Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
February 20, 2011
So, got confirmation of initial round of cuts.
NASA HQ is preparing for budget problems by starting to pull back funds already allocated, in anticipation of fiscal year 2010-11 cuts. Between possible government shutdown, and the uncertainty over the Senate response to the House cuts, and a…
February 18, 2011
Is it still friday? It must be friday somewhere still...
So, just how bad is the budget going to be, oh Mighty iPod?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Introduction: Peter and the Wolf - Philadelphia Orchestra
The Crossing: The Perfect Girl - The Cure
The Crown: Concerto #4in G major:…
February 15, 2011
The American Physical Society just woke up to the budget threat...
To cut a long story short, the US Government has no budget for 2010-2011.
It has been operating under a continuous resolution since Oct 1, and this expires in March.
The House, which originated budget resolutions, generally, wants…
February 11, 2011
Yes, it is friday again, and once more we go to the Mighty iPod to seek guidance on dark matters...
Oh, Mighty iPod, we ask, topically, is the apparent seasonal modulation in DAMA really truly due to some sort of Light Cold Dark Matter, possibly with substructure?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh.…
February 9, 2011
The House Appropriations Committee released a partial summary list of the cuts they plan to make relative to Obama's 2011 budget request, in discretionary items.
Note the 2011 budget year is underway on a continuing resolution, holding funding at 2010 levels, which includes appropriations for a…
February 8, 2011
So I've been hanging out at the Indirect and Direct Detection of Dark Matter conference this week, and been struck by several things.
It is a good meeting, enthusiastic crowd, definite excitement in the air.It would have read much better if the title had been "Direct and Indirect Detection of Dark…
February 4, 2011
while I contemplate 1200 candidate planetary systems, and a hundred black hole researchers, I turn to the Mighty iPod
ok, so I got no blogging on the new stuff or the backlog done this week
Oh, Mighty iPod One: exoplanets or black holes?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering:…
January 27, 2011
It has been a long time since we dove into the divinations of the Mighty iPod...
but now, the spirit moves me, and we again spin the wheel:
Oh, Mighty iPod One, what oh what will become of JWST?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh!
The Covering: The Hen - Jean-Philippe Rameau
The Crossing: Once in Royal…
January 13, 2011
So all good things must come to an end, and the 3000 or so astronomers disperse from SEA-TAC to destinations worldwide.
It was a good meeting, though light on major announcements.
I have a backlog of press releases that I may or may not get round to picking over.
Some nice pretty pics in there.…
January 12, 2011
The science is interesting, the schmoozing is essential, the students are promising, but, at the end of the day, it is The Swag that is cool.
Last year's winner, the LSST little blue pedometer is back, with the promise of another piece of etched optical glass to the winner of the drawing from the…
January 11, 2011
assorted bits of stuff from AAS, or that I was reminded of at the meeting
Astro Better - interesting blog/wiki/tweetnode
I'd noticed them before, mostly because they assimilated the Astro Rumour Mill, but hadn't really taken in what they were doing till I saw their AAS poster on monday
Wish they'd…
January 11, 2011
Kepler announces discovery of transiting hierarchical triple.
Extremely weird, with bonus cute animation...
KOI-126 is an interesting object.
It is a massive star (F main sequence if I caught the numbers right) primary, with two low mass M-stars orbiting it.
The M-stars orbit each other in a very…
January 10, 2011
Kepler 10-b, announced at the Annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society today, has a mass of 4.6 Earth masses and a radius of 1.4 Earth radii. Density of 8.8
Kepler 10b: Exoplanet Catalog
Kepler Mission website - 700 more to go.
Kepler 10b - Mission catalog data
20 hour orbital period…
January 10, 2011
The AAS is off to a good start:
Reines et al have found a good supermassive black hole candidate in Henize 2-10 - an irregular bulgeless dwarf galaxy about 10 Mpc away.
A dwarf irregular, with a diameter of only about 1 kpc, Henize 2 is in starburst. It contains a number of
massive, very young…
January 6, 2011
I really look forward to reading by what right Congress keeps naming local post offices.
Ok, I.8.7 could be argued to implicitly give them the right, as part of the establishing of such, but you gotta be careful with those "implicit" rights these politicians keep assuming for themselves.
I, for…
January 5, 2011
Been a long time since I linked to a Billy Bragg video.
And, look, he's got a new tune:
January 5, 2011
don´t mind me, just gearing up for the AAS
hey: who is going to the AAS?
if you do go, first read Julianne's advice on how to give a 5 minute talk
- the correct answer, generally, is "don't" - I'm definitely in the "provide asynchronous communication paths and put up a poster" group
I completely…
January 3, 2011
Happy New Year!
Been kinda slow 'round here recently, need to catch up now.
So, er, who is going to AAS?
Seriously: what would it take to get Amazon, or Apple, say, to give me unlimited access to all current and future eBooks?
I like books.
We have a few thousand at home, including a healthy…
January 2, 2011
Icelandic media are reporting audible rumbles from Eyjafjallajökull sunday evening.
Earthquake activity is not up, though over the last few weeks there have been some small tremors under the glacier.
No sign of an actual eruption, and no sign of activity under her big sister, Katla.
Yet.
There is a…
December 8, 2010
The Zooniverse folks, hosts of the Galaxy Zoo project and other great astronomical crowd sourcing projects, has a new toy for folks to play with:The Milky Way Project
The Milky Way project take Spitzer data and asks you to draw circles on it - using the rather superb pattern finding power of your…
December 7, 2010
A lot of people have asked me to link to and comment on the SUNY Albany cuts and some of the reactions to it by some online academics...
To cut a long story short, the SUNY system took another round of cuts, and the President of SUNY Albany decided to cut whole programs rather than keep trimming…
December 7, 2010
From Earth to the Universe was a brilliant outreach project for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, displaying online, and in real life, some of the best astronomical images around.
Now we have the Year of the Solar System coming up, who knew, and more and better images are needed!
From…
November 18, 2010
The discovery of a jovian mass planet around a metal poor horizontal branch star in a kinematic stream of stars, possibly originating from a merger with a dwarf galaxy, is an interesting conundrum.
With bonus updates and links.
HIP 13044 - 10' field generated from SIMBAD using Aladin
HIP 13044 is…
November 11, 2010
Do you know how many theoretical astrophysics tenure track positions there are each year?
About 5.
I am also interested in string theory...
November 11, 2010
Something went wrong with the GRE test in october.
Again.
Here is the official word from ETS
The GRE test administered in China, on Oct 23rd, was an old test.
GRE is offering free retakes next week or reimbursment.
This will seriously mess up grad school applicants from China, and not at a good…