astro
catdynamics | September 18, 2008National Science Foundation has announced this years awards for the Physics Frontier Centers
The full list is here
The '08 winners, some of which are renewals are:
Center for Magnetic Self-Organization - Wisconsin
Center for Physics of Living Cells - Illinois
Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics - Indiana
Center for Theoretical Biological Physics - California (San Diego)
Joint Quantum Institute - Maryland
Congratulations.
Bummernickels!
h/t Quantum Pontiff
catdynamics | September 17, 2008The refrigerator on the infrared camera on Hubble is broken and the camera is shut down, for now.
Better hope servicing mission 4 goes off on the revised schedule and is successful.
Currently functioning instruments on Hubble are just the old Wide Field Camera (2), which has one bad chip, and the Fine Guidance Sensors.
From stsci.edu:
"[doing software upgrade]...After the software was installed we attempted to restart the NCS, but it went into safemode before reaching a stable cooling situation. A project tiger-team, including the engineers who designed and built the NCS, has since made…
catdynamics | September 16, 2008Mary Voytek takes over Astrobiology Senior Scientist position at NASA HQ - she's a USGS microbiologist. Extremeophile looks like.
John Rummel has moved to East Carolina as Head CoachDirector of Institute for Coastal Science and Policy.
Is this why the CAN-5 selection is delayed?
Is this Change We Can Believe In?
h/t NASAwatch
catdynamics | September 15, 2008The Milky Way has a roughly 3 million solar mass black hole at its center.
The nearby M87 galaxy in the Virgo cluster has a roughly 3 billion solar mass black hole at its center.
How much more massive do black holes get?
Prof Priya Natarajan at Yale thinks she knows the answer: and that is that black hole mass maxes out at at measly 10 billion times the mass of the Sun, or so.
It is hard to measure the mass of a black hole. Since we can't see it, mass measurements are generally indirect and represent bounds, sometimes only upper bounds, on the mass.
The Milky Way's black hole is the nearest…
catdynamics | September 12, 2008NASA 3D view of Hurricane Ike
click to embiggen
ISS images of Ike friday
click for large hi-res animation
wunderground reports convection has closed around the eye region and an intensification cycle is starting, race against time whether landfall disrupts it before the inner winds go up a catergory, or two.
main issue is still width of the hurricane force wind field, and the size of the storm surge.
the oildrum has updated analysis of possible oil production and refinery impact - shutdown of much of gulf of mexico production for few weeks, mostly precautionary. possible damage to 20-30…
catdynamics | September 12, 2008you may have noticed ScienceBloggers pushing hard on the meme about the Large Hadron Collider destroying the Earth, Not!
I now reveal the true reason.
We went so far as to put
"Has the LHC Destroyed The Earth?" on the banner ad position.
Well, there's a reason for this. It was a test, a warmup exercise for the real thing.
Of course LHC was not going to destroy the Earth on wednesday, probably, it was just a warmup of the injector and bending magnets, there were no actual collisions.
Those come next month and then will be run, by the trillions, for years.
Well, ok, the collimator collisions…
catdynamics | September 8, 2008NASAwatch has a series on interesting posts on Mike Griffin, the Shuttle, its successor and a recent leaked e-mail.
Read if you deeply care about NASA funding and medium term policies and funding issues.
It started with an e-mail from Griffin leaked to the Orlando Sentinel. The e-mail only had 8 recipients, all senior NASA HQ personnel. The e-mail copy is a bad scan of a paper printout. Curious.
NASAwatch's take is here (take time to read the comments)
The gist is that the new Exploration launchers will not be available on time, that the US is looking at 3-5 year gap with no launchers and no…
catdynamics | September 4, 2008Epicycles can be thought of as correlated 2-D Fourier sums.
As such, they are complete.
Any connected, delimited, periodic curve in the plane can be reconstructed to arbitary precision with high enough order epicycles and requisite deferents.
Below is an illustration of this. It is impressive.
Doh!
That, apparently, took 1000 nested epicycles.
It is awesome.
Generalization to arbitary (centered, connected) figures is left as an exercise for the reader.
For extra credit, construct the system of N-bodies which would generate this periodic orbit. Discuss its stability to small perturbations…
catdynamics | September 3, 2008Hrmph.
The real issue is the exact proper motion, not the dispersion about the mean.
Although I suppose outliers can be interesting, even in small N groups.
This is very clever.
I award it a clear: "damn, I wish I had thought of that...!"
"Velocity dispersions in a cluster of stars: How fast could Usain Bolt have run?
H. K. Eriksen, J. R. Kristiansen, O. Langangen, I. K. Wehus
(Submitted on 1 Sep 2008 (v1), last revised 2 Sep 2008 (this version, v2))
Since that very memorable day at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a big question on every sports commentator's mind has been "What would the 100 meter…
catdynamics | August 30, 2008Tom asks - what do I think about the role of professional societies in education?
In particular the American Astronomical Society, which has in recent times had a mission to "optimize the contributions of both the AAS and its members to enhanced science literacy for all, provide encouragement and to broaden educational opportunities for all, with particular attention to groups under-served in the physical sciences, and ensure that undergraduate and graduate programs in astronomy prepare not only the next generation of professional astronomers but also broadly trained individuals with strong…
catdynamics | August 28, 2008strange objects found lying around
In an effort to preserve the sanity of my colleagues and students, and in honour of late night reruns of "Clean House", I am currently recycling or throwing out something every time I exit the office.
This leads to interesting and amusing and gratifying discoveries, and also some strange obscure objects in the piles.
So, why was intensely interested in E1615+061 at some point in the not too distant past...?
catdynamics | August 27, 2008In case you missed the announcement: NASA is contemplating concepts for the next generation optical/ultra-violet space telescope
At Last - ATLAS
Marc Postman and Ken Sembach are leading the concept study teams, looking at 16m telescope, for launch on the Ares heavy to L2.
Optimised for blue light spectroscopy.
STSCI press release
I infer they are contemplating a free-floating occulter if the plan is to have direct detection of terrestrials as part of the science case.
Interesting.
catdynamics | August 27, 2008GLAST has a sky map, first results, pretty pictures and movies, and a new name.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
Gamma-ray sky (click for annotated hi-res version).
Lots of fun stuff at the NASA press release site, go browse.
h/t GLAST blog
catdynamics | August 26, 2008I don't know which is more impressive, that it scans, or that it is still substantially correct.
Anyway, welcome freshers.
catdynamics | August 26, 2008You are at university.
Do you like stars, and stuff?
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/astronomy is not about looking at stars per se (except at occasional star…
catdynamics | August 25, 2008in which I roar, and pounce... and float away.
The American Physical Society News Zero Gravity column is particularly good this month (member login maybe required), he says modestly.
I must be grateful though, at least they didn't cast me as Lockhart or Slughorn... Mad-Eye Moody'd have been kinda cool though: "If one of us dies, stay in formation!"
Thanks to APS editing staff
catdynamics | August 21, 2008What do you think of when I say:
"Hey, we just found a Super-Earth"!
Seriously.
We gotsta know.
I am back in Colorado, I am happy to say, at the "Super-Earth workshop", which is jolly good fun, but we did spend an inordinate amount of time at one point pondering whether "Super-Earth" is in fact a misnomer.
And, sadly, no beer was involved.
Revel in misnomers, I say.
So... some interesting stuff going on, most of which I am not at liberty to discuss.
However, rumours are firming up that CoRoT has something interesting, and I have now heard numbers, which lead me to agree it might be…