astro
catdynamics | December 11, 2008There is, apparently, some friction between the current NASA admin and the Obama transition team.
Could get interesting.
Interesting story at the Orlando Sentinel space blog
"NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is "not qualified" to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned."
Read all the way to the bottom, it is good stuff.
h/t NASAwatch - go read the comments, they are interesting
Looks like NASA policy will be highish,…
catdynamics | December 9, 2008So, I'm teaching a freshman seminar right now, and covering, among other things "summary of current research topics" - to kinda tease the students about what is out there that might be interesting.
Two of the topics covered are exoplanets and modern cosmology.
I found I could fit a nice summary of exoplanets into about 40-50 slides covered in two fast paced classes.
The cosmology is up to 107 slides, two be covered in two classes, and I had to stop, though there was more stuff I knew I really had to include.
So, maybe there is really something to all this cosmology stuff after all?
Or, there…
catdynamics | December 8, 2008Yo yo yo.
Don't forget the Hubble Cycle 16 Supplemental is due at 11:59 pm sharp, and that is Eastern Standard Time, not some laid back later west coast time.
Rumour is that NICMOS did not come back from the warmup during restart, and that it will be WFPC2 and ACS Solar Blind Channel only.
Unless someone comes up with a fast remote fix for NIC and fast.
Seasonal Pretty Picture of M13 - taken with ACS, just to remind us of our loss, and the importance of Galactic Globular Clusters, which we all know are key to understanding the evolution of stellar populations in cosmological context.…
catdynamics | December 5, 2008Brrrr, an icy friday, and we gently shiver to the Mighty iPod and we ask: those high energy gamma ray blips recently detected - signature of dark matter annihilation, or just a regular nearby pulsar?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Identify The Beat - Marc Smith vs Safe'n'Sound
The Crossing: Memories Can't Wait - Talking Heads
The Crown: Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
The Root: South Australia - Pogues
The Past: Breaking News - Half Man Half Biscuit
The Future: Private Investigations - Dire Straits
The Questioner: Straight to Hell - Clash
The House: Worried Man Blues -…
catdynamics | December 2, 2008Gorgeous 3D gallery toy for Chandra images from ChandraBlog
Requires CoolIris plug-in.
catdynamics | November 18, 2008XKCD 505
This is both frighteningly funny, and shockingly profound.
The really worrying thing is how few people in the world will ever get it.
h/t Chad
ok, I will show mercy:
34:
internet rule 34
wolfram's rule 34
Wolfram classified cellular automata rules - some of which are interesting and support universality.
catdynamics | November 17, 2008NASA and The Space Telescope Science Institute
announce a Supplemental Call for Observing Proposals for the
Hubble Space Telescope.
Told you so.
"A serious electronic malfunction on HST in late September led to
the postponement of Servicing Mission 4 (SM4). HST has been
restored to operations, and we anticipate exhausting the pool of
both existing Cycle 16 programs and Cycle 17 observations that
can be brought forward before SM4 occurs. We are therefore issuing
this call for supplementary programs using Wide-Field Planetary
Camera 2 (WFPC2), the Advanced Camera for Surveys Solar Blind…
catdynamics | November 14, 2008Wintry friday, and far too much excitement on all fronts.
So, we ask the Mighty iPod: about those new exoplanets - Fomalhaut b, really there or unlucky background? And, HR8799 - is it really a BSS?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Greetings to the New Brunette - Billy Bragg
The Crossing: Carry That Weight - Beatles
The Crown: Fast Car - Tracy Chapman
The Root: I Want To Tell You - Beatles
The Past: One Better Day - Madness
The Future: (I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear - Blondie
The Questioner: Jail Guitar Doors - Clash
The House: Taktu Til við að Tvista - Stuðmenn…
catdynamics | November 13, 2008Coronographic imaging with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, on the Hubble Space Telescope, has revealed a jupiter mass planetary companion, with confirmed common proper motion with its parent star, Fomalhaut.
This would be the first robust bona fide direct imaging detection of an extrasolar planet.
Good catch from the mouth of the fish of the south.
From Kalas et al (Science, Nov 14th 2008).
Hubble press release now up
Perspective article in Science (pdf)
click for large image
In a paper to appear on friday Nov 14th in Science, Kalas et al (pdf) show data from the Advanced Camera for…
catdynamics | November 12, 2008Wow.
I just realised that the Molinari, h(m), impact index is really measured in magnitudes...
No, really!
h(m) = h/N0.4
is clearly a magnitude system - with a sign ambiguity of course, but that is just to confuse the physicists.
So we should work in log[ h(m) ] and set a "ranking modulus" as a natural metric for departmental distances in rank space.
We are of course free to choose our normalisation - I think h(m) = 5 looks about right, put OSU at 10 pc
So: Hm = log(h) - 0.4*log(N) - log(5)
so for tenure faculty only PSU has a
Hm = 1.892 - 1.124 - 0.699 = 0.07
and Caltech is at 0.11…
catdynamics | November 12, 2008there are many ways to rank a program: including its reputation, its performance, and more subtle quantitative indicators, some of which are contradictory and mutually inconsistent. Rankings are also generally lagging indicators and imperfect indicators of future performance, they are vulnerable to demographics and individual star performers which may not be there in the future, or may fail to live up to their reputation.
Yet, considering the stakes, rankings are endlessly mulled, weighed, hashed, disputed as storied programs slip in the rankings, and celebrated as outsiders surge up the…
catdynamics | November 10, 2008Phoenix Lander on Mars has ceased operation as winter moves in, power ran out and batteries died.
Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot's arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander's instruments.
Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the…
catdynamics | November 10, 2008there will be a major press release on thursday, for a paper appearing in Science this week.
It is a potentially major planet discovery, I will not break embargo to leak the news, but the hint of the upcoming discovery was public exactly two months ago, and there will be some nice ancillary information provided online when the news comes out.
catdynamics | November 6, 2008NASA is putting together a memo giving guidance on conference funding and travel under the 2009 fiscal year budget.
University scientists may be allowed to travel on NASA funds, when all is clear.
This is from SARA:
"The good news is that that folks who have grants (i.e., those at universities) and post-doctoral fellows and other student fellowships will almost certainly be exempt. "
We can hope, since the intent of the law would seem to be such.
The letter of the law is unclear on this, to my non-lawyer reading, and could well be interpreted to cap conference travel on NASA funds by…
catdynamics | October 31, 2008There is a Chandra mission blog
Nifty.
I think all NASA observatories should blog. Some could use a twitter or other microblog as well...
catdynamics | October 30, 2008Science operations have resumed.
Servicing Mission 4 has been delayed even further.
WFPC2 lives!
Arp 147. Pretty!
but...
SM-4 is delayed beyond the current delay to feb '09
"NASA managers have announced that they will not meet a February 2009 launch date for the fifth and final shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The decision comes after engineers completed assessments of the work needed to get a second data handling unit for the telescope ready to fly. The unit will replace one that failed on Hubble in late September, causing the agency to postpone the servicing mission, which…
catdynamics | October 28, 2008giving a talk on blogging at Harvard tends to make one think,
in particular, what is the use of science blogging, and why are economists so good at blogging
it was a fun talk, for me at least,
decent turnout, considering I was squeezed in between the 12:30 seminar and the 4 o'clock talk, some good question
the occasion caused me to do some review of blog statistics and the general state of the blogosphere. The growth has definitely slowed, but science blogs in general and scienceblogs.com in particular are actually quite well positioned, considering their relatively niche position
but, has…
catdynamics | October 27, 2008Apparently I am giving a talk tuesday in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area
Visualizing Astronomy at the Center for Astrophysics
Talk is at 2pm.
Lovely day in Boston this afternoon, I gather that is about to change, so come in from the cold and contemplate hierarchical social networks and viral blog memes.
catdynamics | October 26, 2008WFPC2 is back on.
Status Report #7
"The current primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope is now back in active operation and will resume science observations shortly.
Just before 9:30 a.m. EDT this morning on board Hubble, the telescope's science computer began to send commands to Wide Field Planetary Camera-2. These commands brought the computer out of the quiescent, safe state in which it has waited since the computer shut down on October 16."
Hope they bring NICMOS back up also.
Expect an interim call for proposals for WFPC2/NIC within a week or two.
If it is really working again.
catdynamics | October 22, 2008XMM out of contact.
Observations suggest it is intact, signal from telescope has been detected,
attempts to recover control underway.
XMM loss of contact - ESA press release
"During the evening of Saturday 18 October, XMM-Newton was approaching the point of closest approach to our planet, or perigee, along its 48-hour highly elongated orbit around Earth. At that time, it was communicating normally with the Santiago ground station in Chile through one of its two antennas. After the spacecraft moved out of visibility from Santiago, its radio signal, routinely switched to the other antenna by a…