Welcome to my series of posts about my research trip to South Africa in June/July! See also parts one and two and three… (As usual, all writing on this blog is solely my opinion and does not reflect the attitudes of any of my projects, institutions, colleagues, etc…) June 24: Field Work Begins I was…
I’ve had “The Art of Being a Scientist: A Guide for Graduate Students and their Mentors” sitting on my desk for some time now. It looks to be a fascinating and useful read, however, I was deathly afraid that I was “too late” to open the book and get anything from it. I mean, I’m…
The Carnival of Space is back with edition #182 at Next Big Future after a month-long hiatus. It includes this lovely flyby of Phobos by Mars Express: And I am back after a week long hiatus during which I was writing LOTS and LOTS for a dissertation year fellowship application. Keep your appendages crossed for…
Finally got a chance to watch this fantabulous Lady Gaga spoof about a grad student’s worst nightmare…
In honor of the UVa Astronomy grad students who took (and, I have no doubt, passed) their qualifying exams this weekend, a link forwarded around by one of our professors about how taking a test can actually enhance learning. Believe it or not, it’s not just a hoop to jump through! A flaming hoop. With…
I have written about some interesting highlights from the annual National Radio Sciences Meeting of URSI in Boulder, CO, and would like to finish that off with a topic near and dear to my brain: radio astronomy through the ionosphere. Low frequency radio astronomy has enjoyed a resurgence in the last few years, partly driven…
The American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle is in full swing, so the astronomy news is going to be flying this week! One of the first press releases is one I’ve been looking forward to for weeks. Several UVa and NRAO astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole in a dwarf galaxy! I actually heard about…
(With apologies to Duck Tales.) My recent skeptical confession prompted the bad-ass-ness himself, Phil Plait, to call for people’s skeptical stories on Twitter. The abbreviated format allowed for cleverness, rhyming, and some careful thought about what to say. The response was AMAZING. Almost 500 people shared their personal stories, from the “aha!” moment to the…
I’m still around. Promise! The last few weeks have been super busy with travel, being sick, and work. Coming up in the next few weeks are my thesis committee meeting, a regional conference for my grant, a bellydance workshop, and a class project to design and guide, and generally trying to keep my project moving! …
The SpaceWriter is this week’s host for a great Carnival of Space, with lots of features on manned space flight, past, present, and future. This topic is clearly on everyone’s minds, with a new President in the White House and the anniversaries of three of NASA’s greatest losses this week. Go and read the sobering…
On March 22, 2013 we found out that many NASA EPO programs will be suspended as a direct result of US budgetary sequestration. We are proactively working to raise money to make sure that CosmoQuest can continue to support its staff and its programs.
Your donation will support science education that produces science!
Total Raised: $3,385 (as of 2pm CDT, 4/18/2012)
I’m a brand new post-doc in astronomy working as part of the CosmoQuest team. My thesis focused on radio astronomy instrumentation. That means, I got to build cool telescopes that will open up new frontiers in the universe. I also love to teach, both in a classroom setting and informally. I'm happy to talk about the universe with anyone who will listen, and I am skeptically curious about all things.
