APOD 3.9

This picture of an aurora over a glacier was made an APOD on March 10. Having been taken in Iceland over the Vatnajökul Glacier in January of 2014, the photo won an award for the photographer, who, for his entry of this photo, won Astronomy Photographer of the Year.

APOD 3.8

This picture of NGC 602 was made an APOD on March 7. Located in the Flying Lizard Nebula, on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, this cluster is a mere 5 million years old.

APOD 3.7

This picture of the Pelican Nebula was made an APOD on March 4, 2015. Located in the constellation Cygnus slightly northeast of Deneb, the nebula is 2000 lightyears away.

APOD 3.6

This picture of the Rosette Nebula was made an APOD on February 25. Present within the constellation Monoceros, this nebula is about 50 lightyears in diameter.

James H. Jeans

James H. Jeans was born on September 11, 1877 to William Tullock Jeans, a parliamentary journalist and scientific biographer. Jeans displayed an early affection to physics and mechanics, mainly through clocks, which he manipulated and thoroughly understood with experience. He attended the Merchant Taylor's School from 1890 to 1896, and entered the Trinity College of Cambridge that same year. In 1901, he was elected a fellow of the school, and in 1903 obtained his M.A. His first treatise, published that same year, was his Dynamical Theory of Gases.

From 1905 to 1909, Jeans was a professor of applied mathematics at Princeton, where he wrote two textbooks- Theoretical Mechanics and Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism, the far more successful of the two. In 1907, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and married his first wife, Charlotte Tiffany Mitchell, with which he had one daughter. Jeans was a lecturer in applied mathematics at Cambridge from 1910 to 1912, when he officially retired from university duties and focused solely on writing and research.

Jeans' Report on Radiation and the Quantum Theory appeared in 1914 and was one of the first widely publicized and accepted papers on the quantum theory. From then, his interests turned to Astronomy, evidenced by his Adams Prize essay, Problems of Cosmology and Stellar Dynamics, published in 1919, and his book Astronomy and Cosmogony, published in 1928. He was elected as the secretary of the Royal Society from 1919 to 1929, vice-president from 1938 1940, president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1938 to 1940 and president of the British Association for Advancement of Science in 1934. In 1932, he was made a research assistant of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, and he held the chair of the Royal Institution's astronomy wing from its establishment in 1935 until his death.

In 1928 he retired from scientific research, 6 years before his first wife's death in 1934. In 1935 he met and married Suzanne Hock, a concert organist. Following in her footsteps, he spent the rest of his days focusing on music, even publishing scientific material on the matter in the form of his book on acoustics, Science and Music. Published in 1938, he went on to conduct the Royal Academy of Music. He died in 1946 from coronary thrombosis.

Biography Sources

Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Farmington Hills (Michigan): Gale Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.
Milne, Edward Arthur. Sir James Jeans: A Biography. Cambridge: U, 1952. Print.

Planetary Nebulae

This is the Cat's Eye Nebula, formally known as NGC 6543. Discovered by William Herschel in 1786, this particular image of the nebula was taken by the Chandra telescope with the aid of X-ray technology, due to the high amount of the frequency emitted by the planetary nebula.

This is NGC 6326. This nebula contains glowing wisps of outpouring gas from the center of the star that are illuminated by a binary central star.

This is the Helix Nebula, formally known as NGC 7293. Located in the constellation Aquarius, eventually, the nebula is destined to become a white dwarf star.

This is the Eskimo Nebula, formally known as NGC 2392. Named so for its appearance resembling an eskimo wearing a parka hood, the nebula is bipolar and double-shelled.

This is the Necklace Nebula, formally known as PN G054.2-03.4. Located in the constellation Sagitta, it was only recently discovered in 2005, from the Isaac Newton Telescope Photometric H-alpha Survey.

This is the Ring Nebula, formally known as NGC 6720 and categorized on Messier's list as M57. Located in the constellation Lyra, this constellation is passing through its final stage after being a red giant before becoming a white dwarf.

This is the Lemon Slice Nebula, formally known as IC 3568. Located in the constellation Camelopardalis, its core diameter is only .4 lightyears.

This is Abell 78. Located in a star cluster, it has been determined that planetary nebulas are more likely to inhabit 4 specific globular clusters, being M15, M22, NGC 6441 and Palomar 6.

This is NGC 6886. The nebula, in relation to most other planetary nebulas, is relatively tiny.

This is NGC 5189. This was photographed in 2009 by the Hubble Space Telescope.