astro
catdynamics | October 24, 2006Here is the provisional membership list of the NRC review committee for the Beyond Einstein program
Interesting bunch. Looks cosmology heavy to me.
catdynamics | October 20, 2006Friday, rainy friday.
We go back to the Fountain of All Wisdom, and ask the Mighty iPod a more refined question.
Oh, Mighty iPod: are there gauge fields, hidden in the Standard Model, which show up as extra hair on astrophysical black holes, and could we see evidence for this in measurements of multipole moments during monitoring of Extreme Mass Ratio Inspiral events?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Winter - Vivaldi
The Crossing: Gilsbakkaþula
The Crown: Used Cars - Ani DiFranco
The Root: Bílavísur - Björk
The Past: American Idiot - Green Day
The Future: Sorted for E's…
catdynamics | October 19, 2006There are a lot of news on the space science front:
ranging from SETI's new "Sagan Center", through APL becoming a NASA field center to the "new improved National Space Policy, with Extra Classified Sections"
I'm way behind, so go browse NASAwatch for now, may catch up on the details in a few days at most. Hah.
Have to say though the "go to the Moon, greet the Chinese, and shoot them" quip I heard from a space policy admin earlier this year makes much more sense now. Wasn't funny then either.
UPDATE: - figured I ought to put in some details. A lot if shamelessly trawled from NASAwatch over…
catdynamics | October 16, 2006Magnitude 6.6 earthquake on Big Island.
Sounds like Kona and Waikiki got the brunt of it.
Anyone heard if there is damage on the mountain?
All the telescopes ok? The Keck mountain web site seems to be down.
UPDATE: sounds like minor telescope drive/mount damage at Keck 2
- see Brad Holden's comment.
No injuries, Keck 1 looks ok, Keck 2 is down for a few days at least (and there is the issue of flights in and out of the island...).
No word on UK or Japanese observatories, or CFHT. Am figuring they're in similar shape to Keck.
Hope they had earthquake restraints on their mounts.
CHFT web…
catdynamics | October 13, 2006Happy friday the 13th!
We ask the Mighty iPod a more serious question for the occasion:
Oh, Mighty iPod - are there gauge fields, hidden in the Standard Model, which show up as extra hair on astrophysical black holes, and could we see evidence for this in measurements of multipole moments during ring down measured with gravitational radiation?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Carnival of the Animals: Elephant - Peter and the Wolf
The Crossing: My Feelings - Twin Sisters
The Crown: Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
The Root: Thing Called Love - Bonnie Raitt
The Past: Everywhere - Billy…
catdynamics | October 12, 2006Who ordered that?
A couple of years ago, Prof Buzasi at the US Air Force Academy, mentioned he had acquired a new toy...
"The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs has obtained a 4m-diameter, lightweight telescope from the discontinued Space Based Laser project. Originally designed and constructed for space, this segmented telescope is being reconfigured for use in a ground-based facility. The current optical design is an afocal Mersenne configuration with an extremely thin (17mm) glass primary. The telescope has 312 fine figure actuators for active shaping of the…
catdynamics | October 11, 2006Had fun attending HEAD in San Fran last week.
Came away with some impressions...
GLAST is really on an upswing.
Spacecraft is delivered, launch scheduled, first science meeting planned (before launch?!), and there was a lot of vibe about the prospects.
Suzaku has some interesting results. I was too slow to pick up the CD-ROM of the early data release, ah well, next meeting.
Con-X rescoping concept is formalized. Cuts quite a but of capability, especially at the higher end of the energy range, for relatively modest cost savings. Of course delays and stretching eat cost savings faster than…
catdynamics | October 9, 2006As many of you know, the Beyond Einstein mission line is being sent to Thunderdome to see who survives a meeting of the Dreaded NRC Committee To Be Named At A Later Time.
Apparently the mission teams may have to present their case in as little as three weeks, which is causing some interesting consternations, especially since what they have to present is not yet defined, which makes sense since no one seems to know yet who the committee members are. Or if they know, they haven't told me (HINT!).
But... I learned The Critical Piece of Information:
the cost of the committee is split 50:50…
catdynamics | October 6, 2006The SWEEPS survey of distant stars in the galactic bulge has finally announced their findings.They found 16 transiting "hot Jupiters" with the Advanced Camera for Surveys synoptic imaging of a field towards the center of the Milky Way.
Five of the planets are ultra short period (day or less) and likely to be Very Hot.
Possibly ablating, and puffy. This is a puzzle in some ways.
Number of planets found is consistent with that expected from local population, so going further out
(10-20,000 light years in this field) we keep seeing that sub-population of hot massive planets.
So planets are…
catdynamics | October 3, 2006The Academy has spoken, as expected the NASA COBE mission measurement of the cosmic microwave background won the Physics Nobel prize, with the award shared equally by John Mather at NASA Goddard and George Smoot at Berkeley
Congratulations!
This is a well deserved award, although I expect several people will be wondering why they weren't recognised for their contribution to the mission's success with a share of the prize (and that of course is the problem, arguably several people were comparably worthy in being the third recipient, and there are never more than three people named).
COBE was…
catdynamics | October 2, 2006What is National Security Presidential Directive 31?
Repost:
I saw some slides from a public NASA HQ presentation made a few weeksmonths ago.
It was on the timeline for the Terrestrial Planet Finder, and the Navigator program beyond that.
On one slide, there's a footnote - NSPD Jan 2004. with a quote from that directive that I paraphrase:
Use advanced telescopes to detect and characterize planets outside the solar system
Now, 2+ years ago I had a conversation with a guy from NASA HQ.
I wanted to know why the Beyond Einstein program had been deprioritized and Navigator (as it came to be…
catdynamics | September 27, 2006Via NASAwatch - NASA administrator Griffin replies to the American Astronomical Societies' Six Questions On NASA Priorities and Processes
Read it.
Interesting, tempered, with interesting conceptual holes.
1) the "mission balance" is not just different size missions, it is also different sub-fields.
If there is any desire for a long term broad space science program, then there needs to be a balance between sub-fields, not just mission classes.
2) there is serious disconnect on the "workforce crisis".
There is a very frustrating "MBA mentality" which seems to think that science expertise is…
catdynamics | September 25, 2006One of the topics at the Pale Blue Dot workshop last week was detection of technological biosignatures.
Serious discussion on everything from "I Love Lucy", early warning radars, and Dyson Sphere's to isotopic signatures of fission waste disposal in main sequence stars. The latter is stranger than you think - consider Przybylski's Star.
My particular favourite is the prospect of finding a pulsar, or several pulsars - preferably millisecond pulsars; with a period derivative exactly equal to zero...
So, I got to thinking. What can we actually see on Earth from space?
This.
Artistics…
catdynamics | September 20, 2006Cassini reminds us of home. It is a very pretty picture...
Spot Earth in there?
Pale Blue Dot.
PS - this is from within the solar syste,.
To do the same for a terrestrial planet around another star is million times harder and 10 billion times fainter.
On the other hand the Cassini camera is small and the Earth is resolved in the image.
catdynamics | September 19, 2006 A panel of scientists strongly endorsed NASA's plans to return to the moon, saying in a report Tuesday that lunar exploration will open the way toward broader studies of the Earth and solar system.
Did they now. And who was on this comittee...?
Ah
catdynamics | September 19, 2006A couple of years ago, some research groups reported preliminary indications of Methane of Mars.
At very low concentration - about 10 parts per million - but in the highly oxidised Martian atmosphere, methane has a short lifetime, and any amount implies either an unusual recent event, or ongoing production. There aren't that many ways to make methane...
Allen from JPL discussed this issue.
I think the suggestion that it was suit ventilation from the secret alien base was meant jokingly; but methanogenic subsurface bacteria would do to produce the flow of methane necessary to sustain that…
catdynamics | September 19, 2006Pale Blue Dot trucks on, some very interesting discussion on biomarkers and remote sensing, and ongoing plenary sessions on science and media relations and the current state and evolution of science journalism. UScentric, but very, very interesting.
Good turnout by science journalists, btw, both old pros and students.
Raymond Pierrehumbert is now giving a very interesting talk on long term habitability and the long term evolution of the atmosphere, prospects for continued habitability and implications for exoplanet detection.
The issues are the usual. The atmosphere evolves, and there needs…
catdynamics | September 18, 2006It is true that for life to prosper, it is best to prepare fertile soil.
That is best done by spreading a lot of bullshit.
catdynamics | September 18, 2006Interesting poster at the meeting by Richard Carrigan on data mining infrared surveys to constrain, or detect, the presence of Dyson Spheres around nearby stars; or other Kardashev class I++ civilizations.
Short version - he looked through IRAS data.
Nothing jumped out, but the fainter sources are hard to discriminate, and there are anomalous infrared sources...
Long versions, we need to think about this more, and it is worth occasional data mining of mid-infrared sky surveys, which are going to be done anyway for real scientific purposes.
People do this occasionally, because they can…