dirty space news

we can't always take ourselves too seriously, and the universe likes to remind us of this sometimes.

which is why i'm sharing with you one of the best astronomical follies i've come across in recent times. today someone brought to my attention a recently-submitted research paper on hickson compact group 31, a group of small galaxies gravitationally interacting with each other. the paper shows an image of the galaxies in a way i've not seen before:


hahaha! and if that wasnt blatant enough, they changed the color scale and showed the image again later on in the paper!


this is not the only unintentional astronomical knob gag i've seen... the radio image below of the well-studied galaxy, M87, reveals "spectacular and complex structure" in the galaxy that is 50 million light years away.


and last but not least, this is an artist's impression of the XMM-Newton telescope:


amazing(ly detailed!)!

i guess i'll never be too old or "professional" to enjoy a good knob gag! do you know of any others?


UPDATES and CONTRIBUTIONS:

a fellow astronomer, who writes at dark matter sheep, shared with me his image of the cone nebula. here is the published pretty picture, which is pretty good:


here is the version my friend accidentally created in an attempt to make a mosaic. the image caused them to rename the cone nebula: the "knobula!"



telescoper peter coles, who writes at in the dark, has kindly contributed this image of the actual XMM telescope (most phallic design ever?):



"You'll be interested to see these massive space cocks known by astronomers as Herbig Haro objects... this one's even animated!" according to the wiki page, herbig haro objects "are formed when gas ejected by young stars collides with clouds of gas and dust nearby at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second." couldnt have said it better myself!



"no list is complete without Smolčić et al. 2004." indeed. this isnt an actual telescopic image of an object in the universe, but it certainly fits in with today's phallic friday theme! the graph shows the "colors" of thousands of stars. a color is the difference between the light output in one imaging filter compared to another.



we've had an entry from an astrochemist, which i'm going to allow. he explains "Seemingly, these two large molecules experience strong interactions between each other. In solution, they like to pair up and... self organise. To quote the paper, one of these molecules requires "the presence of suitable partners.""



"There is also the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph, or PNS. The logo looks phallic enough but they actually call it the P-N-S just to make sure..."



andy lawrence writes, "The only suitable reply I feel is John Peacock's redshift space correlation function, which you can find at this link. I think you will agree that it reminds one of something that goes nicely together with those cosmic phalli."


this is science people! and i'll point out that most of the contributions to this post have been made by professional astronomers, well beyond graduate school levels of academia. this post also brings a whole new connotation to the slogan of astropixie which has always been "i prefer the hard truth, not a comforting fallacy."

reflection nebula: m78

the astronomy picture of the day recently featured an amazing image of M78, the 78th object in the messier catalog.

M78 is a stellar nursery; a large cloud of gas and dust where new stars are born. the bright regions of blue and white show surfaces of gas clouds that are being illuminated by young stars. there are probably only a couple newborn stars that the produce enough light for the clouds to glow. the dark patches show dense dust clouds that block this light from our view.


M78 is about five light-years across - it takes light five years to go from one side to the other! you can view M78 through a small telescope, but remember that the image you see is what this reflection nebula looked like about 1600 years ago because M78 is about 1600 light years away from us and it takes that long for light to travel from there to here!

i'm significant!

more calvin and hobbes.

a new image for einstein?

i'm not sure why i find this so funny.


via fresh photons

how genetics works

hilarious.


via flowing data

linkage

the london sperm bank has pretty much the best logo. ever. (thanks for bringing this to my attention, marcos!)


the bad astronomer, phil plait, has been teasing us for ages with his i-cant-reveal-it-yet new tattoo, but now you can watch the video clip from his appearance on LA Ink where he gets his tat. looks great!

sixty symbols has its own facebook page now, so go ahead and join if you enjoy the series: sixty symbols facebook page.

if you havent yet seen the rube-goldberg-inspired video by OK Go, take a couple minutes to enjoy!

are you vajazzled?

i will always be a vajazzle virgin.

to witness this weird spectacle, here's a NSFW-ish video.

i'm still feeling traumatized by the discovery of this uncomfortable-looking phenomenon that must be ridiculously expensive.

forced perspective

this forced perspective image by alexandre duarte from the patagonia region of argentina is one of the better ones i've seen.


who needs photoshop?

yogurt vs. gasoline

or... bike route versus street route in NYC. who do you think wins the race between the neistat brothers?

vague scientist

a comic from collins comics (click for full view)

london in color in 1927

color film was very rare in 1927, which is partly what makes this silent color film of london so great! the film was created by Claude Friese-Greene who gives written commentary on the many common landmarks of london he shows. the one that made me laugh starts at minute 1:40 when he shows the greenwich observatory, and describes who astronomers are and what they like to tell you!



also, i wish more people wore hats on a regular basis today.

earthquake in chile, telescopes seem undamaged

during the wee hours of the morning, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake hit chile southwest of santiago. there are several major observatories in chile which house some of the largest telescopes on earth. the gemini-south telescope lives at the southern-most observatory, which is about a 7 hour drive north of santiago. a friend has reported that he could feel a rumble at the telescope, but no damage occurred as a result of the earthquake and observations will carry on as normal tonight! i havent heard news from the other observatories, but they all live several hours farther north of the earthquake epicenter.

the earthquake generated a tsunami that is currently propogating across the pacific ocean. it is set to hit hawaii at 11 am local time. i have several friends using telescopes on mauna kea right now, and some in airplanes traveling there, so i'm sending positive thoughts their way! i'll keep you posted on any news as i hear it.

the big picture has an early set of photos from chile.

UPDATE: aside from some power outages and lack of communication soon after the earthquake, no major telescope facilities have suffered damage. the ESO facility in santiago reports no damage. the university in concepcion is another story... news from colleagues is that people they know working in concepcion have relocated to stay with friends in other cities (mainly santiago) until the infrastructure is fixed a bit. read more at SarahAskew.

facebook friends

i just received the strangest and best facebook friendship request from a complete stranger that i could imagine. ever.

So here's the story... All of our dogs (Bernese Mountain Dogs) are named after astronomers... First was Tycho, then Zoey had "Galileo" in her registered name. Next was Ptolemy, shortened to Ptolli. Then Jago was registered with "Bernoulli" as her name is Welsh for Jacob... Then we took in a rescue whose name was Brandy. Giving Brandy a new start in life, we transitioned her name to Mandy and then 'Manda and then Amanda... After Amanda, came Tosca, named for Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. So, just thought you might like to know that "somewhere out there" is a dog named after you! ;-).

i accepted.

mental calculation

the looks on the faces of the students in this 1895 painting by n. bogdanov-belsky are wonderful. i love moments when everyone is really focused on trying to figure something out. they are counting in their heads and feeling hopeful and confident that they can solve the puzzle shown on the board if they just think a little more...


try it - no calculating aids allowed!


via dark roasted blend

ps. the answer is discussed in the comments, so have a go at solving it before you peak!

rockin' electron microscope

scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) were developed in the 1950s and are widely used in medical science. SEMs have the power to magnify objects hundreds of times more than regular optical microscopes because they monitor the way electrons react with a surface instead of focusing photons of light through lenses to form an image.

below is an image created by chris supranowitz using an SEM. can you guess what the long path is?


its the groove in a vinyl record. awesome!

in an SEM, an electron beam is carefully focused down to the sample. when the beam hits the sample surface, various electrons bounce back in different directions and x-rays are produced. these data are converted into a signal that maps the sample surface, and we see an image as a result.

you can also put your 3D glasses to use and check out the anaglyphs of many different objects featured in the study mentioned above!

up in smoke

design by kontrastt

are you positive?

link

the three types of knowledge

i was in school for a long time. essentially, i never left, its just that now instead of taking tests, i have to create new knowledge, convince my "peers" that the new information is interesting, and struggle to find jobs every couple of years.

as i really began to focus on one field during my phd studies, i realized one particularly fascinating and frustrating fact: the more i learned, the more questions i had! the more knowledge i gained, the more i realized i *didnt* know! and i became acutely aware during the build-up to my PhD defense that there were lots of things i learned in classes that i'd already forgotten, and all sorts of topics that i should review before defending because i felt i didnt know them well enough... overwhelming.

BUT, considering that i am in such a specialized field, i realized just how much potential information existed in the universe that i didn't even know i didn't know!! ... daunting.

according to the blog of steve schwartz, these are the three types of knowledge: (1) the things you know, (2) the things you know you don't know, and (3) the things you don't know you don't know.

the interesting twist is that the ratio of these categories of information changes throughout one's life, and i dont think there exists a "perfect" combination. certainly there is no universal combination that we can all strive for, because we're each so different!

the entire article i mentioned above is hilarious and well worth the read, but i want to share the pie charts here, because they are a nice and clever summary of the possible evolution of the ratio of these three types of knowledge.

this is what we start out with:


and as he points out "this chart is not to scale; the red slice is unimaginably large."

then we move on to the goals of education. learning more should mean there is less you don't know, right?


but in reality...


hilarious!

in my opinion, the real goal is to be curious... to be aware of what's going on, to question why, to investigate the things that interest you, to recognize things that don't work, and to do what you can to make those things "better" in your local community, or in the world if you can reach that far.

"the cure for boredom is curiosity. there is no cure for curiosity."
-- dorothy parker

dancing birds

how can beautiful birds dancing to michael jackson be this funny?

house of snow

this photo is dedicated to my family, who have received several massive snow storms in the last couple weeks, while all the precipitation i get in england is rain, rain, rain, and snow that doesnt stick.


via neat-o-rama

a brief history of pretty much everything

i used to make little flipbooks inside my notebooks in school, but this is pretty much the ultimate one!



thanks mike!

t-shirt war

rhett and link have a clever stop animation t-shirt war!



rhett and link also produced a funny facebook song several years ago, and the cornhole theme song!

the food of chiang mai, thailand

i've decided to dedicate a whole post to photos and stories of the food that i encountered in chiang mai, thailand. as anyone who knows me or has traveled with me knows very well: i enjoy a good meal. my uncle once commented that i have "a healthy appetite" after i stayed with their family for a week, so you get the idea: i'm a fan of food. and chiang mai has been a culinary highlight of my travels!

i was mesmerized by the choice of ingredients...


... that she pounded together inside the big tree trunk for a spicy salad. everything is spicy hot.


corn and red beans in your yogurt?


most apartments around the city lack kitchens, so people either create makeshift stoves on their balconies, or eat from the plentiful street carts. the food is cheap, tasty, unidentifiable (mostly), and always available!




frog's legs ready for frying....


mango sticky rice - YUM!


smoothie me!


night markets occur most nights all over the city and of course offer lots of variety of food too! how many ways can one attempt to spell "sausage"?


she yelled at me for taking her picture... continuously... until i bought some of her tiny fried eggs.


i'll try anything wrapped up in such a leaf!


i spent one long, food-full day at a lovely cooking class!




the specialty of the day was learning to make curry paste. no matter how much you think you can take, always add WAY LESS chili than they suggest! also, remember to wash your hands several times after chopping chilis. i forgot once and i couldnt feel my nose for 30 minutes after i accidentally touched it. painful!!




we sat in little classrooms for lessons before attempting to create the tasty dishes.


best dish of the day!


the dessert was good too, though!



KFC appeals to the thai clientele by adding a nice layer of green worms to their sundaes...?


liquor counts as food, right? cheers!