I’m still enjoying a great time in New York and New Jersey with friends and family. I try to cram so much into these little visits! But it’s nice to take a little break with my laptop and read up on the latest Carnival of Space at Tiny Mantras. What a cute kid!
Entries from November 2008
Blurbs…
November 24, 2008 · Leave a Comment
My thought process is increasingly random as the holiday approaches, so I’ll celebrate that with some random links from the past week or so…
First, the ISS turns 10 years old at Big Pictures of the Boston Globe. So pretty! And quite a spectacular sight to watch it grow in these pictures. First seen in a tweet by Phlebas, thanks!
Cosmic rays have been all over the news. Check out tantalizing hints of weird astrophysical phenomena and dark matter at Universe Today (and here) and SarahAskew.
Another exoplanet imaged? Great coverage on beta Pic at Astroengine.
Brian Cox was named one of People magazine’s sexiest men alive, as reported at Bad Astronomy. Oh boy do I agree.
Speaking of Bad Astronomy… I got my copy of Death from the Skies from JREF today! Sweet. I’m looking forward to the read. Maybe I can use some facts to amaze the 4th graders I’ll be talking to in December!
The last Journal Club meeting in my department was on the newly photographed exoplanets, and I got a lot out of reading the papers. I am planning to write a cool post on it! As soon as my brain starts working again…
Happy Turkey Day, everyone!
We Dance
November 23, 2008 · 1 Comment
We dance because we want to. Because we love the music and we love our bodies. We love the glitter and the sequins or the metal and the fringe. We dance for our strength and for our femininity. We dance in solidarity. We dance for individuality.
We dance to ancient beats, to brand new pop, to something completely different. We dance for the women who cannot dance, who aren’t allowed, on the very same ground where our dance began. We dance for our loved ones and we dance for those strangers. We dance for the history and for the newness. We dance because we can’t help it.
To all the bellydancers who rocked the house today in Charlottesville… keep dancing!
Categories: general
Tagged: bellydance, Charlottesville
Carnival of Space, and More IYA 2009 goodness
November 22, 2008 · 1 Comment
First, check out the Thanksgiving-tacular Carnival of Space #80 at Starts with a Bang!
I’ve been keeping up with some of the International Year of Astronomy news at Pamela Gay’s Star Stryder blog, and you should, too! One of the “cornerstone” projects is the Portal to the Universe. Here, you can look at lots of astronomy-related blog and image feeds, or find an astronomy club or department near you. Astronomy for your cyberspace and your real space! You can do early registration here.
I can’t wait to check out all the cool IYA2009 cornerstones! Galileoscope aims to put DIY observing tools into the hands of as many people as possible. Cosmic Diary will track the real lives of astronomers. Gee, I hope they include grad student bloggers in that one! We need each others’ support to realize that we’re not the only one going “AHH!!” 
Also, I noticed that our lab had replaced the NRAO 50th banner with a IYA2009 banner. Go us!
Hometown Astronomy
November 21, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Discovery.com reports that NYC may have suffered a major tsunami due to an asteroid impact over 2,000 years ago. Of course, it wasn’t a city then. But evidence in the form of little carbon spherules found in the silt near the Hudson River give clue to a giant impact. Too bad that the city is so overgrown that much of the natural land is covered up now, so it’ll be hard to find more data. Hence, going to Long Island and New Jersey coastlines to find evidence! And, the search is on for an actual impact crater that would give more credence to this hypothesis.
But can you imagine, 20-meter high waves over Manhattan? My poor hometown of Staten Island would have been completely swamped! More reminders that despite the masking effects of our planet’s geologic processes, our little home has had a violent past.
(I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Death from the Skies! which I finally ordered this week. I was going to wait and put it on my holiday wishlist, but ah, what the heck.)
UPDATE: Should read before posting… fixed sentence fragment.
WBC recap
November 21, 2008 · 1 Comment
So I mentioned earlier that I would be attending the counter-protest to the Westboro Baptist Church’s protest of the “Laramie Project” at UVa. Although the WBC never showed up, the counter-protest was pretty darn awesome. Lots of people showed up to support the message of tolerance and love!
A bit of the crowd lining the walkway to the Chapel in support of those attending the play.
Also a Biblical fact.
The fabulous and splendid VAA with their candles.
A Christian counter-protestor has a little reminder for the WBC.
This is basically a repeat of my post on the VAA blog.
Categories: general
Tagged: atheist, Charlottesville, picture
Visiting the GBT
November 19, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Will you be swinging through West Virginia any time soon? Maybe you are visiting family, taking a road trip, or hitting the slopes. Then don’t forget to visit the amazing Green Bank Observatory! It came to my attention through the NRAO‘s new twitter feed that the Washington Post recently had an article on visiting the great observatory to get away from the world’s problems and focus on the “Big Questions.” It’s quite good!
The author of the piece, John M. Thompson, picked the best time of year to visit, just when the fall foliage was gorgeous. To get a glimpse of that, I encourage you to wander over to the Flickr page of my friend and fellow astro grad student, George, and look at the pictures he took from a recent class trip to Green Bank. I love the Reber telescope next to that fiery orange tree!
At Green Bank, you’ll learn a bit of history, science, and engineering. Just as light pollution can spoil optical observations, radio light pollution, in the form of cell phones, digital cameras, and even car spark plugs, can seriously hamper radio observations. Despite the constant references to “noise” and “listening to the universe” in radio astronomy, we are still “looking” at light with the GBT and other telescopes!
Imagine if you had radio eyes, what would the world look like? Your cell phone might be a beacon, and the sun very dim. Radio station towers would be like huge spotlights! Radio astronomers look at the universe in this way and can see gas in the process of forming stars, gaseous relics of exploded stars, powerful jets from the centers of galaxies, the magnetic field of Jupiter, and so much more.
Read the article to explore through the author the amazing history, science, and technology of Green Bank, and don’t forget to visit if you are ever in the area!
Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and Harry Morton (NRAO)
Note on the article: It says, “The telescopes here detect radio waves emitted from deep space; that is, waves between audio and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum.” I’m pretty sure that “audio” is not a piece of the EM spectrum, it just describes sound, which is a different phenomenon altogether. Someone please correct me if I am wrong!
Categories: astronomy · education
Tagged: nrao, picture, telescope, travel
Carnival of Space #79
November 16, 2008 · 3 Comments
Welcome, one and all, to the glittering light show that is the Carnival of Space! Only this time, it’s not a carnival lit by twinkling bulbs but by the nuclear furnaces of stars and the fires of our own imaginations. This week, it’s all about planets as we start from Earth and move through our solar system to our first glimpses of solar systems beyond.
Starting here on Terra Firma, Space Cynics point us to the promise of garden shed-sized nuclear reactors that may be available in just 5 years, and it’s all terrestrial, baby.
Don’t forget to wander over to the gift shop and start your holiday shopping off right with some tips on buying a telescope as a gift at Visual Astronomy. The gift of the night sky is one that keeps on giving! David points us to some cool Moon posters at LPI, targeted for 6th through 9th graders. (Big kids can enjoy them, too!)
Looking for some cinema entertainment? Space Video of the Day gives us the movie “Fire in the Sky,” a story of an alien abduction. It probably would have fit in well at the recent “Aliens!” Film Festival here at UVa. “Rocket Girls” gets a great review at Out of the Cradle as an anime series with a positive vision of human spaceflight and great role models for teen girls. And speaking of entertainment, Paris Hilton talks about relativity? See it for yourself at Starts With a Bang. If Paris isn’t your thing, go read it for the introduction to the topic of time dilation anyway!
Political discourse stays alive at Altair VI with a four-point plan for the space program during an Obama presidency. The focus is not on expensive manned missions to the Moon and Mars, but robotic probes, space telescopes, and more human work in space. Meanwhile, Next Big Future asks what might happen if all the money spent on sci-fi entertainment went towards useful space technology.
The case for an international effort to move humanity into space is made at 21st Century Waves, including quotes from Jerry Grey at the recent International Astronautical Congress. This may be the best way to take advantage of economic and cultural booms and move further into space as one, united humankind.
Relive the recent STS-126 launch at The Spacewriter’s Ramblings in all of it’s exciting, firey glory! For future launches, learn all about the Soyuz launch facilities in French Guiana at OrbitalHub. This is a great example of multi-national cooperation in space-faring technology. I was blown away when I read that Soyuz has been responsible for over 1,700 missions!
Take a look back to our home planet as Nancy Atkinson takes us on a tour of Earth’s 10 most impressive impact craters at Universe Today. Beautiful to look at, but reminders that we still live in a shooting gallery!
Over at Music of the Spheres, we get a look at lunar landings in the style that Apollo never had… with lasers. This will be especially be important for those unmanned cargo missions that support the piloted landers. (Sharks with laser beams on their heads not currently in the works.)
Moving outwards through the solar system, the recent paper about opal on Mars is discussed at Lounge of the Lab Lemming. Although opal is not a conclusive indicator of a wetter Mars, it does suggest some interesting scenarios. Read on to find out more! Explore Martian tectonics at The Martian Chronicles, and see how Mars really is an alien word. Did it ever have plate tectonics like Earth? Maybe, maybe not, but the Tharsis Region has its own interesting story to tell.
It’s hard to think about Mars these days and not feel a twinge of sadness. Stuart Atkinson gives Phoenix a heartfelt farewell at Cumbrian Sky. Seriously, bring the Kleenex! Dave Mosher gives us a lovely ode to our dearly departed Phoenix at Space Disco, as its demise was made official in a NASA press conference. Check out all the cool pictures and videos from this successful mission. We will miss you and your tweets, little lander!
Out where another robotic mission is going on successfully, listen to the eerie sounds of Saturn at A Babe in the Universe. Radio emission detected by Cassini have been turned into audio files for your listening pleasure, and it’s quite fascinating.
Emily Lakdawalla over at The Planetary Society Blog gives us a neat glimpse into a possible mission out to Neptune, then further into the Kuiper Belt. Neptune has come into focus for a variety of reasons, so read on! Then, explore the fascinating realm of the Kuiper Belt at AstroEngine where Ian tells the funny, strange, and sad tales of his five favorite KBOs. Also, did you know that “pluto” is a verb?
Fly to the Oort Cloud at Centauri Dreams on a spaceship powered by an inflatable sail, which may scale up to larger ships more easily than solar sails. This kind of technology could eventually power multi-generational tips to the stars. Stars like Fomalhaut…
So we move on to the big story of the week… the first photographs of exoplanets! Astronomer’s have been holding this up as a “holy grail” of sorts for some time now, so it’s just thrilling to watch these images come out. Like a sparkling, rotating Ferris wheel, I will let many of our carnival presenters tell their own story of this exciting discovery:
Dynamics of Cats… “Spectra next.” Heck yes!
Potentia Tenebras Repellendi… with a great comparison of the size of our solar system with the Fomalhaut system.
The Meridiani Journal… with the exoplanet count now at 326!
SarahAskew… with a reminder of the immense difficulties such studies face.
Bad Astronomy… “Holy Haleakala.” I second that!
Universe Today
a>… with a cool ESA video about the discovery.
Alice’s Astro Info… this time it’s the real thing!
What’s Up Astronomy… most importantly for us on the ground, how to find Fomalhaut and see it for youself!
I now leave you with Fomalhaut and HR8799…
Email any corrections to gugnico at gmail dot com! Many thanks to Fraser for letting me host this week’s carnival!
Categories: astronomy · science
Tagged: astronauts, blogs, carnival, space
I’m a brand new post-doc in astronomy working as part of the 
