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Stargazing to Star Charts: Engaging Students in the Wonders of Astronomy

Space nerds, take the giant leap! Designing a celestial wedding for star struck lovers

APOD:M74: A Grand Design Spiral
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA)- ESA / Hubble Collaboration Acknowledgment: R. Chandar (U. Toledo) & J. Miller (U. Michigan)

Explanation: If not the most grand, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe of about 100 billion stars, 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces, M74 presents a gorgeous face-on view. Classified as an Sc galaxy, the grand design of M74's graceful spiral arms are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark cosmic dust lanes. Constructed from archival images, this sharp composite is from the Hubble Space Telescope. Spanning about 30,000 light-years across the face of M74, it includes exposures recording emission from hydrogen atoms, highlighting the reddish glow of the galaxy's large star-forming regions.

APOD:The Eclipse and the Stork

Image Credit & Copyright: Włodzimierz Bubak Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

Explanation: How do animals react to a total solar eclipse? The featured image shows a stork roosting on her nest in Poland at a partial phase of the recent total solar eclipse. If you are lucky enough to experience a total eclipse somewhere quiet and close to nature, you may be able to notice unusual daytime animal behaviors. During totality, you may hear nighttime sounds like crickets and frogs and see fireflies. In the dark, most birds are quiet. Thinking that it is time to go to bed, ducks and other waterfowl prepare to sleep on one leg, with their heads turned around and their beaks tucked into their back feathers (they don't really sleep with their heads tucked under one wing). When sunlight returns at the end of totality, songbirds greet the new "morning" with their dawn songs. The crickets and frogs go quiet again. Animals and people resume their lives, only briefly disturbed by the chance alignment of our Sun and Moon.

APOD:Nā ʻUhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola
Image Credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

Explanation: Nā ʻUhane Māhoe Huki Pū i ke Ola, is the Hawaiian name given to this image of a pair of spiral galaxies locked in a mutual gravitational embrace. Some 200 million light-years distant toward the high flying constellation Pegasus their spectacular, galactic scale merger is captured in sharp detail in the image from the 8.1 meter Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, Hawai'i. The galaxy pair, known as NGC 7253 and Arp 278, was chosen as a target, researched, and given a Hawaiian name by high school students in the joint Gemini Observatory and University of Hawaiʻi Project Hōkūlani internship program. The name translates to "The Twin Spirits Pulling Together Creating Life". That's both culturally and astronomically appropriate for galaxy collisions that trigger a cosmic maelstrom of star formation from galactic reservoirs of elemental building blocks of life. These merging galaxies are found within a region of Pegasus identified as the Hawaiian navigational constellation Ka Lupe o Kawelo.