Ever wanted to drop in on a bunch of space nerds discussing the top stories of the week? Of course you do. You are reading this blog.

All of the episodes are now also archived on CosmoQuest, where you can watch the show live, every Thursday at 18 UTC. Find your timezone for next week here!

Also, I’ve been dumping some personal videos that I’ve dug up onto YouTube. Here is a panorama of the PAPER-South Africa site from June 2011:

There’s also my skydiving video that was on VHS (thank you, Tim, for converting it!) and some “Occupy” and related protest footage from recent travels. I figured, why not share the bits.

So… just as I was saying how I need to spew forth words into a thesis by April… I’ve also joined SkepChick as a new blogger! I figure, if I just keep writing and writing and writing in different places, something good will come out. Right?

In any case, I’m honored to join such a creative, fun, smart, and nerdy group. My first two posts focus on exoplanets and aliens, as I get right into my favorite topics.

Also, I finally posted a blog again on Discovery, this time about the very cool APOGEE project that has had its first observations.

And in one more announcement… the Weekly Space Hangout now has a home on CosmoQuest! Thanks to Pamela Gay’s impressive coding-fu, you can now go to one place for the hangout, live Astronomy Cast recordings, Questions with the Bad Astronomer, live virtual star parties, and whatever other astronomical goodness we can stream into your eyeholes.

Citizen science online is catching on these days. Not just for your screensaver anymore, these projects let you get your hands dirty, metaphorically speaking. You can classify galaxies or fold proteins.

I am really happy to share this project which is now in beta and building a community for astronomical research: CosmoQuest.

The first project, Moon Mappers, is underway, where you can classify surface features from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s images of the Moon. Get started with crater classifications, or pit your visual recognition software (aka your brain) against a computer.

CosmoQuest is more than just a place in which to play with data, though that is pretty cool. It’s a blog, a community forum, and a place to learn and share. And, it’s growing, so join in now! Coming soon are projects mapping the surface of asteroid Vesta and the planet Mercury.

Also, I am very happy to say that I will be working for CosmoQuest as a post-doc in a few months. That’s right; #WillAstronomForNoms was a success, and I’m going to be Pamela Gay‘s clone! Or something like that… we haven’t worked out the genetics yet.

So, I’m pretty excited, and I’m also trying to finish my thesis so I can get there! Lots. Of. Words. Wheee! Target defense date is sometime in the first week of May. So when I lose my mind between now and then, you know why.

Aaaannnnddd… back. In Charlottesville. The last week and a half saw me in two of the most fun cities I know and at two different conferences presenting my thesis work and all kinds of other professional stuff. Crazy.

You can get a nice sense of the week’s astronomy and space stories by watching the weekly astronomy video chat:

Thanks to Google+ master of the universe, Fraser Cain, we’re doing a live chat about astronomy every Thursday at 10amPT/1pm ET (that’s 18 UTC; check here for your local time.) You can ask questions in the chat during the event or watch the recorded video after it’s done. Last week, I called in from the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, and was graced with the presence of such stellar people as Pamela Gay, Phil Plait, Jon Voisey, Nancy Atkinson, Alan Boyle, Emily Lakdawalla, and Ian O’Neill.

If you watch closely you may catch wind of some excellent personal news that I will blog about shortly, if you don’t already know… Also, with the last month of Serious Work® under my belt, I’m making a return to blogging, at least occasionally, over at Discovery Space News. My latest article on the APOGEE project, built at UVa, is forthcoming. AND, I have some other news about blogging to share in a bit… TEASE.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the video!

Greetings from Boulder! I’m at the National Radio Sciences Meeting of URSI, listening to lots of talks on radio astronomy and geosciences, as well as madly finishing my own talk which I gave yesterday.

I just had to share this cool website that was in one of the talks in the education section of the radio astronomy session. The Long Wavelength Array is a telescope in New Mexico that is being developed to study very low frequency radio waves from the cosmos, just a bit lower in frequency than the PAPER project that I work on. They are at a point where they can image the entire sky every few minutes seconds*, and they are making these images available in real time. Check out what the sky looks like at a few 10s of megahertz right now at LWA TV.

Here is the sky at the time of this draft:

The circle on the left is the entire sky overhead. Note that, as it is late afternoon in winter, the Sun is fairly low in the sky. The color scale ranges from dimmest (blue) to brightest (red). The Sun isn’t all that bright, though that is partly because it is low in the antenna “beam” where it is less sensitive. However, even when it is high in the sky, it does not necessarily dominate. The circle on the right represents the polarized emission from the sky at these frequencies.

Cyg and Cas refer to Cygnus A and Cassiopeia A, the two brightest radio sources in the sky. I love these two, as they are the first things to pop up in our own PAPER images from the Northern Hemisphere. Cygnus A is actually an active galactic nucleus, or a supermassive black hole that is eating up material around it, spewing out jets of high energy material since it’s a very messy eater. If you zoom way in on Cygnus A with something like the Very Large Array, you get this gorgeous image:

Cassiopeia A is a remnant from a supernova, or a massive star that exploded at the end of its lifetime. To the VLA, it looks like this:

And those are just TWO of the THOUSANDS of radio sources in the sky. With more data, more averaging, and improved techniques, radio astronomers are drilling further down to fainter and fainter sources in these low frequency maps. But point sources aren’t the only things to see. That dotted line across the middle represents the Milky Way, our own spiral galaxy. Unlike the starlight that we see in visible wavelengths, however, what we see in the radio is emission from electrons, tiny charged particles, as they spiral through the galaxy’s magnetic fields near the speed of light. Really cool.

With realtime data like this, the LWA and other such projects will open up a new dimension to the radio sky: the time domain. That is, with such an all-sky monitor, we’ll have records of radio sources that flare-up brightly, some of which are still unexplained. The sky is actually a huge area to search, and strange things may be happening when we are not looking. We’ve only seen the tip of the radio flare iceberg, and new tools like LWA-TV will expand our view.

*Whoops! Thanks for the correction, Jake!

Just got home from a whirlwind of family holiday travel, and I’m not even going to put my suitcase away. In a few days, I’ll be leaving again for the National Radio Sciences Meeting of URSI in Boulder, Colorado. I give a talk there on Wednesday afternoon, then I fly out to Austin two days later for the American Astronomical Society 219th Meeting. There, I’ll be at an education research workshop on Saturday morning, and my talk is Thursday afternoon. (Yes, I got *that* slot. Instrumentation, represent!) Looks like I’ll be involved in a splinter meeting about education and outreach on Thursday morning, so you’d better recover from “the party” quickly if you plan on coming! Dark Skies, Bright Kids will have a poster, so come and say hello on Wednesday. I’m sure there will be be some sort of TweetUp during the week as well. Just keep tabs on #aas219. Finally, if you happen to be applying to University of Virginia for graduate school in astronomy, email me! We love to meet prospectives.

I love visiting both of these cities, as they are full of great places to eat, listen to music, get coffee, and enjoy beautiful vistas. Of course, I might be behind my laptop working most of the time that I’m not scientifically socializing, since I have just four more months to finish this thesis. My lovely new headphones from Tim’s parents have been helpful in letting me get my work done with minimal distraction wherever I am. So, don’t make fun of me too much for looking like a radio DJ, okay? This won’t be the first time I’m working from a AAS meeting, however, as one year several of us had our laptops at the hotel bar in a frantic push to finish the DSBK website the night before our poster presentation. Fun times! When Phil Plait is making fun of you for being a nerd, you know you may have gone too far…

Here’s some interesting stuff of note from the last few weeks:

Have a Happy and Healthy New Year by telling ABC that we won’t stand for anti-vaccine ads in Times Square.

Top 10 (or 11) space stories of 2011, according to Discovery News readers. (My sunspot viewing post is #3! Thanks, guys and gals!)

The Bad Astronomer serves up the best gorgeous deep space and solar system and space pictures of 2011. Comet Lovejoy deserves an honorable mention.

Also, science vacations!

If you missed this very lovely post on “Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits,” do check it out. And the nerdalicious follow-up.

George Privon wins at Christmas cards this year. He also explains why astronomers love to increase their signal-to-noise.

Astrobites takes a look at low frequency radio astronomy with LOFAR.

SPARKLECORN!

I got this CD for Tim for Christmas. I nearly died of happiness when this song played in the car.

And finally…

Tim converted my 2002 skydiving video from VHS to something I can actually watch with modern technology! Look at what a youngin’ I was…

Greetings, fellow space nerds and geeks! For the US folks, I hope you have recovered from your turkey coma and are getting back to your regularly scheduled week. We’re getting ready to celebrate the longest night of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, while you Southern Hemispherers approach summer. However you celebrate the impending holiday, I hope its a peaceful and cheery time! Now, on to the astronomical goodness…

Feeling generous? Help fellow astronomy blogger Ray Sanders win a blogging scholarship! Go over to Dear Astronomer for more details, and vote for Ray until November 30th. Ray also has an article on Universe Today this week exploring the bizarre magnetic properties of pulsars.

The exoplanet count tops 700 as Ian O’Neill examines what is counted as a planet and what is still in the candidate category at Discovery News. With all of these exoplanets, many have held out hope of finding evidence of extraterrestrial life in the galaxy. Paul Scott Anderson wonders if extraterrestrial artifacts are lurking in our own solar system, just waiting to be discovered, at Meridiani Journal. (Of course, there are those that believe such artifacts have already been discovered, but, unfortunately, their cases are less than convincing.)

Back in the 18th century, the Titus-Bode Law was used to study the distances between planets, as explained at Vega 0.0 (spanish). A new age of exploring Mars has begun this past weekend with the successful launch of the Mars Curiosity rover. Weird Warp has more on this car-sized robotic science lab, set to land in August 2012. Stuart Atkinson tells us more about the successful liftoff at The Road to Endeavor, while assuring Opportunity that we still love her, too! The landing for Curiosity is set to be pretty spectacular, with a parachute, rockets, AND a crane:

Though Mars gets much of the attention these days, Venus was once a prime target for robotic exploration. Vintage Space looks back at NASA’s very first interplanetary mission with Mariner 2 in 1962. In that same decade, the United States and Soviet Union were racing to get people into space and to the Moon. So why didn’t the Soviets win the Moon race? Colin explains at Astronotes.

Switching to future modes of transportation, listen to Steve Nerlich at Cheap Astronomy on why faster-than-light travel is, sadly, out of the question. Lest you suffer from buzzkill after that, check out a report on carbon nanotubes that may be used for deep space camouflage at Next Big Future. Cloaking devices, activate! Back to the present, Next Big Future also tells us about a report by the FAA on the US commercial suborbital industries.

Turns out, you don’t have to go far from our home planet to encounter bizarre scientific phenomena. Niall at We are all in the gutter explores terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and their somewhat unknown origin.

That’s it for this week’s Carnival of Space! I’ll leave you with a replay of Curiosity’s launch from Saturday morning:

Even though it’s been a few weeks, I still want to bring attention to some of the interesting stuff on the internet that has caught my attention…

via NASA

Earth had a visitor of the rocky kind in YU55 which passed within the distance of the Moon’s orbit. See the radar video from NASA and get your dose of science from the Bad Astronomer. I got to see the asteroid fly through the field of view of the 26-inch telescope at McCormick Observatory, thanks to Ed Murphy, who is my new favorite candidate for space-laser-operator after the great job he did of finding and tracking it.

Then, it’s the Carnival of Spaaaaaace! Latest one is 223 with a fun picture of Apollo astronauts just lounging about.

Chances are, you don’t suck at that thing you think you suck at. Another reason to *heart* LifeHacker.

More solid information on flu vaccine safety and efficacy from Dr. Steven Novella. I got my shot!

Meanwhile, Delta Airlines is running a public “service” announcement by the National Center for Vaccine Information. It actually seems like a disservice to public health, promoting the NVIC’s anti-vaccine agenda. Delta has responded, but they have not yet removed the ad. Elyse from Skepchick has collated all the ways that you can tell Delta that you are unhappy with this, so keep the pressure on.

The Skeptical Teacher, Matt Lowry, encourages us to support Science Debate 2012. See story immediately above this one to be reminded of why science literacy is important in the public sphere. Shouldn’t our elected representatives know their science, too? This group got Obama and McCain to respond to their questions about science policy in 2008.

More on the science behind Celiac disease, or the autoimmune disease that responds to gluten, from “Smaller Questions”.

A really great example of why falsification is important to science, by Barbara Drescher.

George Hrab exposes the idiocy of “77 non-religious reasons for man/woman marriage,” including the silly use of a slash in their title.

The creative minds at Mad Art Lab have gotten hold of a 3-D printer. Only awesome-ness can come from this. Or the robot apocalypse. Or both. Maybe they’ll even make a space laser!

I found this to be a rather poignant essay on the “Occupy” movements and rape culture. (Not found on my own, but found it here.) Also, the Occupy Wall Street protestors were kicked out in the middle of the night, but have returned this evening. Rock on.

For me, last weekend was pretty fun. I went to Philly, spent some time with Tim, hung out with an old college friend with whom I have way too much fun, took a workshop in “Circus Aerials,” and did a really cool historical walking tour. And I took part in my very first TuacaCon! This is a really fun virtual event where authors read their work to you. It’s like storytime for adults! At least some of the segments are posted on the UStream site, so check it out! I got to talk about astronomy and extraterrestrials with P.G. Holyfield for a bit which was really great. He’s particularly interested in astronomy due to a story that he’s working on right now that I can’t wait to read. In the meantime, you can read or listen to “Murder at Avedon Hill” which combines fantasy and mystery in a world that I very much hope he revisits in the future. Also, I learned about Write Or Die. NOW I can finish my thesis.

Speaking of podcasts, I had a lovely chat about astronomy with Kylie Sturgess a while back, at Dragon*Con actually, which she recorded and posted, and I don’t think I ever linked to that. Sorry about that, Kylie! Some of her other recent episodes are from SkepTrack, so you can re-live (or for-the-first-time-live) those panels.

Finally, if that’s not enough to keep you informed and entertained for a while, the James Randi Educational Foundation posted two talks from The Amazing Meeting 9 so far, one by Sadie Crabtree on skeptical activism:

Sadie Crabtree – Winning Hearts and Minds for Skepticism from JREF on Vimeo.

… and the rather spirited panel on space, which contains the “shush heard round the world.”

TAM Panel – Our Future in Space from JREF on Vimeo.

If you’ve made it this far down the page, then you probably have time for this (via Tim).

It’s Friday, not Monday, which means I’m going to load up part 1 of the “stuff that interests me” from the past few weeks. Since I… I missed a couple of Mondays there.

Obviously, big news in the tech world… Steve Jobs has died. Amanda Bauer’s blog brought his 2005 Stanford speech to my attention, and it’s worth a good read, if you haven’t seen it already.

The Carnival of Space is a rotating round-up of the week’s astronomy and science blogging. Shamefully, I’ve neglected linking to it in recent months, so here are episodes 217 and 218 for your perusal.

I showed you this astronomical eye-candy last week…

…and I’m going to mention it again as my favorite astronomy story of the past few weeks. This is the release of the very first images from ALMA, a radio telescope array under construction in Chile. Listen to super-awesome astronomer Alison Peck describe ALMA’s capability on NPR. Meanwhile, Sarah Scoles rounds up much of the exciting outreach material put out by the NRAO in conjunction with the image release.

Of course there is still plenty going on here on THIS planet, not the least of which is “Occupy Wall Street.” Don’t get OWS? I didn’t either at first. But it’s not hard to find out, despite the reticence of many in the media.

If you are a young person hit hard by these financial times, LifeHacker came up with a great list of things you can do to live on less, without becoming a hobo. I thought I might pick up some good tips, but it turns out that I’m already doing many of these. Being a grad student is like being in a permanent economic downturn.

I got this great link on how to overcome writer’s block from Jennifer Ouellette, whose science writing I absolutely love. It’s technically about fiction writing, but I think it’s pretty useful for non-fiction as well. Speaking of science writing, here is why writing about science is so fulfilling.

Live somewhere around Chicago? Like stars? Like camping? Want to become famous for finally discovering Bigfoot? Then you want to come join Women Thinking Free and me for Skeptics Under the Stars, also tentatively known as “Occupy the ‘Verse.” Get all the details from Elyse over at Skepchick. I am really, really excited. So excited, I included it in my semester-ly progress report for graduate school, including the Bigfoot part. (It’s truly amazing they haven’t kicked me out yet…)

As for where I’ve been and where I’m going on a more metaphorical level…

Between insomnia, having some weird flu-like bug, and preparing for and then having a nice long chat with my thesis committee about my present and future, it has been a hectic couple of weeks. The insomnia, as it turns out, is a side effect of the medicine I take to combat anxiety. The lack of sleep then causes more anxiety. Fun, right? At least the treatment for the insomnia has some benefit in terms of the amusement of others, as Tim discovered when he called me several minutes after I had taken Ambien for the night. Though I have no recollection of this, he related the conversation to me the next morning, some of which is chronicled on my Tumblr. I hope you get a chuckle out of this as well. And, YES, I now realize that turtles are reptiles and NOT amphibians.

As for the nice long chat with the thesis committee, I’m gearing up to finish my thesis project with PAPER which actually has a new website. (It’s sparse, but give us time.) As I’m finishing that, I’m gearing up for the next phase of my career. I am on the job hunt for a position that will let me do what I love best, and that is to share science with as many people as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy as the 14+ hours a day I spent developing my version of the “Life Beyond Earth” course at UVa, or trying to come up with new activities for our eager elementary school students through Dark Skies, Bright Kids. I would jump at the chance to encourage an impressionable young undergrad to give radio astronomy a try, showing them the ropes of data analysis. Oh, and I like blogging about science, if you haven’t noticed. Along those lines, I’ve started some job applications that would let me exercise my educator muscles, though I’m far from pressing “send” on any of them. I’ve even come up with a Twitter hashtag to chronicle my journey, #WillAstronomForNoms, so follow along or give me encouragement or send me cookies or something like that.

That’s all for now. Captain Dreadlocks says, “ARRRR… see you soon!”

I was away this weekend at a really fun wedding and with no wifi, but I did manage to write about the stupendous amazing lovely first images from ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array.

And now, the astropr0n…

ALMA shows us what’s going on in the Antennae. Click the picture for a bigger view and my Discovery blog to find out more! Do me a favor and check it out, comment, share it with your friends, etc.