move. Dawes was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1865 and kept observing until 1867. Dawes died at Haddenham, in 1868.

Qt 2 Astronomer Essay Sources

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dawes,_William_Rutter_(DNB00)

http://www.mikeoates.org/astro-history/dawes.htm

Observations Pt 2

Friday, November 15, 2013             9:00pm – 10:00pm

Location: Sarasota, Florida  

Instrument used: Binoculars

Weather: Fair

Visibility: Partly Cloudy

Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous

Stars: Altair, Deneb, Vega

Planets: Venus

Constellations: Aquila, Cygnus, Virgo

Thursday, November 21, 2013                   9:00pm – 10:00pm

Location: Sarasota, Florida  

Instrument used: Binoculars

Weather: Fair

Visibility:  Partly cloudy

Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous

Stars: Polaris, Deneb, Gamma, Andromeda

Planets: Venus

Constellations: Cygnus, Taurus

Sunday, December 15, 2013                       9:00pm – 10:00pm

Location: Sarasota, Florida  

Instrument used: Binoculars

Weather: Fair

Visibility: Overcast

Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous

Stars: Deneb, Gamma, Andromeda, Alberio?

Planets: Venus

Constellations: n/a low visibility

Tuesday, December 24, 2013                     9:00pm – 10:00pm

Location: Sarasota, Florida  

Instrument used: Binoculars

Weather: Clear

Visibility: Good

Moon Phase: Last quarter

Stars: Deneb, Gamma, Andromeda, Alberio (verified)

Planets: Venus

Constellations: Cygnus, Taurus

Monday, December 30, 2013                      9:00pm – 10:00pm

Location: Sarasota, Florida  

Instrument used: Binoculars

Weather: Clear

Visibility: Good

Moon Phase: Waning Crescent

Stars: Deneb, Gamma, Andromeda, Alberio

Planets: Jupiter

Constellations: Cygnus, Taurus, Gemini, Orion

Wednesday, January 1, 2014                      9:00pm – 10:00pm

Location: Sarasota, Florida  

Instrument used: Binoculars

Weather: Clear

Visibility: Good

Moon Phase: New

Stars: Deneb, Gamma, Andromeda, Alberio, Rigel

Planets: Jupiter

Constellations: Cygnus, Taurus, Gemini, Orion