APOD 1.5

During the spring and summer times of mars parts of it ice caps in the south pole begin to melt. This happens because of the warm weather the planet is going through now causes some of the carbon dioxide to evaporate, creating these dry ice pits. In the picture it appears as if the ice pits are coverd in gold but this is actually dust. We have not yet fully discovered the complete composition of this substance. This is a cycle as mars completes one revolution around the sun. If we one day do reach mars astronauts will try to collect samples of these ice caps and therefore try to understand mar's composition better.

APOD 1.4

This image of the sun was taken in 2002 and it shows how the sun has so many chemical reactions at once that it can create these types of surface craters of boiling matter. Some of these sunspots can get as big as 50,000 miles in diameter. The Earth isnt even as big as some of these sunspots on the sun. Some of these events that take place on the sun are signs of how the sun is becoming more and more sensitive every year. It is estimated that the sun will die out in about 5 billion years. Thses obsvervations will help us to understand more about how the stars in the universe develop over time and about the stages they go through.

PODCAST 1

Galileo was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher that contributed a lot of obvservations to the field of astronomy. One of his major contributions were improvements to the telescope and his support of the Copernican model. For these reasons he is nicknamed "The Father of Modern Obvservational Astronomy." Using his telescope he made keen observations of the phases that Venus goes through as it orbits around the sun. He also discovered that the sun has sunspots on its surface. He also saw that Jupiter had moons that orbited around it. His obvservations with this telescope lead to futute astronomers to make even more discoveries. As a child he thought of being a priest but his father pushed him to go into the medical field. Once this didnt go as planned he later found his talent in the sciences. Galileo is accredited for his important and basic discoveries in astronomy.

APOD 1.3

The robotic rover Opportunity has taken pictures of Mar's surface and we have realized that most of the rocks on Mars contain a high amount of the element Zinc. This discovery can help uncover the history of the red planet. It may lead to finding geographical hints of Mar's wet surface. If we can identify where Mars had its oceans located it may lead us to find remains of maybe pre-historic life that existed on Mars. It may also tell us why Mars is now dry and maybe this is because of a cataclysmic event that depleted this planet of any existing life today. As the rover continues to explore the unknown terrain of Mars we will surely acquire more images that will help us attain more knowledge of our solar system's history.

APOD 1.2

It has just been discovered that Saturn has new rings around it. These were discovered by a robotic spacecraft called Cassani. These rings cause Saturn's night side to look illumintated because of the amount of rings and the amount of sunlight this is produced by them. Some of these rings are produced by physical properties from surrounding space objects like saturn's moons. This gives us new information that can later be useful in understanding more about our celestial neighbors. It also shows us that we do not really know everything that we could know about these planets. We still have a lot of exploring to do in our galaxy which may lead to other more important discoveries in the future.

APOD 1.1

This information says that 4 new galaxies have been identified in our vast universe. It mentions that these galaxies have signs of enhanced star formation. These happens when nearby galaxies crash into each other and they rip apart gravitationally. This causes for dust and other particles to crash causing a creation of bigger stars. Our galaxy the milky way will someday also pass through this process and crash with a nearby galaxy such as andromeda. This makes us think that in the past that maybe the milky way was a result of this event as well. In our vast universe this is probably happening to millions of other galaxies somewhere far away. This shows that stars are constantly being made. It also represents how huge our universe is and that we can not fully appreciate it.