One Astronomer's Noise

Entries from January 2010

Spacey updates…

January 31, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Okay, a slew of updates since I’ve been busy!

Last week, the very awesome Nancy Atkinson wrote up the Carnival of Space #138 over on her new blog. Check out news about Mars, Kepler’s findings, and more!

I’ve posted a draft of the Twitter poster I had at the AAS Meeting at the beginning of January. It includes some quotes from the survey I put out the week before, though I haven’t compiled all the numbers yet!

For some crazy reason that I’m not even fully aware of, I’ve started a Tumblr. It’ll probably be a dropping off place for random links and photos and things, whereas any actual writing I manage will stay here. Oh, it’ll probably feature some of my real-life potty mouth, which I keep tame here. ;-)

And finally, I’m going to Florida! George, Aleya, Aleya’s bro, and I are road-tripping down to Kennedy Space Center for the launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory! We’ll be tweeting and blogging and posting pictures the whole way. Oh, and we’re also going to get to see the launch of STS-130 … my first ever launch, and possibly the last shuttle night launch! Follow the SDO tweetup events with the #SDOisGO hashtag, and I’ll be posting here as well. UPDATED AGAIN: My photos will be uploaded to my new Flickr set.

Boom, baby. STS-128 by cma3.

*NERDSQUEE!!*

Categories: astronomy · general
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Why "dowsing for bombs" may land you in jail…

January 24, 2010 · 2 Comments

I ranted a little while ago about the cheap, useless dowsing rods being used by Iraqi security forces to detect bombs. These units, being sold for tens of thousands of dollars each, were being manufactured by ATSC in the UK. It now seems that scumbag Jim McCormick, managing director of ATSC, may get what he deserves, as he’s been arrested on suspicion of fraud.

It is sickening and appalling that these people have made millions of dollars selling fake bomb detectors in a highly volatile area. People DIE when these dowsing rods ultimately fail. The news media is being far to generous is supposing that these detectors “may not work.” They are based on a pseudo-scientific concept that fails objective testing. James Randi, and later the JREF, has tested numerous dowsers under controlled conditions, and not one has succeeded better than chance. As can be expected, the JREF has responded to this story (twice). Rebecca over at Skepchick also weighs in on the harm of dowsing, including the following important investigative report on British TV:

I have little to add to the story except to say, score one for reason if these devices actually get recalled and if McCormick is properly punished. Seriously, these ATSC people have either completely bought into the myth of dowsing, or they are immoral jerks that have no place in decent society. And that’s being polite…

Categories: skeptic
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AAS Reports: The Allen Telescope Array

January 20, 2010 · 3 Comments

The first official day of the conference, my collaborator and I spent quite a bit of time hanging out at the poster group for the Allen Telescope Array. Although they work at a different frequency regime than we do (check out my PAPER episode at 365 Days of Astronomy for more about our project!), we do share some personnel and technology and, as it turns out, science goals.

The ATA is a centimeter-band array of 42 six-meter dishes with the central goal of pushing the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence further out into the galaxy. However, SETI is not the only goal for this array, as it is poised to become a general survey instrument and do all kinds of astrophysics along the way.

The SETI search has begun with a Galactic Center Survey. This survey looks for very narrowband signals, as one might expect to come from a non-natural source. Of course, there are intelligent beings emitting narrowband signals right from our own planet, so the initial survey picked up 421,432 signals! Scientists keep track of man-made radio frequency interference (called RFI) and can avoid obvious, known signals, dropping the count to 10,060 candidates. These move on to the second phase of processing. The ATA uses two beams on the sky (that is, it looks at two places at once.) If the signal is seen in both beams, then it must be local. This knocks out about 75% of these candidates. Further schemes involve immediate re-observation of candidates and a finer search for known, man-made signals. As you can expect, since we haven’t heard about it on the news, these methods knocked out all the remaining signals, so ET has not yet been found. But the survey has just begun!

ET signals are not the only time-dependent, or transient, signals of interest to astronomers. While naturally occurring signals are rejected from ET searches, they are scooped up for scientific study. Slow radio transients are sources that occasionally burst with emission, not as often or regularly as a normal pulsar (a rotating neutron star with “hotspots”). These were first detected serendipitously, but more systematic searches are underway as radio surveys become more standard. These sources can be intermittent pulsars, X-ray binaries, and other interesting astrophysical phenomena. Scientists at the ATA have already overcome a number of calibration hurdles in order to begin their science observations. (Just getting the data is only the first step… a lot needs to happen before the data can tell us anything interesting!)

The ATA can also be used to probe the Galactic magnetic field. Measuring magnetic fields is notoriously difficult in astronomy, as we can’t directly go out and probe various regions. One important tool is the polarization (or orientation of the EM fields) of radio emission. Quite roughly, as polarized light passes through a magnetic field, it is “spun around” or re-oriented, based on the frequency of the light in an effect called Faraday Rotation. By measuring the polarization of a source at multiple frequencies, information about the magnetic field can be extracted. A recent study using this technique with the Very Large Array significantly constrained models of our Galaxy’s magnetic field, and produced a very cool rotation measure map.

Taylor et al. 2009, ApJ, 702, 1230. The Galactic Plane goes through the center of the projection.

The astronomers at the ATA have been able to confirm some of these results and plan to extend them with the telescope’s multi-frequency capability. My collaborator, Danny, was especially excited about this since PAPER will have to deal with polarized emission from the Galaxy and beyond as well!

There were a bunch more posters in the ATA section, so be sure to browse their abstracts and the official websites at the SETI Institute and Berkeley’s Radio Astronomy Laboratory.

Related: AAS Wrap-up: Personal Perspective and the Big Stories

Categories: astronomy · science
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Carnival of Space #137

January 18, 2010 · 13 Comments

The Carnival of Space has finally made it’s appearance this week.

When the carnival players first showed up, I was lost in a beautiful, idyllic world called Pandora, inhabited by those tall, blue Na’vi and lots of fantastic (and fluorescent) creatures. But as I stepped out of the theatre labeled “Avatar”, leaving my 3-D glasses at the door, I came back to the real world (and my inbox) to remember that our universe is pretty wonderful as well. And this is exactly the point made at Martian Chronicles, our first stop at the carnival, who tells us How to Cure the Avatar Blues; so head there to take some time to wonder at Earth’s own beauty to start.

Our planet itself is by far not the only source of wonder. Go outside on a clear night and just gaze up at the treasures of the universe. The objects may be distant, but the beauty can be experienced first-hand. How big is space, really? Get a bit of a feel for it at Astroblog, where you can see The Southern Cross in Stereo and find out what it would look like if you “hopped over” to Alpha Centauri.

Humans have begun to reach out into this vast ocean of space. Kentucky Space takes us to a new center at Morehead State University which is Creating Kentucky’s Future in Space”. As NASA’s space shuttle approaches retirement, you can celebrate its achievements by participating in a Fan’s Choice Poll for Space Shuttle Commemorative Patch at collectSPACE. The lovely Astropixie celebrates human spaceflight as well as we wait for Hubble in 3-D to obliterate Avatar 3-D’s box office performance. (Well, we can hope!) But in order to get the public in general to care as much about spaceflight as we do here at the carnival, it’ll take some marketing savvy, as discussed in TED Friday: Rebranding Space and Education at Habitation Intention. We should just be sure to avoid any Risks of Manmade Sun Explosions as described at Next Big Future as we move along.

There is one man that we have been celebrating pretty specifically for a year now who realized the beauty and grandeur of our solar system: Galileo Galilei. Revisit Galileo’s Discovery of the Moons of Jupiter at Steve’s Astro Corner. Today, we know much more about those tiny points of light as they are extreme, and sometimes violent, worlds of their own. Visit volcanic Io in great detail with a paper on Verifying a new model of Io’s atmosphere by simulating multi-spectral observations at the Gish Bar Times. And once you are bowled over by that, check out Another dose of Martian awesomeness by the Bad Astronomer, with some truly breathtaking, high-resolution images of sand dunes from a neighboring world. Go explore Mars from the ground through the camera of Opportunity with The Road to Endeavor as she says Farewell, Marquette. Don’t forget to break out your red/blue 3-D glasses for the full experience!

Like the characters of Avatar, let us take our journey through our fantastic and awe-inspiring universe to the stars. You can fly to Messier 80 with Simostronomy, where we re-discover T Scorpii, Our Long Lost Friend. Just watch out for supernovae on your journey, as We Are All in the Gutter tells us about
A new, bigger kind of boom. Nevertheless, a supernova is still a pretty thing from a safe distance. We’re reminded that the universe is truly large enough to entertain us for a very long time as the Spacewriter shows us A Cosmos of Galactic Content. Our universe can be entirely bizzare with even just A Simple Look at Black Holes and Their Affect on Light and Mass at Weirdwarp. But it’s not so weird, as the Q & A of the Day at ChandraBlog reassures us that we’re not actually inside a black hole.

Don’t forget to share the wonders of the universe with those around you. One great way to do this is through astrophotography. WillGator.com tells us about the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2010 contest, which is sure to serve up even more wonderous astronomical goodness. Another way to share the cosmos is actually with humor! The Angry Astronomer is starting a series on Astronomer Humor, so do check that out. (Are you taking submissions, Jon?) And finally, get a chuckle at an amusing out-take from next week’s Cheap Astronomy podcast. Someone with audio skills really needs to auto-tune/remix that for some real fun.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s tour of the cosmos and realize just a bit that the real world is often more marvelous than anything we can dream up with our fiction.

Photo credits: The Suss-Man on Flickr, Kara Allyson on Flickr, Hubblesite.org, saturn.jpl.nasa.gov, NRAO/AUI, Space Ritual on Flickr

Categories: astronomy
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Something to read… and something to listen to!

January 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment

First, as I mentioned earlier, check out the Carnival of Space #136 at Simostronomy. There’s an update on Spirit, more news from the AAS, and the usual spaceflight goodness.

Second, I had a great conversation with Mister Payne for the Religion of Curiosity podcast, and the episode has just posted. This is a really great show that genuinely, curiously explores many questions about religion, so check out all of his shows! I haven’t listened to this episode yet*, but we talk about my beefs with Catholicism, why I consider myself to be pretty laid-back about my atheism these days, astronomy, bellydancing, etc. It was a really fun conversation so I hope you enjoy listening in.

*And I probably won’t… I hate how I sound, or my accent, or my word choice or something… so once something is published, I can’t go back and listen to it without cringing!

Categories: astronomy
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AAS Wrap-up: Personal Perspective and the Big Stories

January 10, 2010 · 2 Comments

What a crazy ride!

I am finally recovered, mostly, from the big American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC, that occurred last week.  What a ride!

For me, the conference started off with a teaching workshop put on by the Center for Astronomy Education on interactive learning methods in “Astro 101.” As I start to sort through those notes, I’ll be able to write more about it. Suffice to say, it was wonderful to see that many interactive methods which were used in some of my favorite humanities classes are applicable to the large, lecture-hall-filling introductory astronomy classes.  Some of the exercises brought more questions out of me than they answered, but I have yet to even teach my first class… so time will tell.

The conference itself was just a whirlwind of activity. I made it to a number of the main talks, but very few of the small talks. I made it around to many, but not all, of the posters that I wanted to see.  A typical meeting has maybe a hundred posters each day, and maybe a dozen or so 5-minute talks going on at any one time.  You can’t do it all.  Walking around the poster session, I found myself having lengthy conversations with presenters or running into and having conversations with people on the floor at random. This is great for my research, for my education, and for networking, but absolutely terrible for keeping a schedule! But that is what made this conference great. Even at my own poster (the research one) I spent at least half an hour poring over the details with my collaborators, and we probably scared off at least one of the judges that was supposed to come by for the student competition. (Sorry!)

I also hardly slept. The conversations spilled out of the conference and around the dinner tables at nearby restaurants, then to the bars! I found myself out every night with such wonderful people, then had to drag my butt up to make the 8:30am talks. But who needs sleep when you are surrounded by so many great people?  I managed to work in some quality pub time with Phil Plait, a mini-reunion of 2004 Socorro summer students, a tweet-up with Pamela Gay and friends, a night of finishing the DSBK website while at the bar, and a particularly entertaining evening at the hotel bar with my friends and Neil deGrasse Tyson. And that was before the “real” party on Wednesday night which was, as the kids say, “off the hook.”

Check out my Flickr page for some visuals!

The Big Stories

Some of the big topics were already covered quite well by the science news sites and blogs, so I’ll do a quick roundup here before I delve into my own notes later.

Kepler

The Kepler mission made a splash with its first science results.  With just a few weeks of preliminary data, the team has discovered 5 exoplanets, studied variable stars, detected weird planet-sized hot objects, and identified many candidate planets. Read up with Universe Today, Star Stryder, and Astroengine.

Magellanic Clouds

The Spitzer Space Telescope released a gorgeous image of starbirth in the Small Magellanic Cloud, as covered by Bad Astronomy. UVa’s David Nidever and Steve Majewski used the Green Bank Telescope to show that the streams of gas being pulled away from the Magellanic Clouds by the Milky Way are longer than was previously thought. Galactic cannibalism at it’s best can be found over at Universe Today.

Bolden’s NASA

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden made a big splash with his talk, which I missed, but I was able to catch up via Twitter. I can’t comment since I wasn’t there, but Phil Plait and Pamela Gay give excellent summaries and reactions. (My first response to Bolden’s call to get children to look through telescopes would be, look over here!)

Gravity Waves

NANOGrav, a method for detecting gravitational waves by timing millisecond pulsars (MSPs), got some good press that was picked up by Astroengine. I love seeing this story, but I’m biased since a) it involves radio telescopes and b) I know a few of the team members and they are super brilliant people. Although this particular collaboration is relatively new, these people have been crunching away on pulsar timing for years now and have been perfecting their techniques, just waiting for a great chance such as Fermi and its ability to detect new MSPs.

The stories don’t end there…

And there was so much more! I’m sure the upcoming Carnival of Space will include a smorgasbord of new discoveries that were announced at the AAS, and I’ll be following up with my own notes on topics that didn’t quite make it to press. Til then… cheers! To honor… ;-)

Part of the 2004 Socorro Summer crowd, the coolest REU ever: Kirstin, Chun, me, Yancy, Kelley, and Ben.

Categories: astronomy · general · science
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From one astronomy party to another

January 6, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Still at the AAS being completely and happily overwhelmed. I can’t wait to write up some of my notes ad reactions, but there’s hardly time even for sleep! So for now, I’ll send you over to the latest Carnival of Space and remind you to check out the cool updates from all the other astronomy blogs over there on the blogroll, as well as the Twitter updates (#aas or #aas215). :-D

Categories: astronomy
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Dark Skies, Bright Kids – The book!

January 4, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Forgive me, I’m sleep deprived, and it’s just the first night of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC. (Check out #aas and #aas215 on Twitter. If you really want to sink your teeth into the event, Astrosphere will be live-streaming a bunch of talks and press conferences!)

But I will press on sleepily for a short post… the Dark Skies, Bright Kids project at UVa is putting together a book! To learn more about this great outreach program being developed by Dr. Kelsey Johnson and a number of post-docs, grad students, and undergrads at UVa, come to our poster on Tuesday (445.01).  I promise, once the website is up and rolling, I’ll post a link here as well.  One of the group members, Laura Jackson, created some lovely artwork to explain various astronomical concepts in English and in Spanish to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders.  The rest of the DSBK team pitched in to create a booklet, of which we will have a few copies to give away at the AAS.  If you are interested in astronomy outreach to this age group, please come to our poster and check it out. Here’s a teaser:

You know the drill… click to embiggenate!

Categories: astronomy · education · outreach