Crowned by Star and Sky

a devotional zine dedicated to the Queen of Heaven.

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wynken, blynken, & nod one night...

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Annie Jump Cannon was truly a remarkable woman, the words of Hawlow Shapley that he gave when he awarded Annie with the Draper Award said it very well:

“The benign presence of the Brick Building, noted collector of degrees and medals, author of nine immortal volumes, and several thousand oatmeal cookies, Virginia reeler, bridge player, and, especially, the recipient of the Draper Medal of the National Academy of Science – the first medal ever bestowed on a woman by the honorable body of fossils and one of the highest honors attainable by astronomers of any sex, race, religion, or political preference.”

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She lives aloft the clouds

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Annie is most known for her modification of the stellar catalog, this is what we now know as OBAFGKM star classifications. Although Annie didn’t originate the idea of the stellar classification, she modified the model to what we use today. This is a major part of her legacy, some of her other achievements are:

Image Credit: Courtesy Wellesley College Archives

She became the curator of the Harvard Observatory in 1911 and was given a permanent position there in 1938.

She was the first woman to become a doctor of astronomy from the Groningen University in 1921 and got an honorary degree from Oxford in 1925.

In 1923 she was voted one of the 12 greatest living American women and even had an award named after her by the American Association of University Women.

In 1931 she was awarded with the Draper Award from the National Academy of Sciences.

Annie classified more than 500,000 stars, published many many papers, discovered some 300 variable stars, 5 novas, a spectroscopic binary, and SS Cygni (a dwarf nova which repeats itself every 60 days).

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Annie Jump Cannon: Born in Dover, Delaware on December 11, 1863. Died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in April 13, 1941. Unlike many important scientists throughout history, Annie isn’t that well known, but the work that she did most certainly is.

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“Classifying the stars has helped materially in all studies of the structure of the universe. No greater problem is presented to the human mind. Teaching man his relatively small sphere in the creation, it also encourages him by its lessons of the unity of Nature and shows him that his power of comprehension allies him with the great intelligence over-reaching all.”

Annie Jump Cannon

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Black Hole Neutrino Factory Researchers using data from three X-ray telescopes have found that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be a source for high-energy neutrinos. The 4-million-solar-mass black hole, known as Sagitarrius A* (Sgr A* for short) may be producing these mysterious particles, which have been captured by an underground detector in Antarctica. Neutrinos are tiny particles that have virtually no mass and that carry no electric charge. These physical properties mean that they can travel across the Universe unimpeded, because they are not absorbed by intervening matter and they are not deflected by magnetic fields. Those properties also make it difficult to detect neutrinos and to determine their origins. The Sun produces neutrinos that bombard Earth constantly, but there are other neutrinos with much higher energies that are only rarely detected. Scientists think that these high energy neutrinos are created by violent events in the Universe, such as galaxy mergers, gamma ray bursts, matter falling into supermassive black holes and pulsar emissions. By comparing the arrival of high-energy neutrinos at the IceCube detector buried in the Antarctic ice with outbursts from Sgr A*, researchers have found a correlation. A high-energy neutrino was detected by IceCube three hours after the most powerful flare ever detected from Sgr A* by the Chandra X-ray Telescope. Smaller flares from the supermassive black hole, as detected by the NuSTAR and Swift telescopes, preceded IceCube neutrino detections by a few days. This could be the first solid evidence for an astronomical source of neutrino production. Of course, it begs the question of exactly how Sgr A* is producing them. A possible explanation is that particles around the black hole may get accelerated by shock waves, creating flares of charged particles that decay into high-energy neutrinos. That same mechanism could also explain an origin for high-energy cosmic rays, which are difficult to trace back to their source because their charged particles are deflected by magnetic fields as they traverse the cosmos. In the Chandra X-ray Observatory image that accompanies this post, Sagittarius A* is located within the white area at image center. -JF Image credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Wisconsin/Y.Bai. et al.  Source IceCube information

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Annie Jump Cannon's 151st Birthday!

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Surreal Gallery

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Big Bang May Have Created a Mirror Universe Where Time Runs Backwards

By Tim De Chant

Why does time seem to move forward? It’s a riddle that’s puzzled physicists for well over a century, and they’ve come up with numerous theories to explain time’s arrow. The latest, though, suggests that while time moves forward in our universe, it may run backwards in another, mirror universe that was created on the “other side” of the Big Bang.

Two leading theories propose to explain the direction of time by way of the relatively uniform conditions of the Big Bang. At the very start, what is now the universe was homogeneously hot, so much so that matter didn’t really exist. It was all just a superheated soup. But as the universe expanded and cooled, stars, galaxies, planets, and other celestial bodies formed, birthing the universe’s irregular structure and raising its entropy.

Continue Reading

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Wanderers a short film by Erik Wernquist

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Quantum Mechanics Explained or Quantum Theory For Dummies

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How Galaxies Evolve in the Cosmic Web

How do galaxies like our Milky Way form, and just how do they evolve? Are galaxies affected by their surrounding environment? An international team of researchers, led by astronomers at the University of California, Riverside, proposes some answers. [MORE]

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  Solar flares and explosions in the sun’s corona trigger intense auroras, colorful displays of light visible in the upper atmosphere near earth’s magnetic poles.  Source for Image: NASA: The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earthhttp://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/Videos_Aurora.htm

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NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope image of an  interacting group containing several galaxies, along with a "cosmic fountain" of stars, gas and dust that stretches over 100,000 light-years. Resembling a pair of owl's eyes, the two nuclei of the colliding galaxies can be seen in the process of merging at the upper left. The bizarre blue bridge of material extending out from the northern component looks as if it connects to a third galaxy but in reality the galaxy is in the background and not connected at all. The blue "fountain" is the most striking feature of this galaxy troupe and it contains complexes of super star clusters that may have as many as dozens of individual young star clusters in them.

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Historic Blue Marble Image: On December 7th in 1972, Apollo 17 launched to the moon, and the crew snapped this photo of Earth on the way. The original caption is reprinted below: View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast.

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European comet lander Philae 'sniffed' organic molecules containing the carbon element that is the basis of life on Earth before its primary battery ran out and it shut down, German scientists said.

They said it was not yet clear whether they included the complex compounds that make up proteins. One of the key aims of the mission is to discover whether carbon-based compounds, and through them, ultimately, life, were brought to early Earth by comets. [MORE]