3.8: NGC 4676: When Mice Collide

The two galaxies in the picture are pulling each other apart. They are referred to as the mice because they have such long tails. The tails are caused because the difference in their gravitational pulls on different areas of the galaxies. Of course, this is all happening extremely slowly. NGC 4676 is about 300 million light-years away and is located in the constellation Coma Berenices. This picture was taken with the Hubble Telescope.

3.7: Long Stem Rosette

This picture is fabulous! The rosette nebula actually looks like a rose! (I love that this was the picture for :) Valentine's Day) It is red because of the hydrogen. The "petals" are a molecular cloud in the constellation Monoceros. It is stellar nursury about 5,000 light-years away. The diameter of the center "cavity" is about 50 light-years. The stars there are relatively young- they are only a few million years old.

Astronomer Bio Sites

http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~cwp/Phase2/Leavitt,_Henrietta_Swan@871234567.html
http://www.mada.org.il/website/html/eng/2_1_1-31.htm
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~gmarcy/women/leavitt.html
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap981027.html
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/Museum/lea.html
http://hoa.aavso.org/posterswan.htm

3.6: Abell 2218: A Galaxy Cluster Lens

Almost all the bright objects in this picture are galaxies in the Abell 2218 cluster. The cluster is really big, so its gravity can actually bend light and act like a telescope. It focuses the light of galaxies that lie behind it. These galaxies are about three billion light-years away in the constellation Draco. This "cluster telescope" has allowed astronomers to see a galaxy at redshift 5.58. So far, that is the farthest away galaxy that has been measured. This picture was taken by the Hubble Telescope.

3.5: Venus and Jupiter in Morning Skies

I completely fell in love with this picture, it is so beautiful. The two bright star-like things are actually Venus and Jupiter! They are the second and third britest objects in the nightime sky (after the moon). The planets are separated by about two degrees when this picture was taken on Janruary 30. However, gap between the two planets closed to about half a degree on following nights. This picture was taken along the Miankaleh Peninsula and Gorgan Bay.

Star Formation

Sites about Star Formation:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011125.html
http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/Outreach/Edu/sform.html
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/rcfta/anrep93/node19.html
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=10376
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2001/26
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050621.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/spitzer20070913.html
http://web99.arc.nasa.gov/~csf/

3.4: A Solar Eclipse Painting from the 1700s

This painting was completed in 1735 by Cosmas Damian Asam. Historians believe it is the first realistic depiction of a solar eclipse. Asam was a painter and architect in 18th century Germany. Historians hypothesize that Asam possibly saw eclipses in May 1706, 1724, and 1733. Asam not only painted the eclipse he showed the solor corona and diamond ring shape around the sun. The person in the painting is St. Benedict. The painting is now hanging in the Wettenburg Abbey in Germany.