Swift
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 5, 2010The verdict is out, the 2010 Senior Review Committee recommendation on the NASA Astrophysics old active missions; who will keep going, and who is recommended to get the chop.
It is an interesting list, with some interesting recommendations.
And the winners are...:
1. Planck - level funding for 30 months, per request, consider 42 month extension later
2. Chandra - extend to 2012 and beyond, restore and augment funding, consider automated operation, concern about spacecraft degradation
3. Warm Spitzer - surprise winner! recommend $7M augmentation for 2012 and 2013, note spacecraft ends…
esiegel | May 19, 2008No, really, I can hang with the big boys!
Although this is usually something we hear from people who are seemingly out of their league, due to diminutive stature, here on Earth:
(Muggsy Bogues is awesome.) Apparently, there are stars out there that have the same Napoleon Complex. According to this Press Release, a star only 1% as bright as the Sun just released a burst of energy as powerful as 1000 solar flares!
Now, that link is only too happy to provide you with an artist's rendition of what happened:
But let's compare this with real stuff, instead. Our Sun has a magnetic field that's…