Frank Low

Frank Low

Frank Low lived an interesting life. It started when he was born on November 23, 1933 in a very expecting place to produce such an accomplished astronomer which was Mobile, Alabama. He moved to Texas as a child and when to college at Yale and then got his graduate degree in Philosophy at Rice, because he liked Texas so much. He had one wife, three children. And when he died he had six grandchildren that he enjoyed playing with. Frank Low started of working with solid state physics but then became interested in the new field of infrared astronomy. This new branch covered physics in astronomy and astrophysics that was useful in studies of astronomical objects visible in infrared radiation. In this field they discovered that the wavelength of this infrared light ranges from 0.75 to 300 microns, visible light is about 380 to 750 nanometers, this is useful in viewing astronomical objects because visible light is much easier scattered through the dust in space. Infrared also falls in between the visible radiation, that we can see, and which ranges from and submillimeter waves.

Frank Low created a telescope that could be put onto an spaceship that helps avoid atmospheric absorption of infrared radiation, this allows images to be much cleaner and thus allowing more information to be obtained from the picture. The spaceship that they used this first on was called the Douglas A-3 skywarrior. The telescope that was on it was a 2 inch one and was used in 1965 and 1966. Later when they learned how useful this new telescope that he had invented was NASA has a 12 inch one made to be boarded on a spaceship.

With this telescope Frank Low discovered that both Jupiter and Saturn emitted more energy than that energy that was caused by the solar radiation. This new discovery found prof that these planets are an internal source of energy that causes more energy than just the sun.

Some of the awards that he won include: the Rumford Prize, that he won in1986, Helen Warner Prize, that he won in 1968, Joseph Weber Award, that he won in 2003, Karl G. Jansky Lectureship, that he won in 2006, and the last award that he won was the Bruce Medal, that we won in 2006. He also had things named after him like, Kleinmann-Low Nebula and the Asteroid 12142 called Franklow this asteroid is in the main belt asteroid classification with an orbital period that consists of 2034.0120719 days.


His life ended at the age of 75 after a long illness on the sad day of June 11, 2009 in yet another state Tucson, Arizona. Frank Low was an astronomer that allowed new information to be shown about the galaxy that without him we would not have the knowledge about right now.

APOD 4.4

Bright Points on the Quiet Sun

This picture looks like a lot of little cells but it is really a very upclose view of solar surface it looks like a striking patch work of little granules because it is in a very high resolution picture of the what we would first think of as a quiet Sun with little activity. These granules are very hot the rising columns of plasma , the lighter parts of the cells, are edged by dark lanes of cooler and because they are cooler are also descending plasma. This high-resolution picture also helps us see that the dark lanes appear to be dotted alot of tinny contrasting bright points.This is very cool because we get to see, the sun, close up, and not how we normally think of our hot ball of gas a fire.

APOD 4. 3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100419.html

Ash and Lightning Above an Icelandic Volcano

This picture looks like ti should be about a story book with a very sad ending. IN reality this picture answers the question of the reason of how recent volcanic eruption in Iceland create so much ash. Even though the large ash plume was not uniques meaning there are storms like this one, the location was what made this pitcure very special, particularly wonderful it was in such well populated areas. The Eyjafjallajökull is a volcano in southern Iceland and this storm began to erupt, March 20. none of these eruption were unusually powerful, they were about the same power as most. This is a beautiful use of photography to help science.

APOD 4.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100418.html

arge Eruptive Prominence Imaged by STEREO

This picture appears to be a sun, or star of some sort. The question that is answered with this pitcure is that of happened to our Sun? Previous to this week it made the biggest eruptive prominences that has been ever viewed. In this picture we can view that the sun's prominence erupted in only a few hours and is was great fully captured in a video form by NASA's satellites. This picture helps us know what is going on in the sun and how it effects us.

APOD 4.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100417.html

Damage to Apollo 13

This picture is of Apollo 13. In this picture we see that an oxygen tank exploded and hurt their service module very badly. This had serious reprocutions because the astronomers were had to be forced to abandon the plan to make their third manned lunar landing. The refuse to this photo as a grainy grim photo, taken as the service module that had been drifting away, jettisoned only hours before the forced module's entry again and splashdown. The whole side panel of the side service module is shown that it was blown away and extensive internal damage is very noticeable. this is a very sad picture because we can not afford anymore mistakes.