astro
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…
catdynamics | April 29, 2010NASA loses a balloon in the outback
The Nuclear Compton Telescope (PI Boggs at UCB's SSL), a soft γ-ray telescope designed for balloon launch, observations in the stratosphere, and recovery, crashed because of a wind gust during an attempted launch in Australia earlier today.
ABC News (Oz) on youtube
NCT is an wide field imaging telescope with polarization capability.
Science goals were galactic nuclear emission lines for studies of nuclear synthesis in supernovae, and γ-ray polarization studies.It flew last year out of the SFBF in New Mexico - guess they were going after southern sources…
catdynamics | April 26, 2010Beware the pig-like Kanamit.
It's a cookbook!
The real problem is that nobody reads the literature anymore.
There are many Solutions out there, no matter how screwy
Next thing someone will come up with the clever solution to the Fermi Paradox that they have become too introspective and just play silly role playing games all the time...
catdynamics | April 2, 2010Final day of the Exoplanet Rising workshop.
Start off with migration theory, then scattering and collisions.
Finish with tidal destruction and future observational prospects.
Lubow and Malhotra.
Then Thommes and Armitage.
Followed by Ogilvie and Traub.
Then we are done.
This is a public service announcement: Extreme Solar Systems II - Sep. 2011
Announcement went out a few days ago and pre-registration for the meeting is nearing capacity. If you are contemplating attending, then pre-register ASAP, please.
Lubow is up first.
Migration is still an issue, even if most planets maybe don't…
catdynamics | April 1, 2010Exoplanets Rising continues theoretical rumination, as we contemplate formation, migration, water delivery and evolution
Johansen and Lissauer on oligarchic models before lunch.
Then Mayer on collapse of Too Big Too Fail blobs before Chambers and Raymond return to rocks bashing into each other.
Finish with Mardling looking at the subtleties of tidal evolution.
Ok, Showman and Dobbs-Dixon did the whole giant circulation thing early this morning, but I wasn't here for that. It is all online if you like that sort of thing.
Good review by Anders on dust bunnies and the irritation dust causes.…
catdynamics | April 1, 2010Surprise discovery announcement at the Exoplanet UpRising workshop!
In a dramatic change in schedule, Fieffe Menteur, a junior researcher at the French Academy for Keplerian Exoplanets broke embargo and revealed the first discovery of a habitable exoplanet!
Dateline 2010-04-01:
The object, tentatively named Matsya seems to be a warm Super-Ganymede, orbiting a Warm Giant Planet, tentatively named Navistan in the habitable zone of a K3VIz star HD234789 - to be announced as CoRoT-26bc, aka KOI-13bc (according to NASA anyway) in a pair of joint papers to appear in a journal of Science today.…
catdynamics | March 31, 2010Finding and characterizing habitable exoplanets.
Enric Palle on Earth as an exoplanet.
Drake Deming on using JWST to find exoplanets
Then Lisa Kaltenegger on biosignatures
Jim Kasting on habitability and 3D GCMs.
Missed Palle's talk. It is online...
Talked about transmission spectra, reflectance, variability, polarization, red edge.
Caught the discussion, some interesting banter.
On the "red edge" - there will be something like it on any efficient biosphere because plants must absorb efficiently near the peak transmission spectrum of the star, and there must be some heat rejection at some…
catdynamics | March 31, 2010
Workshop turns more to theory: planetary structure, crusts and atmospheres; cooling and heating. Well, it is an Institute of Theoretical Physics...
Adamses Burrows and Burgasser start the morning.
We're promised things will be stirred up a bit more.
Diana Valencia on super-earth structure and composition,
then Chris Sotin on water worlds.
Burrows: interesting figure on estimated core mass of hot giant planets (detected through transits) vs host star metallicity.
Inferred core mass has apparent correlation with stellar metallicity. Higher the stellar metallicity the more massive the…
catdynamics | March 30, 2010Next we review microlensing surveys for planets and then direct imaging surveys.
Scott Gaudi up first on microlensing.
Interesting statistics on preponderance of solar like planetary systems.
Hints of free floating planets seen.
Paul Kalas on direct detections.
Also Graham and Kadsin.
Plus bonus "structure of giant planets" review at the end.
Microlensing:
Rapid fire overview and list of surveys.
If you want a summary of what it is and who is doing it, read the opening slides.
Get statistics of planets in otherwise inaccessible mass-orbit parameter space, but no or limited followup for most…
catdynamics | March 30, 2010Status of CoRoT and Kepler missions is reviewed at the "Exoplanets Rising" workshop at the Kavli Institute, we'll see if there are any news.
CoRoT is up first. Magali Deleuil presenting.
Kepler next with Bill Borucki.
CoRoT nominal mission ends tomorrow!
Extended missions to end of March 2013.
Some camera trouble on CoRoT - done 13 observing runs.
75,000 light curves from long (60 d) stares, 50,000 light curves from short (25 d) stares.
Lots of fun stars doing their funky stuff.
There will be a lot of CoRoT primary science, not just planet detections.
The astroseismologists are really having…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Dave Charbonneau: why transits are cool
Kicking off afternoon session is Josh Winn on transit uses and abuses.
Then Gaspar Bakos on ground based transits.
you get masses, and planetary radii.
Can go to low masses and close in planets, and working to earth masses in habitable zone - Real Soon Now
as Dave says, it will be a current or near future graduate student who gets the first peek at a true Earth
also, transiting planets offer quick opportunity for spectra through differential transiting spectra of the host star.
Should work for Neptunes, then waterworld Super-Earths.
Dave beats up…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Debra Fischer talking about correlations between metallicity and mass of stars and planets
Two samples: Coralie data from Santos et al and Lick/Keck data
need to get uniform sampled subsets, looking at giant mass planets
known (cf Santos et al 2004, Fischer & Valenti 2005, Udry & Santos 2007)
trend to N ~ Z2
for short orbital period giant planets over -0.5
everyone is redoing their analysis, remeasuring Z and making use of bigger samples, longer observing stretches and higher velocity sensitivity (and hence lower mass planets)
surface gravity, g, confounds Teff and Z estimates…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Marcy next, talking about the ηEarth survey with the Keck.
simulations, under certain assumptions, predict a "planet desert"
roughly for mass range 1-10 MEarth and 0.1-1 AU or so
can populate the desert with some fine tuning of migration parameters etc
but still noticeable deficiency of moderate mass planets
very assumption dependent
best tested through observations
cf Lin & Ida, and Mordasini et al.
But, as Mayor just said, there are loads of planets in that mass range in that orbital range...
Keck sample of 238 G/K/M main sequence stars, looking for 3-30 MEarth stars. Quiet, nearby…
catdynamics | March 29, 2010Well, I'm back at the Kavli Institute attending the Exoplanets Rising workshop.
We have a full schedule of talks over the week, and I'll be intermittently blogging the events as we amble along.
Bunch of interesting sounding talk on the schedule, and hopefully some interesting news and discoveries that we will hear about.
We kick-off this morning with Mayor and Marcy, and the Fischer and Charbonneau after the break, looking forward to it.
Not seen planets around M dwarfs with mass less than 0.3 solar masses, but that is likely a bias - lower mass dwarfs are fainter, duh.
Talks will be online…
catdynamics | March 22, 2010So we were chatting, over coffee, as one does,
and we were talking about the nuisance it is when you have Monte Carlo simulations with qualitatively different output branches, and how you can trace outcomes and divergent branches leading to different, and same, outcomes.
The specific examples were binary population synthesis, where you can get a lot of different qualitative intermediate steps depending on contact and time scales. But this should work for anything where there are qualitative state changes or branching physical processes.
Most simulations handle such by setting flags and…
catdynamics | March 22, 2010In six words.
Like this:
"Observe extragalactic Cepheids pulsate.
Measure H0."
h/t David Brin with a special thanks to PZ.
No, not that PZ, the real PZ.
catdynamics | February 26, 2010That is all.
Now get back to writing some bloomin' proposals, you slackers.
catdynamics | February 24, 2010So, who is taking odds on the Hubble Proposal Cycle 18 Deadline being postponed from this friday to next week because of The Upcoming Monster Storm!
Even if it misses Baltimore, as the current track would have it, our genteel colleagues in Boston might be Not Amused.
Of course none of us are betting on a delay, we're rushing to get our proposals done thoroughly and early.
catdynamics | February 19, 2010NASA's SDO destroys a Sundog on launch.
Cool video.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched, successfully, Feb 11th.
On the way up, the rocket crossed a high altitude layer of ice crystals - a wispy cloud - which was showing a Sundog - the rocket visibly rippled the cloud as it passed through - looks very cool.
SDO video link
Full launch video - ripples at ~ 1:50+
see also GrrlScientist
catdynamics | February 19, 2010The Aspen Center for Physics is holding its annual series of winter workshops, with the final, double sized workshop being on the astrophysical topic of Black Holes.
Aspen Center for Physics
Yes, I am there, organizering, Daniel Holz from CV is also here, along with 100+ other luminaries, and, yes, he's also been too busy to blog.
The discussion has been lively and broad, covering everything from formation and accretion of low mass stellar black holes, through to mergers of supermassive black holes, via the puzzle of intermediate mass black holes.
Wednesday evening, Prof. Andrea Ghez gave…