astro
catdynamics | November 8, 2007Keck/Lick team finds fifth planet in 55 Cancri
Press release
Pretty pictures and animations!
55 Cancri is one of the best studied extrasolar planet systems, it was known to have four planets, and now a fifth has emerged from the data - 45 Earth masses in near 1 AU orbit - in the habitable zone.
Be nice if it has a large moon...!
Meant to blog it, but Greg beat me to it, and has all the beautiful details wrapped up
catdynamics | November 7, 2007Rocketeers is the contemporary story of the flurry of activity in private space launch development and construction, centered primarily in the US southwest.
Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore
Smithsonian Books
ISBN: 978-0-06-114902-3
Belfiore is a freelance journalist who covered the private sector space launch developers, the epynomous rocketeers, during the short period of the last few years leading up to SpaceShipOne winning the first X-prize, and the immediate aftermath.
It is a fun read, half contemporaneous history, and half cheerleading; the focus is on Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites…
catdynamics | October 31, 2007Destiny's Child:
Me, in a suit, on television...
The Daily Show, in Dec 2002,
back when they used to do real fake news instead of serious commentary and analysis
The camera does add about ten million solar masses...
I lost my copy of the press video (this is taken from a rather fun NASA Space Science Update conference). Was amused and gratified to see it appear in tDS archives.
Maybe the first time most of my family has seen me in a suit since my cousin's wedding...
I have vague memories they showed another clip of me laughing, intercut with Gunther looking embarrassed, need to browse some…
catdynamics | October 31, 2007seasonal pretty pictures
NGC 1999
The two below are artist concepts, worth clicking through.
Pumpkin Nebula
Lost Souls Nebula
catdynamics | October 24, 2007In the short story "A Pail of Air" by Leiber, the Earth is ejected into interstellar space.
The story describes the one family's struggle for survival as the atmosphere freezes out.
A few years ago, David Stevenson noted that such free floaters could sustain liquid water on the surface through geothermal heating, if the atmosphere was thick enough and of the right composition.
Now a smart, hard working postdoc and some random co-author have explore it further, looking at what happens to free floaters with Moons! Tidal heating may supplement geo heating long enough for live to become…
catdynamics | October 24, 2007San Diego Tribune is reporting the reservation fire has reached South Grade road on Palomar mountain.
Am I correct in thinking this is the switchback road that goes straight up to the observatory? So the fire is 5-10 miles away and below the observatory?
Anyone know observatory status?
PS: apparently fire was mid-mountain about 2 miles from observatory at dawn
PPS: House-to-house battle on top of Palomar Mountain
PPPS: Caltech web site now says wind turned and observatory is safe for now.
UPDATE: definitely a bad fire coming up Palomar Mountain, whether it engulfs(ed) the top depends on what…
catdynamics | October 15, 2007The deadline for registering for the next annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society is coming up on wednesday...
It is in Austin, Texas, second week of january.
The annual meeting is mostly a schmoozefest, job market for junior faculty, some random "townhalls" and other communiques from DC, and about one hundred press releases, occasionally good and surprising ones.
There is also a semi-private mini-workshop on one of the fields I am working in, that is in conjunction with the AAS meeting but not part of it (a "while you're in town" sort of thing).
But... it is a long way to go,…
catdynamics | October 15, 2007random thoughts on the discovery that black hole outflows contain rubies and sapphires
Corundum grains are always nice, even a micron at a time.
Spitzer press release
Hear the podcast
catdynamics | October 10, 2007I have once more ventured within one of the strange spiky toroidal concrete circles that envelope US centers of power,
and I emerge with unverified anecdotal speculative rumours
NASA HQ people (science, natch) are amazingly cheerful.
Hadn't seen them so cheerful, overall, for a long time.
More money has been allocated to Research and Analysis lines, in the current round, retroactively, kinda without telling anyone.
So success rates for current proposal rounds are in the double digits. Over 10%.
Actually, probably over 20%. I've heard some crazy doods mention 25% or even 33% or even 50%…
catdynamics | October 9, 2007do you lead, or trail?
I was reminded of this beauty for obscure social reasons...
In theory, spiral galaxies may have either "leading" or "trailing" spirals.
In practise almost all that we can measure have trailing spirals.
In trailing spirals the spiral arms flow back with the rotation, as the name indicates, whereas with leading spirals the arms open into the rotation.
For most spiral galaxies, the arms rotate differentially, the outer parts of the arm usually have lower angular velocity than the inner parts, and tend to "wind-up" into more tight multiply wrapped arms, if they are…
catdynamics | October 5, 2007I gather NASA has discovered web 2.0 and social networking.
From a series of very interesting conversations I've had recently had, there is both growing awareness of a semi-official NASA presence in web 2.0 realms, and an interest in making this permanent and official.
My first reaction was to go back and flick through my old copy of True Names
Hah feds, you'll never take Mr Slippery alive!
There is an astrobioblog, which is moribund, usual problem in "official blog" creation. There was at some point an official LISA blog, but I can't even find it anymore.
- Contrast with Keith Cowing's…
catdynamics | October 4, 2007Fifty years ago today, the first tiny step was taken off planet.
We may be more introspective nowadays, but we sure know how to Have Fun 2.0
Here is a selection of finds from the blogosphere, trawled up over the last few weeks. Some of these were sent in, some I picked as good examples of blog posts on physical science or related issues in the last month or so.
Sputnik!
The launch of Sputnik, fifty years ago today, inspired a generation of scientists and spurred a renaissance in science, education and technological development.
Academia:
Quantum Pontiff celebrates a great historical event…
catdynamics | October 3, 2007NASA may be rolling back their "full cost accounting" scheme
A couple of years ago, NASA switched to "full cost accounting.
Previously a fair fraction of NASA permanent staff were paid out of center budgets directly, but, with some reason, to be fair, they moved to the aforemention full cost accounting, where each persons time had to be accounted for and charged to the appropriate line.
This can be a serious pain when you have someone supporting or supervising multiple projects, or when someone wants to do something new that hasn't been through a budget cycle. On the other hand, there was a…
catdynamics | September 21, 2007NuSTAR lives!
NuSTAR is a SMEX class high energy x-ray observatory.
It was shut down just at critical design review in spring 2006 by the then NASA associate administrator for Science, due to budget cuts in NASA science.
It has now been revived by the current associate administrator for Science, Alan Stern, and comes back to post-review phase B.
Launch expected in 2011.
The good news is that apparently the funding will NOT come out of the recently announced SMEX request for proposal rounds, that will go ahead with six proposals to be selected for concept study, to be down selected to three…
catdynamics | September 19, 2007Well, the Peruvians claim something from above hit them...
Maleficent Mystery Meteorite Miasma.
Makes more sense then invading the Home Counties, or New Jersey for that matter; they'll want to adapt gradually to local conditions, start at altitude...
The claim is that there was a fireball and explosion near Lake Titcaca, and when the locals went to investigate (thinking maybe it was a plane crash), they found a 10-20m crater that was a few meters deep. Noxious smell reported.
Then ~ 500 people living nearby became sick.
Hm. The crater doesn't look terribly meteoritic (see story for press…
catdynamics | September 17, 2007Random Thoughts thinks about
Gao and Theuns (sub) and the effects of a little bit of warm dark matter on early structure formation.
arXiv copy
catdynamics | September 13, 2007Google is offering $30 million for anyone able to land a privately funded rover on the Moon by Dec 31st 2012
space.com story
Interesting.
Especially if this becomes part of a long term strategy by Google as a serious involvement in off-planet exploration, as opposed to a one-off stunt.
Google Lunar X-Prize
I wonder if they funded that prize through an insurance annuity bet, or self-insured?
This is a big jump, since the 2004 Ansari X-Prize was for a suborbital, and the follow through on that is still in the pipeline, although if it does lead to a private suborbital or orbital tourist…
catdynamics | September 13, 2007Ok, I read the BEPAC full report, all 201 pages.
Interesting stuff, lots to glean from it.
First, Con-X community letter on Exploding Galaxies and other Catastrophysics, with some interesting comments from Prof Superwinds.
NASA HQ has still not responded to the BEPAC report. Way back when, my understanding was that HQ would issue a decision based on the report at a high level, that they have not done so is worrying.
Now the BEPAC report: the committee upped the cost estimates on all the projects.
SNAP claims TRL (Technology Readiness Level) 9 on the telescope...!
TRL 9 is "has flown…
catdynamics | September 11, 2007dinosaur killer asteroid possibly traced back to specific belt asteroid collision
I was going to blog this - Bottke et al Nature paper last week (sub) tracing the K-T impactor to a specific disruption of the ~ 170 km diameter parent body of the carbonaceus chondrite asteroid Baptistina.
They also suggest we've been in a impact maximum over the last 100 million years or so, because of the shower - a factor of two above long term average for sizable (1 km) impactors.
They argue the Tycho crater on the Moon came from the same event.
Interesting, might be right.
catdynamics | September 11, 2007Expanding Beyond All Understanding
If the universe does in fact become dominated by Λ - dark energy drive acceleration, then in a surprisingly short time the Milky Way will be rather lonely, as all unbound nearby galaxies will have receded beyond our event horizon.