Enceladus Ice Geysers 2.1

For this week's APOD blog I decided

to do the picture of the ice geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. I have never heard of cryovolcanism, but the picture interested me. I found it especialy interesting that these volcanos might be responsible for creating one of Saturn's rings, as well as the fact that moon is actually at -200 degrees Celsius.

Aurora, Stars, Meteor, Lake, Alaska 1.7

I chose to do the picture of the aurora borealis over a lake in ALaska for this week's APOD entry. I'm not sure if they were all taken at the same time, for the picture says that it is a digitally fused panorama, but the end result is utterly fantastic. The scene featuring the aurora and its reflection over the lake, with a meteor shooting beneath it and the stars above it, create a beautifully picturesque image of North Pole, Alaska (the city).

Nicolas Copernicus

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Colin Johnson
Astronomy Honors I
10/11/07
Mr. Percival

Nicolas Copernicus
Nicolas Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland in 1473. When he grew older, began
to study astronomy, mathematics, and optics at the University of Cracow. His uncle, Lukas
Waterzode, the future bishop of Varmia, influenced him to become a canon at the
Frauenberg Cathedral in Ermland. He spent the vast majority of his life in an academic
setting, going to the University of Bologna and the University of Ferrara to study law, and
the University of Padua to study medicine. His primary interests in the early parts of his life,
however, were the painting and translation of Greek poetry. As he grew older, though,
astronomy began to pique his interest. He made the vast majority of his observations from
the wall of the cathedral with the naked eye for the telescope would not be invented for a
hundred more years. In 1514, he was contacted by the Lutheran Council in order to aid
them in the process of reforming the calendar. In fact, he opposed it, because he knew that
the exact length of the tropical year had not yet been confirmed.


In the year 1539, a mathematics professor by the name of Georg Joachim Rheticus
visited Copernicus, and a year later, he published Copernicus’ theory of the heliocentric
universe in his Narratio Prima (First Report on the Books of Revolution). Copernicus took a
fair amount of convincing to publish his own works, not because he was concerned with the
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church’s outlook on the theories, but simply because, as a perfectionist, he was not sure if
his work was ready yet. However, at the behest of Rheticus, he published his De
Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (Onthe Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), in which
he detailed his theories of a heliocentric universe in which the Earth rotated on its axis and
revolved around the sun. He also laid down the order of the planets, and the theory (later
proven false) of the planets’s circular orbits. Two months after the publication of his
theories, Copernicus died, in May of 1543.
He died, therefore, before he was able to see the stir caused by his creation.
According to the Bible and the teachings of the time, man was created in God’s image and
therefore is superior to all other parts of nature. However, Copernicus’ theory led men to
believe that, rather than being superior to the universe, they were merely a part of it. This, in
fact, is regarded as one of the most important aspects of his work, that man could no longer
consider himself superior to the rest of nature. Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno, both of
whom embraced Copernicus’ beliefs, were persecuted by the church for their heretical
views. Bruno even dared to suggest that our solar system might even merely be one of
many such systems, and for this he was burned at the stake in 1600. Due to his vast
contributions to the science of astronomy and our understanding of the universe we live in,
Nicolas Copernicus can easily be considered one of the most important astronomers of all
time.






Works Cited
Encyclopedia of Scientific Biography.
Kusukawa, Sachiko. "Nicholas Copernicus." 1999. Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science, U of Cambridge. 11 Oct. 2007 .
Landry, Peter. "Nicolas Copernicus." The Scientists. Feb. 2004. 11 Oct. 2007 .

Comet Encke's Tail Ripped Off 1.6

This week, I chose to do the video of the comet Encke's tail being ripped off by a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun as it passed inside Mercury. I had no idea that comets ever lost their tails, and therefore I was surprised to see that not only could you see the tail fall off, but you could actually see the CME hit the comet and carry the tail off with it.