Bright Lizard Star

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2017/hubbles-bright-shining-lizard-star

In a recent article i found written by Karl Hille, he explains how in a recent discovery, the NASA Hubble Space Telescope captured a picture of a galaxy named NGC 7250 that has recorded supernova explosions, and has bright bursts of star formation. In front of this recorded galaxy is another galaxy named TYC 3203-450-1, and is located in the constellation of Lacerta (The lizard). This galaxy appears much brighter than the NGC 7250 galaxy, and is also how we know that it is much closer to us. These very bright stars are called “foreground stars” and are not very well liked by astronomers because since the stars are so bright, it is hard to study the more interesting and distant objects.

This article relates to class because it brought me back to when we learned parallax angles which determined which stars are closer that measuring the brightness of a star from earth’s view is called apparent magnitude, and the actual brightness of a star being absolute magnitude. On page 33 in our lecture tutorial book we discussed apparent and absolute magnetism and we discussed that the moon will look brighter from the Earth than Mars because we can actually see the moon, this also tells us the moon is closer.

I found this section of class easy to understand because the terms were easy to remember. I was able to tell myself apparent magnitude definition because it “appears” from Earth, and absolute magnitude is how much is “absolutely is”. I also thought the pages in our lecture tutorial book were easy to understand.