APOD 4.5

This picture shows the space shuttle orbiter Endeavour which has docked at the international space station for the last time.  It is orbiting 350 km over planet Earth.  In the picture the shuttle is moving at 17,000 miles per hour.  The station has a robotic manipulator arm Dextre appear in silhouette.  Endeavor has just finished a 16 day mission. 
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110602.html

Biography - Robert Kirshner

Robert Kirshner was born on August 15th, 1949.  He was a very smart kid growing up and was admitted to Harvard University.  There he received his undergraduate degree in Astronomy, magna cum laude in 1970.  He then went on to get his Ph.D from Caltech also in Astronomy.  Kirshner then got a job at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.  After working there, Kirshner joined the faculty at Michigan University.  He worked there for 9 years.  During that time along with Augustus Oemler Jr., Paul Schechter and Stephen Shectman,  Kirshner discovered the Bootes void.  This is a region in the constellation Bootes that contains very few galaxies.  This discovery was made by the team of four in 1981.  In 1986, Kirshner moved to Harvard and joined the Astronomy Department.  By 1990 he was the chairman and he served there until 1997.

A lot of Kirshner's work had to do with supernovas, supernova remnants, and the large-scale structure of the cosmos.  This is a very passionate subject taken up by Kirshner as he written over 200 research papers dealing with these aforementioned topics.  He also wrote a lot about the expansion of the universe.  He was even honored with "Science Breakthrough of the Year" in 1998 for his work on the expansion of the galaxy.  He also wrote an article about the subject for a Scientific American Issue in 1999.  He also served on the National Academy of Sciences in 1998.  Kirshner has continued his work on the field doing research on dark energy which may explain the universe's acceleration.  This work earned him the Gruber Cosmology Prize in 2007.

Sources for Biography - Robert Kirshner

"Biographies." The Chandra X-ray Observatory Center :: Gateway to the Universe of X-ray Astronomy!. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 May 2011. <http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/fl/bio.html>


Robert Kirshner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia."Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 May 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kirshner>

Zooniverse

Today May 16th, I spent the class period working on Galaxy Zoo: Hubble.

Zooniverse

Today May 2nd, I spent the period working on Moon Zoo.

APOD 4.4

About 60 light-years away in the constellation Corvus, two large galaxies collided.  Their large clouds of molecular gas and dust triggered many star formations.  This scene of cosmic wreckage spans about 500 light-years.  This view reveals new star clusters and matter far-flung from the scene of the collision by gravitational tidal forces.  The galaxy pair has been given the name The Antennae.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110429.html

Zooniverse

Today, April 28th, I worked on Galaxy Zoo Hubble for the class period.