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exciting may weekend!

we have an exciting weekend ahead, over our heads! not only is monday my birthday, but many entertaining astronomical events are occurring as well!

if youre up early either saturday or sunday morning, you'll see the bright planet jupiter rising close to the waning gibbous moon. look to the south about an hour before sunrise:


the international space station (ISS) is currently orbiting the earth just near the line that splits night and day, which provides a continuously beeming bright ISS shooting across the sky every hour and a half! check out the heaven's above website to figure out when the bright ISS passes over your head.


finally.... the phoenix mars spacecraft will be landing on the surface of mars near the mysterious north pole region this sunday!! you can watch the event LIVE on NASA tv from 3:00 - 8:00 pm (i think thats pacific time?). you can also head over to mars live, where chris lintott and doug ellison will guide a guaranteed-to-be-entertaining live tour!

keep amanda weird

there exists a fantastic tradition among the astronomy graduate students at UT: when a person earns a PhD, the rest of the students honor that person by creating a special t-shirt which includes photos, memories from grad school, inside jokes and his or her dissertation research. the t-shirt is informally presented and explained at the official PhD party.

i don't know for certain how long ago this tradition started (any deas?), but the original t-shirts had a single plot from the dissertation and that was all! the rise of photoshop and gimp have initiated the development of quite intricate shirts over the years.

i admit i was super excited to join the PhD club *and* receive my official shirt at my party last weekend. it's a rite of passage, really, and i'm so pleased with the result!!! the front of the shirt generally shares random events from the grad school years, usually presented thru some sort of a theme. since the students found so many pictures of me from this blog and other sources, they chose to show pictures of me eating and drinking in all the places i've traveled to and spent time during grad school with the theme: on the road again!


the top left is me trying hard to keep my beer out of the water during one of our many boat parties on a lake just outside of austin. below that is "flat amanda" followed by my advisor pouring me a margarita while we were in mexico celebrating the wedding of former UT astronomers. on down the line.... drinking in brasil and eating homemade empanadas in chile. the right side features me eating a huge plate of meat in a viking-themed restaurant in sanitago, chile, and drinking a larger-than-my-head-sized mug of beer at the oktoberfestival while wearing my bona fide dirnd'l!

they also thought to include my evolving modes of transportation. although i've never owned a volkswagen, i've always been affiliated with people who have, and joined the austin aircoolers vw gang pretty much immediately after i moved to austin. i owned a car for a couple years, but upgraded to a scooter and a bicycle at some point. several months ago, i sold the scooter so now i'm down to my bike and the city bus system... and i love it (although its definitely summer now in texas so i'm little sweaty whenever i arrive somewhere by bike!)!

the back of the shirt is themed after the astropixie blog! the subtitle comes from cleverly changing a very popular phrase around here: keep austin weird, to "keep amanda weird"!! haha!


if you've been to austin, maybe you've noticed that it's a little weird in general, but the basis of the "keep austin weird" project is to support local stores and style so people can sustain their independent businesses, and the city can retain its unique subtlety without be run over by big money superstores that are frankly.. no fun at all!

the shirt superbly ties in so many memories from grad school, and even includes a tiny little plot from my research on the right.... just under the "science: it works, bitches" banner! as a play on the cartoon that i have at the bottom of the blog, they included several pictures of me "in disguise." they joked that they found way more pictures of me in costumes than they had room to include on the t-shirt... so i guess it's fair to say that i enjoy dressing up ;)

thank you so much amy, marty, andrea and everyone else!!








yippeee :)

living on another planet

here's the astronomy picture of the day today. it depicts what the environment might be like on the surface of the planet (uncreatively named) Gliese 876d. APOD explains:

On planet Gliese 876d, sunrises might be dangerous. Although nobody really knows what conditions are like on this close-in planet orbiting variable red dwarf star Gliese 876, the above artistic illustration gives one impression. With an orbit well inside Mercury and a mass several times that of Earth, Gliese 876d might rotate so slowly that dramatic differences exist between night and day. Gliese 876d is imagined above showing significant volcanism, possibly caused by gravitational tides flexing and internally heating the planet, and possibly more volatile during the day. The rising red dwarf star shows expected stellar magnetic activity which includes dramatic and violent prominences. In the sky above, a hypothetical moon has its thin atmosphere blown away by the red dwarf's stellar wind. Gliese 876d excites the imagination partly because it is one of the few extrasolar planets known to be close to the habitable zone of its parent star.


this dramatic image was created by Inga Nielsen and it's worth visiting her website and checking out some of her other digital art. here are some of my other favorites.

galaxy rise


far behind the skies

animated grafitti

this is one of the coolest pieces of urban art ever... created in argentina and found at blublu.org.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

worry

this weekend my grandparents gave me a book called everyday wisdom, by dr. wayne w. dyer. i just opened to a random quote that reads:

there's nothing to worry about --- ever!!
either you have control or you don't.
if you do, take control; if you don't,
dismiss it. don't waste your energy on worry.

over the last several months, i'd say i spent a fair bit of time worrying about the outcome of my dissertation defense, but as the quote points out... i had control over my destiny. i agree that worry over things i have no control over is pointless, but i feel this goal was something i had control over. focus energy on things that are possible to change.......

phoenix landing

the phoenix spacecraft will be landing on the surface of mars next sunday, may 25th. here's a nice video from JPL describing the landing and what to expect. i'm excited for this event!!

beginning aftermath

the night before my big day... just after i had finally gotten to sleep, a gigantic thunder boom woke me up and completely scared me! the storm last for a while, dropped texas-sized hail and the wind blew the trees around like crazy. i couldnt get back to sleep.... until approximately 6am! turns out that the storm knocked down trees and branches all over town, killing electricity to over 20,000 austin residents! as i walked thru campus the morning of the big day, the atmosphere felt like a twisted fall season where the leaves forgot to turn colors before they fell off the trees to the ground!


i was feeling pretty nervous before my talk started.... but ready to go and get it all over with!!!


insert a successful talk and 1.5 hour closed door session... and then i'm off to the bar to celebrate with my wonderful family!!








tonight is my official party night! cant wait!! woohoo!

reality of doctor-hood is slowing sinking in. what an absolutely amazing feeling! not only the satisfaction of the accomplishment, but the clarity of thought as my mind finally connects all the pieces of info together from all the things i’ve learned and studied over the last many years!

thanks to everyone for all the kind words :)

just call me doctor!

dr. bauer

dr. astropixie

dr. banana

aunti doctor

doctor amanda

keep 'em coming! i'm so thoroughly thrilled and extremely exhausted. incredible!!!!

tomorrow is *the* day!

the big day... defense day... i cant wait for it to happen... and be over! i'm excited and nervous and anxious and ultimately.... ready!!!

many family members are coming into town to support me and celebrate with me, which is so humbling and exciting! thanks to everyone for all the encouraging words. i'll be back to my regular blogging frequency soon!!! yippee!

everything's bigger in texas

yesterday, i saw some texas-sized hail!!




it was a nice (loud) break from this....


(the work, not the beer.)

space walker on colbert

current international space station resident, astronaut Garrett Reisman, spoke with stephen colbert recently in an excellent interview. and just so you know stephen... my offer is still open.



thanks universe today!

grin and bear it!

an intersection about a mile from where i grew up in cincinnati, ohio.

eat food, mostly plants

a couple things i've learned from my own experience and from micheal pollan, author of in defense of food:

i enjoy real food! i love eating with family and friends. i'm most satisfied when i cook my food!!!!

i try not to eat anything my great-grandmother wouldnt recognize (i read ingredients... if there are more than about 5, i usually dont know what they are!)

i dont eat on the go... in a car.... while walking... i like to sit down and appreciate my food!

when i moved back to austin, i joined a locally-grown food delivery service called greenling. every week they deliver a huge box of veggies and fruits, grown on central texas farms to my front door!!!! i absolutely LOVE it! the fresh food tastes wonderful, i pay about $35 a week for whatever has been harvested in the last week, the food lasts me the entire week, i think my allergies have reduced immensely due to eating local foods, i've learned how to cook many new foods that i never would have bought on my own at the grocery store, i havent been sick since i moved back, in general i feel healthy... i must say its one of the best things i've ever done!! and since i am carless, it's amazingly nice to not have to grocery shop with a backpack to carry stuff home!

i walked to the farmers market when i lived in chile and enjoyed learning about new foods that were grown at farms just down the valley, and now i feel like i'm getting a glimpse of what farmers in my area around austin are actually doing. it's great.

anyway, here's micheal pollan speaking at google. the video is an hour long, and it's completely worth it...

dissertation word cloud

an excellent suggestion from chuck, the lab lemming, inspired me to create a word-cloud of the last chapter of my dissertation... in its current state.

actively assembly black blue centers chapter citep citet density downsizing evidence evolution faber07 feedback formation function galaxies gas growth holes identify imaging increase lower mass massive mergers models morphology number observed process provides quenching rate red redshifts samples sequence sfr since spectroscopic ssfrs star star-forming stellar structure study thesis understanding

created at TagCrowd.com

i take it as a good sign that only one reference creeped in there, although the latex command i use for calling references, citep, sure did! can you tell i study galaxy formation and evolution?? thats another good sign!! one week and a few days left until the defense... thanks for the distraction, chuck!

i used tag crowd to create my word cloud.

battlestar democratica

its a clear play on the clever battlestar galactica summary of the first three seasons called what the frak is going on?... nonetheless, here is a 7 min video that summarizes the democratic race to the official nomination...

what's up in may?

from JPL news...

James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti

no words...



how does this ever happen? awesome.

carniva of space - anniversary edition

an amazing selection this week at the one year anniversary of the carnval of space hosted by why homeschool.

i contributed the discussion of some fantastic images of saturn and iapetus.

enjoy!

black hole joke

if a black hole got married, would it still be considered a singularity?


i'm a sucker for a good bad nerd joke.

i saw this one somewhere on twitter this week, but i cant remember from whom... sorry.

saturn and iapetus

here are some fantastic images of saturn that i received from a friend and/or from the jpl cassini website. these images were taken by the cassini space craft using red, green and blue spectral filters then combined to create natural-looking photographs.

i absolutely love the details of the atmosphere that you can see above the shadow of the rings!


the image below shows the moon, rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) in the foreground. the little moon shadow at the upper left in from the moon mimas, and the skewed shadow at the bottom right is from the moon, iapetus [eye-AP-i-tus].


the above image shows some cool seasonal features of saturn. the northern (upper) part of saturn is currently experiencing winter and is therefore cooler on average as it is turned away from the sun more than the southern part. in the northern hemisphere, above the ring shadow, you can see the detailed structure of the gas deep down into the atmosphere, whereas you cannot see such structure at the equator or in the southern hemisphere. this is likely due to two effects: the higher temperatures at the equator and the south, and also the reflection of sunlight. we can see some structure in the southern atmosphere, but it is mostly flushed out by scattered sunlight. photons that reach saturn from the sun are bounced around off the particles high up the atmosphere and reflected back out in all directions. this makes it harder to see the deeper layers....

like when you turn your bright lights on while driving thru fog: you quickly realize you can actually see less than if you just have dim lights on!


here are some great images of the saturn's moon, iapetus. iapetus has a crazy, unexplainable bulging waistline that hasnt been seen on any other planet or moon in our solar system.


iapetus is saturn's third largest moon and has a lot of craters. the big crater near the bottom is about 500 km across! this moon is locked in synchronous rotation with saturn, meaning the same side is always facing the planet (just like our moon - we always see the same side of the moon!). it's not really understood why iapetus has such a strongly 2-toned surface!



cool stuff!

nick dewar illustration

the illustrations of nick dewar are seemingly simple, but still quite intriguing in their subtlety.

be excited about 2009

2009 is the UN-declared international year of astronomy. this marks the 400th anniversary of the first time a telescope was used to look upward into the skies instead of outward across the lands. galileo used his refracting telescope to look at the details of the craters on the moon and discover that jupiter had moons of its own... demonstrating that it was possible for an object, other than the earth, to be the center of *something*!!


this also adds to the long list of reasons why i'm excited to move to the UK... i'll be close enough to venture to the places where astronomy as a science was first practiced... during their celebrations of the international year of astronomy!