Riccardo Giacconi

            Riccardo Giacconi was born on October 6th, 1931 in Genoa, Italy. He graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Milan in 1959. He is known for being a famous physicist. After graduating in 1959, he joined the American Science and Engineering research firm. Fourteen years later, Giacconi joined the Harvard-Smithsonian center for Astrophysics. He spent several years of his life directing both the Space Telescope Science Institute and the European Southern Observatory. He was elected president of Associated Universities Incorporated, which operates the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, in 1999.  Giacconi is still alive today and still contributing to the astronomical world.

            While Riccardo Giacconi was working for these groups, he was also researching x-ray astronomy. He started this research in 1959, nearly a decade after astronomers first recorded x-rays from the Sun. His research led to the discovery of x-rays coming from Scorpius X-1 and the crab nebula. In 2002, Giacconi received the Nobel Prize for Physics for his research and discoveries of cosmic sources of x-rays. In addition to his research, Giacconi built the Einstein Observatory in 1978. This observatory was the first high-definition x-ray telescope. He also proposed a more intense telescope which was launched in 1999 called the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Riccardo's research and telescopes allowed people to be more aware of x-ray's in space, and allowed future astronomers to learn even more about cosmic sources of x-rays.

APOD 4.1

This picture was taken at dawn from the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory on March 27th. The Milky Way's central bulge is shown with Paranal's four 8 meter Very Large Telescope units. Along with the Milky Way galaxy, you can see Venus and the bright morning star. I think this picture is interesting because it shows the massive Milky Way galaxy all in one picture, and shows hoe magnificant it is.

Henry Draper

Henry Draper was born March 7, 1837 in Virginia. He was a doctor as well as an astronomer. Draper came from a successful family - his father was a doctor, chemist, and professor at New York University and his brother was a meteorologist. This successful background helped Draper in his own success. In 1867, Draper married a wealthy socialite, Anna Mary Palmer. Together, they were a very influential couple. Draper was very interested in the chemical effects of light. This led him to take the first daguerreotype of the Moon in 1839 and one of the first portraits in 1840. He photographed microscope slides for a textbook his father was making, and then again for his own research later on in life. After going abroad for a year, Draper became increasingly interested in astronomy and the idea of tying photography and astronomy together. This inspired Draper to take the first photograph of a nebula in space. He took a photo of the Great Nebula of Orion on September 30, 1880. He also took the first photograph of a comets head and tail in 1881 and the first stellar spectrum photograph in 1872 of Vega. 
While making breakthroughs in science, Draper continued to work as a a physician at Bellevue Hospital and then both a professor and dean of medicine at NYU. He continued to research astronomy and photography until the end of his life, and Draper won a plethora of medals and awards for his accomplishments throughout his life. He died on November 20, 1882 In New York City.

APOD 3.4

 This is a picture taken from Sea Isle City, New Jersey. It shows Venus and the Milky Way rising in the early morning hours on March 1st. Venus lies just within the inner boundary of the habitable zone. The habitable zone is the region thats not too far and too close to the sun, and where the temperatures allow there to be water. I like this picture because the sea is similar to the surface of Venus, and it's a cool parallel.

APOD 3.3

This time lapse panorama shows an Aurora in New Zeland. The rare pink color is caused by excited oxygen atoms high up in Earth's atmosphere. The light coming out from behind the mountain is from the rising moon. I really like how this picture was taken at night, yet it is so bright and light out.

Henry Draper
http://www.naic.edu/~gibson/draper/
http://www.nndb.com/people/739/000167238/
http://www.saburchill.com/HOS/astronomy/033.html

APOD 3.2

This picture shows a Micro Moon layered on top of a Super Moon. The Micro Moon occured on January 15th and is the biggest full moon of 2014. The moon reached it's full moon phase just hours before it reached its lunar apogee (when the moon is most distant from the Earth in it's orbit.) The Super Moon behind the Micro Moon is from June 22nd when the moon was at perigee. The distance between apogee and perigee is 50,000 km. The next Micro Moon is projected to occur on March 5, 2015. I think it's really cool how they compared the Micro Moon and Super Moon by layering them because it helps show how small and big the moon gets.