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Physic Photo of the Week

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Physics Photo of the Week February 20, 2026   Bursting Raindrops  -  photo by Donald Collins On a winter day in December 2023 I noticed these unusual photos of frozen raindrops on our house deck near Warren Wilson College.  We had a sudden freeze overnight.  The rain had beaded up on the deck boards - probably having been staine in the early summer.  The water and the deck stain repel each other so the surface tension of the water being forced away from the deck stain caused the droplets to bead-up like small spheres with the surface tension forces in equilibrium with the gravitational forces. However when the water drops froze, the ice formed on the outside parts of the droplets, leaving unfrozen water inside.  As the water within the drops froze, the expansion of water upon freezing exerted pressure on the frozen skin of the raindrops, that the droplet burst, shooting a small jet of water that almost immediately froze.  Practically all the ...
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Physics Photo of the Week

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May 9, 2025 Open Star Clusters - Astrophotos by Donald Collins, College View Observatory   Throughout the Milky Way Galaxy there are thousands of open star clusters.  One of closest open star clusters is the Pleiades - or "Seven Sisters" - featured in the lower left photo.  The Pleiades cluster is the closest cluster from the Earth - 440 light years distant.  The bright stars of the cluster form a small "dipper" asterism.  Star clusters are groups of stars within the spiral arms of a galaxy and have formed from relatively recent condensations from clouds of gas and dust within the galaxy.  The Pleiades are about 100 million years old, which is fairly young for star clusters.  The stars were formed from the gravitational condensation of gas and dust clouds into several hundred stars.  The Pleiades is easily seen with naked eyes throughout late fall through mid spring.  They are visible now (late April) in the western sky about halfway between ...
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Physics Photo of the Week

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Physics Photo of the Week April 4, 2025 Galaxy M106 - Photo by Donald Collins - College View Observatory Galaxy M106 - the 106th entry in Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects - lies about 20-25 million light years from Earth.  It is about 10 times further than the Andromeda Galaxy and about twice as far away as the recently featured Galaxy M87 .     As with most galaxies, M106 contains on the order of 100 billion stars , and most likely has a supermassive black hole lurking deep in its core.  Celestial south is up in this photo. This galaxy is interesting in that there are many star-forming regions within the spiral arms.  It's also rather "clumpy".  The clouds of dust and stars are not very evenly distributed.  The clumps of new young stars are the clumps that appear brighter and "bluer" in the photo.  The clumps of stars eventually will dissipate and result in open clusters similar to the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster in our own...
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