creating knowledge

this newly available, post-doctoral freedom in research feels as exciting as it does daunting. how does one create new knowledge? the process of becoming a (phd) doctor is to learn how to learn what no one has learned before. a strange goal.

some people create thru determination. johannes kepler certainly had some mathematical skills - he managed an amazing amount of data and repeated his calculations over and over in order to discover the shapes of the orbits in our solar system. persistence and time, trial and error, worked for him. he knew something non-circular was unfolding before him, but it took a while to identify the ellipses... what excitement to slowly see it happening!

others seem to be on a different initial plane of thought: albert einstein, isaac newton, charles darwin. the ones who looked at the questions and investigated the problems from completely new dimensions - literally!

it's rare to see researchers with such continuous insight. most of us plug away at interesting problems using our favorite techniques, hoping for clever insights to creep into our minds every so often. i like to ensure that my projects allow me to travel to mountain tops and use big telescopes, because i find those adventures particularly enjoyable.

but i wonder... what motivates researchers? the potential of discovering dramatic breakthrus? or merely producing publishable results? i guess we hope for the former while working towards the latter - to assure employment! ;)

i genuinely enjoy thinking about the complicated details of galaxy evolution theory, but i admit i get bored with the day to day statistical systematics. i'm not convinced any activity, job or hobby, completely lacks in tedium. i love cooking, but i still have to clean up afterwards. i'm alright with that though - the good things wouldnt be so good if there were no less-than-good things to compare them to.

we all have the potential to create new knowledge, new art, and new insight. in fact, each unique one of us does everyday... its just that we rarely remember to acknowledge it.

carnival of space #75

the big carnival tent of space is open at the lounge of the lab lemming.

enjoy your space reading!

man's great ancestor

a comic from the perry bible fellowship (which i dedicate to my pops).

american psyche - "naive but bright"

from george saunders's column in this weekend's guardian:

Now is a kind of calm-before-the-storm moment here in America. We have the [...] financial crisis, we have two wars going on, we have a vice-presidential candidate who, in terms of how she talks, she just, what she does is, phrases are added, which what that means, in terms of her meaning? Is, what she does is, puts new ones on, or conjoining, in order so that she, when speaking, can glean closer into that thing, which, hopefully, she has been meaning?

So that's reassuring. It's been a long time since we were led by someone whose command of the language was, in terms of how good he is, or were, no, not so hot, basically ungood, when looking upon it.

But not to worry. America's fine. Although I have, these past two years, made a lot of fun of America, like the smart-mouthed kid in the back seat of the car making fun of his family. Of course he loves his family, of course he believes in his family: he is the product of that family; that family is all he knows. His criticism can be seen as a form of engagement, of intimacy, of love, even.

America is having an identity crisis. On one side: fear, aggression, banality, xenophobia. On the other: hopefulness, humour, confidence in human nature, critical thought. This battle is not being fought along party lines; it is not the case that one party or candidate holds a monopoly on these positive virtues. No: it is more existential and every one of us is fighting it internally. Which country are we to be? The terrified, torturing, isolated bully; or the tolerant, slow-to-anger, naive-but-bright protector-of-the-poor? It's not altogether a new battle: the American heart - hell, maybe the human heart - has been divided along these lines for a long time. But here, in our time, it feels like the battle is heating up. So, as they used to say on TV: stay tuned.

lovely little worlds

these lovely little worlds were created by walter martin and paloma munoz. oddly enough, they remind me of the perceived scale models of real video footage that i posted earlier this week!

glowing-hot carbon nanotubes

a collection of the best microscopic images of 2008 have been put together at national geographic! my favorite is the glowing-hot carbon nanotube factory:

Glowing-hot carbon nanotubes form an expanding orange ball in this image by Paul Marshall of Canada's Institute for Microstructural Sciences, a winner in the 2008 Small World photomicrography competition.

The nanotubes are elongated, hollow cylinders of carbon atoms. To make a carbon nanotube--just 1/50,000 the width of a human hair--a piece of carbon (graphite) must be heated, for example by lasers or electricity. And sometimes, Marshall says, the heated mass of nanotubes grows like a bulb in the spring."

interestingly, the image reminds me of another object that contains glowing-hot carbon that is much much MUCH bigger: our sun! this is an image of the sun *today* from the SOHO spacecraft.


the sun is about 75% hydrogen and 22+% helium, but there is a bit (0.3%) of carbon in the mix!

specifically, i'm amazed at the similarity in the structure of the carbon nanotubes and the pattern of solar granulation seen at the "surface" of the sun. this image shows a sunspot and the surrounding granulation wth an image of the earth superimposed to give an idea of scale (you can fit about 100 earths across the diameter of the sun).


cool! I'm endlessly fascinated by the similarities and differences between the very large and the very small.

oxford, england - part 3 - the meadow

the final series comes from an afternoon walk to the meadow, where animals roam free for all us kids to enjoy!






happy dog!!



and in case you missed part 2 or part 1 of this adventure... or you want to view the whole oxford collection! enjoy!

the moon, pleiades, and venus

they're not in the same part of the sky, unfortunately, but you can see them all over the next few nights.

tonight, the bright waning moon rises just beside the pleiades (tiny little dipper) star cluster, in the east.


just after sunset on the other side of the sky, venus sets close to antares.



northern hemisphere folks can still see the summer triangle quite clearly overhead these days... made up of the stars vega, altair, and deneb.

bathtub gin

here's a short piece by keith loutit showing sydney harbor in a unique way. its mesmerizing how the scenes look like scale models.


Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

observational astronomy: challenges and puzzles

a nebulous nursery lives about 7,000 light-years away from us and is known as the carina nebula.


the carina nebula encompasses such interstellar wonders as the powerful star, eta carinae, and the star-forming region, NGC 3324! the above 50 light year, wide-angle image comes from the hubble heritage project, and reminds me of one of my favorite aspects of observational astronomy; trying to find the particular patterns inside an image that you want to point your telescope to.

for instance, imagine you want to further explore the properties of a dust pillar in the carina nebula, by collecting special observations that no one has previously created. all you have are the coordinates of the object and the Hubble reference image that comes from the larger image above:


you have successfully written a proposal to do the research, you were granted the observing time on the telescope, and now you are sitting inside the telescope dome ready to commence observations. having completed all your calibration tests, you program the coordinates of the pillar into the computer, move the telescope, command the technology to take a data image, and a short bit later, a raw image pops up on your computer screen:


(please note: the raw image directly from the telescope would look black and white, have much lower resolution, and probably not show much more than the stellar points of light**, but stick with me during this simple demonstrative scenario... i simply captured these shots while interactively exploring a wide-field view of carina)

from your telescope snapshot, you expect to see something vaguely like the above hubble image you prepared before arriving at the observatory, but clearly you are looking at something else! oh no... it appears that the pointing of the telescope is not correct by some unknown amount and your job is to sort it all out: find your object in the sky, correct the telescope's pointing, and get on with the collecting data before you've wasted too much time in the night.


so you search around the original wide-field image for hints of the structure you see in the telescope image, keeping in mind that you may be comparing two images with different orientations, rotations, flips, and/or flops (the challenge for anyone interested is to find the two cut outs above in the first image of the entire carina nebula). finally, you think you've identified what you are seeing thru the telescope, so you estimate which direction you must digitally nudge the telescope in order to move it just the right way to exactly image the dust pillar!

most likely you iterate this process until you have found your object!! once the telescope is properly aligned, you excitedly start exposing your image, and sit back hoping nothing goes wrong with the whole setup while you wait to see your data!


each telescope seems to have different pointing accuracies, with each individual telescope performing less precisely when tipped over to more extreme angles. people who own their own smaller telescopes are probably familiar with these issues. the biggest (most expensive) telescopes in the world have teams of astronomers and technicians around, specially trained to understand their particular quirks and tendencies, which makes observing during a night much more time efficient. smaller telescopes (2-4-meter class) generally allow training students and regular astronomers to use them - left to individually discover the quirks and fix any problems that should occur during the night! personally, i find the latter opportunity to be quite fun, most of the time. sometimes its incredibly frustrating if something serious goes wrong, or you cant solve an issue and have to wait for the regular staff to fix the problem during the day!

** the quick acquisition images used to isolate a target in the telescope field of view are generally not able to detect any kind of nebulosity. usually i locate my target galaxies using patterns found in the the bright stellar points of light in the image... but i thought the nebular features were more visually stimulating for this discussion ;)

nighttime timescape

tom lowe has just posted another great short timescape video. the whole thing was shot in california with timelapse motion photography. i particularly like the night sky scenes where the milky way floats across the sky, the clouds passing behind the old trees, and the shot of the very large baseline array (VLBA) dish as it dances back and forth between targets!


Timescapes: Digital Timelapse from Tom on Vimeo

mushy peas and mint sauce

i went to the 714th annual nottingham goose fair last weekend! thats probably the oldest festival i've ever attended! it was a huge carnival with rides, rain, fried foods and games like hook-a-duck. amazingly, i only took one picture, but it seems to summarize my experience:


the website describes mushy peas and mint sauce as a "local delicacy," so of course i had to try it. my serving didnt come slopped on top of chips (fries, to the north americans), rather i spooned it out of a tiny cup. it wasnt as awful as i thought it sounded considering that i really dont like peas - but i did not go back for a second serving!

dropping knowledge

dropping knowledge is an interesting internet project that welcomes people to ask questions on many topics relevant to current global issues, and then receive answers from a wide variety of people around the world. i love the motivational phrase they use: ask in order to understand, answer in order to share.


they provide a nice 8 minute introduction video, but i'd also recommend exploring the questions and answers for yourself. let me know if any particular question or answer especially strikes you.

a decade of the hubble heritage project

last week marked the tenth anniversary of the hubble heritage project, which consistently presents to the public the most spectacular images produced by the hubble space telescope (HST, read current hubble health status: here). to celebrate, the heritage project people released a beautiful image of the intergalactic landscape referred to as NGC 3324:


(explore a zoomable larger image: here.)

to create the color image, they combined a blue-filtered oxygen emission image, a green glow from the hygrogen filter, and a bright red-filtered image of sulfur gas. oxygen gas illuminated by star light glows in the background, while bright red glowing sulfer clouds and dark patches of thick dust clouds protect the factories of stellar birth that lie within them. this nebulous nursery lives inside a larger inferno called the carina nebula, about 7,000 light-years away from us.

jazz and cosmology

if you're near albany, new york on november 1st, check out the black book project by the ten 27 jazz trio.

"An eclectic mix of original jazz compositions and magnificent images of the cosmos from the Hubble Space Telescope are combined in this unique performance by TEN 27 featuring Monica Wilson-Roach on electric cello and bass, Michael Roach on keyboards and piano, and Paul Borrello on mallet-kat and drums."

according to the american astronomical society newsletter, Monica Wilson-Roach wrote the cosmology-based jazz composition in honor of vera rubin - one of my astronomical heroes! vera's perseverance to study the universe, despite being discouraged from studying science because of her womanhood (princeton said "no thanks" to her and all other women until 1975!), helped create a more benevolent atmosphere for me to pursue my studies today!

From Ken Croswell’s The Universe at Midnight (via cosmic variance):

Vera Rubin was ignored, in part because she was a woman. With a certain amount of pain, she recalls that, when she applied to Swarthmore College as a science major and casually told the admissions officer that she liked to paint, the interviewer said, “Have you ever considered a career in which you paint pictures of astronomical objects?” She recalled, “That became a tag line in my family: for many years, whenever anything went wrong for anyone, we said, ‘Have you ever considered a career in which you paint pictures of astronomical objects?’” When she told her high school physics teacher that she got accepted to Vassar, he replied, “You should do okay as long as you stay away from science.” She would later recall, “It takes an enormous amount of self-esteem to listen to things like that and not be demolished.”

vera rubin contributed immensely to our understanding of the composition of the universe. she provided clear observational evidence that something non-visible existed inside galaxies. in fact, she found that there was 5-10 times more of the non-visible stuff in side galaxies than the visible stuff that produced the light for our telescopes to collect!

to do this, she looked at spectra of many galaxies in order to calculate the speed at which stars orbit around their galaxy centers. the speed of the star around the center of the galaxy is proportional to the distance to the center and how much stuff is between the star and the center. this is similar to planetary speeds - neptune moves much slower around the sun than the earth does because it is much farther away. vera measured the speed of the stars at the outskirts of galaxies and realized they moved way faster than they should, after taking into account all the visible material inside the star's orbit. therefore, something else, something non-visible, something dark, "dark matter" existed inside the galaxy to gravitationally speed up the stars rotating around the edges.


i was lucky enough to meet vera at my first AAS meeting while i was still an undergraduate student. the woman who introduced me made it a point to tell me a bit about vera's history beforehand, and i remember being very excited at that moment! thanks for your inspiration, vera!

an ocean of clouds

it's beautiful how these clouds hitting the mountains create the same wave patterns that an ocean creates as its water reaches the shallow shores.

our moon passes jupiter

did you see the bright object near the moon last night in the sky? that was jupiter. look to the south after sunset to see their close alignment again tonight!

oxford, england - part 2

the adventure continues (view part 1, here) from the top of st. mary's church...


the little gargoyle faces all over the city are sometimes eerie and sometimes funny, but always entertaining.



one lonely pink bulding face.


little people eater....




only 300 years late to meet edmund halley (of comet fame).



scenes about town...





an R2D2 builders club!!!!


enjoying a few drinks with the family that welcomed me to town!




view part 1 of the oxford series. still a bit more to come....

the science of love, and the future of women

i've been introduced to anthroplogist helen fisher thru a guest post at skepchick by laura davis by laura without labels. laura shares an excellent review of helen's new book, "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love," which i now want to read.

here is helen fisher giving a talk at TED in 2006. i find her 20 minute video to be an inspiring and charming discussion on the ways we romantically love, especially the second half.

a micrometer from here

the name of this video caught my eye, but i thoroughly enjoyed the short film. the artist, amit zakai, describes the film: "my graduation project, at the HIT israely academy for design, is a comic film measuring daily life in single units and multiplying them by powers."

i particularly like (and dislike) the eyeball part around 3:05... it's uniquely done but makes me cringe, as anything in close proximity to the eye does!


"a micrometer from here" (eng sub) from amit zakai on Vimeo.

oxford, england - part 1

belinda grew up in oxford and took me along for a weekend family visit! shenanigans ensued....


belinda drives.

glad i'm not driving.



gorgeous old victorian homes.


evidence of belinda's existential phase of youth!







when belinda first told me the name of this bridge, i heard the "bridge of size." and i thought to myself, "but its not really that big!" then i read the little sign and realized my mistake... the bridge of sighs - oh! that name made much more sense when i heard the story of the original bridge of sighs in italy. still, i dont understand why the british didnt give this one their own, less depressing name!




a couple characters in front of the bodleian library


a rather large key hole!




annoying uber-tourist!

more to come...