astro
catdynamics | May 28, 2014"Standing down on this one" - was the first line of the email I read at about 7 am this morning as I rolled over and grabbed my phone, having had about 4 hours of sleep.
After staying up past 2 am to run some numbers, we would, after all, not be submitting a request for Director's Discretionary Time override on the Hubble Space Telescope to do a Target of Opportunity urgent observation of a suspected transient in Andromeda.
Andromeda
This ended a fun 12 hour period of Astronomy in Action, bits of which occasionally frothed over onto social media, as Real Live Astronomers blew off steam,…
catdynamics | May 27, 2014Not entirely coincidentally the general topic of misogyny, microaggression and harassment was featured on the Women in Astronomy blog recently:
Fed Up With Sexual Harassment: Defining the Problem
Fed Up With Sexual Harassment: Survival of the Clueless
Fed Up With Sexual Harassment: The Serial Harasser's Playbook
Fed Up With Sexual Harassment: Power to Speak Up
Fed Up with Sexual Harassment
Harassment from Student
Here are some other useful reads:
Do Women Have an Advantage in Faculty Searches?
Truth Against Humanity - Starstryder
catdynamics | May 15, 2014Senior Review is out:
summary - Swift #1, then NuStar.
K2 gets partial funding. Spitzer is terminated.
Panel recommends not cutting off the bottom but balancing fields.
NASA Response to the 2014 Senior Review for Astrophysics Operating Missions - Final Version for Release (5.16.14) - this is an edited update of the NASA response that was on the website on the 15th of May. It is tagged as Final version and for release, so I guess it is now official.
Final Report Astro 2014 Senior Review Panel (pdf)
NASA Response to 2014 Senior Review for Operating Missions FINAL (pdf)
NASA used the…
catdynamics | April 21, 2014Julia is a nifty new language being developed at MIT
I stole this plot from github, it shows Julia's current performance on some standard benchmarks compared to a number of favourite tools like Python, Java and R. Normalized to optimized C code.
And, there, in a single plot, is why Real Programmers still use Fortran...!
catdynamics | April 17, 2014
Big Eyed Beans from Venus - Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band!
Cool. Literally
Comparable to Mars in effective temperature, bit larger than Earth, probably slightly more massive than Earth (mean density could be lower), atmosphere unknown.
Might well have extensive surface regions with persistent liquid water.
Kepler-186f comparison
catdynamics | April 12, 2014A frightening fraction of my open tabs are some of Bee's posts at Backreaction - so to save my browsers, I dump them here for further future perusal:
Are irreproducible scientific results okay and just business as usual?
Shut up and let me think
Should the Nobel Prize be given to collaborations and institution?
Women in Science, Again?
Science Martketing needs Consumer Feedback
Does Modern Science Discourage Creativity?
The comeback of massive gravity?
Can Planck Stars Exist?
Book review: “The Theoretical Minimum – Quantum Mechanics” By Susskind and Friedman
Do we live in a…
catdynamics | April 11, 2014In times past we have lovingly tracked the proposal frenzy as the near annual Hubble Space Telescope proposal deadline approaches.
As was noted by Julianne several years ago, and confirmed over the last half dozen cycles, the shape of the curve of number of submitted proposals as a function of time until the deadline is nearly invariant.
Interestingly, the total number of proposals also does not change much, some dips and spikes with the loss and availability of instruments, but the total is near stationary and some measure of the statistical saturation of the ability of astronomers to put…
catdynamics | April 3, 2014In the great tradition of tracking Amazing Norwegian Meteorite Stories, we bring you:
Meteorite almost hits Norwegian skydiver
h/t Stjörnufræðivefurinn
Short Norwegian version...
catdynamics | March 17, 2014Imagine you were a very clever ant, living on a large log, floating in a big lake...
BICEP2 at twilight
...a very large, deep, cold lake.
Being a not incurious, clever ant, you contemplate the lake in its infinite and insurmountable vastness.
Surely knowing what lies on the lake, or even beyond the lake (if such can be conceived) is not feasible.
Then, you notice that the lake has ripples.
Ripples, and waves, and swirls.
So, being a methodical sort of ant, you start measuring the ripples and waves and swirls, and you get your student ants to measure them also.
You measure lots of waves,…
catdynamics | January 6, 2014You are at university.
Do you like stars, and stuff?
We revisit old ruminations on career paths 'cause it is topical...
Another rehashed blast from the past.
Should you do astronomy as an undergrad? (the following is in part shamelessly cribbed from a colleague’s previous freshman seminar for our majors):
Do you like stars and stuff?
If not, you probably should look for an alternative to astronomy, on the general principle that at this stage of life you should at least try to do things you actually like.
If you do, good for you.
Now, do you have the aptitude?
Professional astrophysics/…
catdynamics | January 6, 2014So, now you’re at university, and you’re thinking about heading for grad school …
A seasonal revisit of some old rumblings*
*NB: this discussion should not be construed to be anything but hypothetical ramblings, they do not reflect in any way the official position of any academic institution, department or graduate program, especially not the one I am part of!
So You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 1.5: thinking about grad school
Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on January 16, 2012
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So, now you’re at university, and you’re thinking about heading for grad school …
More…
catdynamics | December 18, 2013What should a high school student do to get on a track to become an astrophysicist?
Reworked from a rework from an oldie.
Something prompted me to think it is time to lightly update and republish this series, possibly with added bonus parts!
So, you're in high school wondering what to do with yourself, and you think: "hey, I could be an Astrophysicist!"
So, what should YOU do, wanting to get into a good university and an astro/physics major?
1) Take all the math that is offered, and do well in it.
The limiting factor for most students wanting to do astronomy or astrophysics is poor math…
catdynamics | December 18, 2013An interesting new twist for the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society will be the "Augmented Reality" poster - an instantiation of the very rapidly growing augmented reality features appearing everywhere through smartphone apps or google glass.
V838 Mon poster by Vogt et al
will have a layar augmentation:
[caption id="attachment_3642" align="aligncenter" width="200"] Vogt et al poster viewed through layar app on an iPhone
(click to embiggen)[/caption]
using layar creator, tags are added to the poster which pop up when viewed through the app providing links to sources, videos,…
catdynamics | December 13, 2013Although many moons have passed, we once again approach The Mighty iPod One, and we once again ask the impossible:
Oh, Mighty iPod, is there indeed invasive terrestrial scum on Europa, transmitted through the mystery of lithopanspermia?
Woosh goes the Mighty iPod.
Woosh.
The Covering: Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy - Bowie and Crosby
The Crossing: One of Us - Joan Osbourne
The Crown: The Space Race is Over - Billy Bragg
The Root: Trúir Þú Á Engla - Bubbi
The Past: Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet
The Future: "Hi hi hi hi hi" - Die Zauberfloete, Mozart
The Questioner: Set Fire to the Rain…
catdynamics | October 30, 2013Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious ship which will peer far and wide...
The European Space Agency is being very sensible and mapping out its schedule for large and medium science missions for the medium term, under the Cosmic Vision program.
In particular, the first of the large missions, L1, has been chosen and is JUICE, Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer - a Jovian orbiter scheduled for launch in 2022, to study the three outer Galilean Moons.
Athena
The other mission concepts which competed for the L1 mission slot were Athena, a reformulated large X-ray observatory - Athena is revisit of the…
catdynamics | October 11, 2013"Text of Bolden Response to Wolf Letter Re Chinese Participation in Kepler Conference" - from spacepolicyonline.com
>From: Bolden, Charles (HQ-AA000)
>Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 12:20 PM Central Standard Time
>To:
>Cc:
>Subject: Response to Chairman Wolf
"It is unfortunate that potential Chinese participants were refused attendance at the upcoming Kepler Conference at the Ames Research Park. Mid-level managers at Ames, in performing the due diligence they believed appropriate following a period of significant concern and scrutiny from Congress about our foreign access to…
catdynamics | October 10, 2013 When it is darkest, men see the stars.
This afternoon I needed to check something urgently, and as is my habit in this day and age, I jumped to a website where I knew the information was available.
A few seconds later, with some irritation I went to hit "refresh" as the request failed to go through, and then realized that it was a *.nasa.gov address, at Ames, as it happens, and I was not going to be getting that bit of data this afternoon, not without some old fashioned legwork.
A bit later I realized with increasing dismay that a signficant fraction of the illustrations for my class…
catdynamics | September 18, 2013The google+ hangout on SETI searches for KII and KIII aliens using WISE is archived on Youtube:
Enjoy
catdynamics | September 17, 2013A google hangout this afternoon:
"Today, September 18, 2:00 PM
SETI Institute researchers Jill Tarter and Franck Marchis (host & moderator) will hangout with Jason Wright, professor of astronomy at Penn State, Matt Povich, professor of astronomy at Cal Poly Pomona and Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist and mathematician at the Institute for Advance Study.
These scientists will discuss the potential for the WISE telescope to detect extraterrestrial super-civilizations that acquired a large energy supply by building a mega-structure to harvest the energy of their star("Dyson Sphere") or…