APOD 4.8

Partial Solar Eclipse with Airplane 

The solar eclipse, photographed in Fremantle, Australia, appeared soon after dawn and is here photographed behind dark morning clouds with a small airplane in the foreground. Here, the eclipse is only partial, as the moon obscures the large piece of the sun's bottom half as viewed from earth. The eclipse would continue and become annular, leaving only a small ring of the sun appearing from behind the moon's shadow. Also visible in this photo is the earth's atmosphere's effect on our viewing of the sun, dimming its luminosity and causing the sun's edges to look shaky. 

APOD 4.7

Messier 77 

M77 is a spiral galaxy 47 million light-years from Cetus. It spans 100,000 light-years across. The core is important and widely studied for its value in learning about supermassive black holes in Seyfert galaxies. While this image was based on Hubble data, M77 is also seen at x-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, and radio portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This picture particularly exhibits the galaxies bright core and spiral arms. Star-forming regions appear red and dust clouds trace the bright spiral arms.

APOD 4.6

Hungarian Spring Eclipse 

This image was taken over Tihany, Hungary as a partial lunar eclipse occured. The sun set and moon rose in succession and the moon touched the Earth's umbral shadow. This was the first partial lunar eclipse of the year. The lunar disk is darker near the top corner as it slips into Earth's shadow. The eclipsed phase lasted around 27 minutes. The image was compiled from exposures taken at intervals and shows the colors and shapes that the moon took on over this period. This lunar eclipse precedes an annular solar eclipse which will occur next week at the new moon. 

George O. Abell Biography

George Ogden Abell was born on March 1, 1927. He pursued his science education at California Institute of Technology and worked as a teacher and astronomer at UCLA. He is known as a prominent astronomer, scientist, and skeptic for his work discovering astronomical features and debunking common misconceptions about pseudoscience, such as the paranormal.

Abell's most premier work was cataloging galaxy clusters which he collected during the Palomar Sky Survey. Through these catalogs, he disproved the current hierarchical model to show that second-order clustering existed in the clusters' formation and evolution. He innovated current models to show cluster luminosity as a tool to measure distance. In 1966 he collated a list of 86 planetary nebulae, one of which, Abell 39, is named for him. Among his discoveries was the supposition that planetary nebulae form from evolved red giant stars.

Abell's 1958 survey of galaxy clusters, the Northern Survey, has been augmented and renamed the "Abell catalog." This catalog shows around 4,000 clusters. The final list with added clusters from southern hemisphere skies was published after Abell's death by some of his contemporaries.

He was a president of the Cosmology Commission of the IAU and a president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. In 1970, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Abell died October 7, 1983, but his legacy remains as a great astronomer and educator of young people, as he served as a UCLA Astronomy Department professor, of which he was elected chairman, and dedicated 20 years to teaching high school summer science camps. The summer camp offers a scholarship in his honor.  Furthermore, Abell is the namesake of Asteroid 3449 Abell and The George Abell Observatory in Milton Keynes, England.

APOD 4.5

A Year on the Sun 

This photo shows 25 composite images of the sun taken in extreme ultraviolet light over the course of one year. The image shows both sides of the solar equator. The active regions show brights loops and arcs occurring along the magnetic field lines. These active regions usually appear as sunspots. 

APOD 4.4

Grand Spiral Galaxy M81 and Arp's Loop 

M81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the sky. It is 11.8 million light-years away near Ursa Major. This photo shows the bright core and the spiral arms of the galaxy. Arp's loop is the grand arc at the upper right of the galaxy. It has been found that some of this loop reaches our own galaxy. The image shows bright stars and dust clouds, along with Holmberg IX, the companion galaxy. 

APOD 4.3

Darkened City 

This photograph shows an unlikely, unlit cityscape with the bright night sky behind it. To create the apocalyptic view, the photographer combined a daytime foreground with a long-exposure night time shot of the sky, showing the milky way and many familiar constellations like Scorpius and Aquila, with bright stas Antares and Altair. In order to achieve a bright, clear view of the night sky, the photographer took the background shot at a dark area at the same latitude as the foreground city.