astro
catdynamics | February 9, 2007President's proposed 2008 NASA budget all glorious 623 pages, in full colour PDF.
So, where to begin:Here is the slide version for lite readin'
NASAwatch has a good summary of links, including Griffin's spin
Science opines
The bottom line is roughly as Science notes - the story is in the out year projected budgets, where there is a cumulative shortfall of ~ $2.5 billion over the next 5 years. (That is about 70 tons for those keeping count).
Science attributes these to STS and ISS cost overruns, but that is not quite accurate. The shortfall is because of the rapid development of the "…
catdynamics | February 9, 2007Friday, and it is still freezing.
Much has happened since last friday, so we humbly approach the mighty iPod and implore it respectfully to guide us...
What, oh mighty iPod, is now going to happen with the Hubble Space Telescope?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Atomic - Blondie
The Crossing: Run through the jungle - Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Crown: Aginst Th' Law - Billy Bragg & Wilco
The Root: Maria - Tonight - Three Tenors
The Past: Here Comes Santa Clause
The Future: Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits
The Questioner: Hrogning eru að Koma - Bubbi
The House: Night…
catdynamics | February 7, 2007Mmm. With 48 hours to go for the extended Hubble proposal deadline, about 360 new proposals have been received.
A lot of these will be reworked ACS proposals, noting that if they only get 4-10 times more orbits, they could mostly do what the ACS could do with, but with WFPC2...
And some will be innovative and important proposals to use NICMOS or WFPC2 to do science of lasting value... ;-)
UPDATE: if I read the latest correctly, they offset the phase I proposal numbers, so that the late proposals start at 1000 - in which case only just over 100 were in wednesday night. Which seems plausible.…
catdynamics | January 31, 2007Congress today takes on an omnibus continuing resolution spending bill for 9 out of the 11 appropriations for the current fiscal year.
The bill proposes to continue funding for agencies at the 2006 level, with all earmarks stripped out.
PS: I was wrong, House used earmark funding to bump a few programs, especially NSF and DoE.
NSF did really well.
NASA not so much.
On the one hand, this is sensible - it bypasses the trap left by previous Congress of dumping impossible draft appropriation bills on the new Congress part way into the financial year; and it cleans house by stripping out billions…
catdynamics | January 31, 2007There is absolutely no truth to the rumour circulated at coffee this morning that the failure of Hubble's Advanced Camera power supply was due to impact from pieces of a Chinese satellite
I have, however, not been able to refute rumour that a golf ball sized object may have been responsible...
That will teach them not to use a six-iron in Low Earth Orbit
catdynamics | January 31, 2007Big Boom.
Just like the Good Old Days!
Sea Launch has a bad day
Via NASAwatch
catdynamics | January 30, 2007Neil de Grasse Tyson on The Daily Show now.
He is very good. Jon is on form also.
catdynamics | January 29, 2007If you haven't been reading you e-mails, the Hubble call for proposals that expired last friday has been retroactively extended until Feb 9th so people can try to revise their ACS proposals to use WFPC2, or to edit out use of ACS parallels, or to submit new science, including additional proposals to use NICMOS, WFPC2 or FGS. Or theory/archive proposals.
Out of the almost 750 proposals received, almost 500 were primary ACS proposals. Ouch.
In addition there are several multi-year large ACS surveys under way, like Julianne's - also the hunt for type Ia SNe at high redshift to detemine dark…
catdynamics | January 29, 2007Ok, it is really official Space Telescope news on ACS (dynamic web page)
Spare power electronics popped, not recoverable, may not be repairable.
They're looking to see if they can run the ACS SBC only off the A-side electronics (which failed last year, which is why the ACS is running on the spare).
also on NASAwatch
This is bad. Could really muck up the current jobs round, ACS must fund 1-200 postdocs.
If they can switch to A-side, it sounds like only the Solar Blind Channel (narrow field ultra-violet imaging) can be used, not the optical wide field or high resolution cameras.
Argh.
Full text…
catdynamics | January 29, 2007News item at NASA HQ website:
The B-side power supply on the ACS has crapped out
Not good, since they switched to it when the A-side went flakey.
May be fixable. Or not.
PS: there was a 3pm telecon on the status of HST today
if anyone was on it, let me know what they said. If there was anything new.
Because of the servicing gap, and general old age, there are only three cameras working on the Hubble Space Telescope right now, and no real spectrographs.
The primary instrument is the Advanced Camera for Surveys, a wide field (by Hubble standards) very high spatial resolution optical camera. It…
catdynamics | January 26, 2007Ok, so it is five proposals, not four...
Three are in, one should be heading off any minute now, eh?
And the last seemed to be in good shape. Could actually be done an hour or two early.
Must resist temptation to go back and "fix" any of the "done" proposals... it just causes trouble.
Hey, who got the highest GO number? We were at ~ 400 at about 3 pm, with five hours till the deadline!
For the uninitiate, today is the deadline for Hubble Space Telescope proposals.
These are primarily observing proposals, although there will also be a number of archival and legacy proposals which mine…
catdynamics | January 25, 2007
An astonishing Saturn composite image (warning: Very Large JPG)
See CICLOPS for more
catdynamics | January 25, 2007the 26th of January, 2007 at 8pm EST
is when Cycle 16(!) Hubble Space Telescope proposals are due
Hope you remembered to update your Astronomer Proposal Tools vs 16,
and you will want your new latex science justification templates
and remember to actually check what they say in the call for proposal itself
I think I'm on 4 this year, which is on the low side.
Mean success rate is around 1/8, which is not so good, eh?
More later, if I get time to chat.
catdynamics | January 18, 2007There is a curious phenomenon in our general subject of study, which I have anecdotally noted over the years.
Some sub-fields self-reinforce, people working in them are all very impressed with each other, they all think, or say, that what everyone else is doing is terribly clever and they're all doing very impressive research and we're all just so important and good.
Now, this is an over-generalization, but it is true, for example, that most cosmologists, or string theorists, will tell you how all the others in their field are really better than anyone else in other fields, and how even if…
catdynamics | January 17, 2007Ok, we did a press release at the AAS, it was basically rehash of the old Exotic Earth result from September, but with new improved simulations and a Real Paper (in press) to go with it this time. AAS press office picked it out, and you don't say no to Maran if he asks, dood knows what he is doing.
So, Astronomy picked it up. Front page on their web site right now (direct link here).
Cool.
Avi and Sean did all the hard work, of course.Illustrations are from Nahks
catdynamics | January 17, 2007First Hubble Fellowships awards are out, haven't heard how many were made.
NSF Fellowships should be announced early/mid next week.
I hear that Chandra selection cmt met and they hope to make offers next week.
Rumour Wiki continues with news
catdynamics | January 16, 2007The Astrophysical Data System, sponsored by NASA, is hideously useful.
It is, essentially, a searchable database of all the astronomical literature, of all time, with links to current and past papers (some current papers are behind subscription walls for fixed or indefinite periods), and to the arXiv preprint archives, and to a lot of the online astronomical databases and catalogs, like searchable sky catalogs and object databases, at all wavelengths at that. Some articles are searchable, either in the abstract, or full text searching.
Everything imaginable, almost, is cross-linked and…
catdynamics | January 16, 2007GRBlog provides a handy live feed of the Gamma Ray Burst circulars - the GCN notices.
Same bunch has the Texas Supernova Search online. Using ROTSE-III(b) to find optical supernovae, piggybacking on the gammar ray burst optical transient searches.
catdynamics | January 16, 2007The Astro Rumour Wiki page has gone hyperactive as rumours flood in.
But, no word still of the Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra Fellowships?!
Getting late in the game.
If you heard, comment, rumourmonger on the wiki, or e-mail me.
We gots to know.
catdynamics | January 12, 2007I never knew Brian May wrote that...
Via NASAwatch we find the following
..."We will find what we believe are the lowest priority half-billion dollars in content, and we'll extract it, across the agency," he says, stressing that does not mean programs at the core of the redirected U.S. space program as defined by President Bush almost three years ago.
That is Griffin, talking about how NASA will keep the Crewed Exploration Vehicle development on track if Congress sticks with a continuing resolution for the 2007 budget - which would keep NASA's budget at the 2006 level, with earmarks deleted…