fires near mcdonald observatory

i studied for my PhD in austin, texas and spent several months at the mcdonald observatory in west texas. i saw many beautiful thunderstorms and even some smoke plumes during my observing stints, but never did a full-fledged wildfire threaten the safety of people nearby.

that all changed several days ago when a devastating wildfire blasted through the nearby town of ft. davis. the observatory shared this incredible photo:

shown is the 107-inch telescope, the one i've used for a cumulative 4 months or so, as viewed from the catwalk of the 82-inch telescope that was built in the 1930s!

as of now, the observatory is safe, but here is a link for info on the current texas wildfire situation. best wishes to all!

UPDATE:
the NY Times posted an article with the images below included:

storm, by tim minchin

i'm impressed by the story told by tim minchin's in this beat poem and also the art of STORM the movie.

enjoy!

more from dotAstronomy3

here is an exciting summary of some of the scenes of dotAstronomy3 this week:

.astronomy3 Trailer from Markus Poessel on Vimeo.

and a short video explaining why we managed to wipe out the WiFi network. also, ABBA!

pluto, the previous planet: a song

a couple years ago i was walking to the bus stop with the song "rudolph the red nosed reindeer" stuck in my head, much to my frustration! in order to maintain my sanity, i started singing alternative lyrics based on the phrase that popped into my head: pluto the previous planet! i've been wanting to record this song and post it for the public ever since, but had never really been inspired.

so yesterday during the hack day portion of dotAstronomy meeting, i gathered a few fellow conference participants: astronomers, a great pianist, and an enthusiastic director.... and off we went!

so without futher ado... pluto, the previous planet!!

Pluto, the previous planet from carolune on Vimeo.

as much as i like the song as it is, the last verse might lead one to believe that i would like to reinstate pluto as a planet. i want to state for the record that this is NOT the case! i'm pleased that astronomers have decided on a definition of a planet that is based on some actual physics! the song is just fun and i hope people enjoy it.

with all this in mind, we also developed an accompanying website with a special message from pluto:

"First of all, thank you everyone for your concern, but really, I’m happy in my new role as the original dwarf planet! And there’s no need to worry, nothing physically happened to me to cause my reclassification. In fact, Charon’s been jealous for years that I was considered a planet, while we’ve been dancing around each other in our joint orbit around the sun. And don’t forget about our other two small satellites: Nix and Hydra! They may be small, but they’re important to me. And your Earth only has one Moon, so I feel special..."

here's the website: http://youpiter.org/pluto/

hope you enjoy!

dotAstronomy - Oxford, UK

the third dotAstronomy conference is well underway in oxford's new college! i'll have exciting results to reveal tomorrow from this year's hack day, but for now, here are a few photos of the harry-potter-like venue!

stellar path

not sure who created this artwork, but i like it and saw it at onyx earth

ant in drop of water

this photo of an ant stuck in a water droplet was captured accidentally by photographer adam gormley.

(link)

"Trapped in a tiny perfect sphere of water, this unlucky ant is unable to escape. A sudden downpour gave it no time to take cover, and photographer Adam Gormley was there to snap the image. Adam, from Noosaville, Queensland, Australia, had been photographing spiders in his neighbour's garden when the rain came down. He had no idea there was an ant in one of the three millimetre droplets until he viewed the images later. He said: "I thought it was some dirt inside the drop, and it was not my main focus, I liked the way the drop was sitting on the aloe-vera leaf, with the tiny hairs. When I uploaded the shot to my PC, I viewed it large, and I think I shouted out loud in excitement when I realised what I'd captured by accident!" "

european odyssey

today i begin a very large stretch of travel. first i fly to the UK, stop in my old haunt of nottingham to hopefully finish a couple projects with astronomers i continue to collaborate with there. then i'm off to oxford for the third installment of the exciting dotAstronomy conference series. you can read some of my previous posts about it if you dont remember the fun!

then its a whirlwind tour of universities and institutions to present talks about my recent research results, including: the university of cardiff, the max planck institutes in heidelberg and munich, and then the royal observatory in edinburgh (where maybe i'll get to see some cool first edition books by the likes of copernicus, galileo, and newton), and finally, a bit of holiday.

i think this will be an intense trip filled with lots of fun and lots of science. it will be good to see old friends, visit new places, share my research, and get both positive and negative (i'm sure) feedback about what i've been up to.

i havent had much time to actually get excited about this trip because i've been working really hard to get several projects to a point of relative completeness.... but i'm finally feeling relief and really looking forward be sitting on the plane, except for the fact that i woke up this morning feeling a little ill. boo.

anyway, get ready europe, here i come!

KMOS on the very large telescope

the very large telescope array (VLT) is a fascinating and beautiful set of four 8-meter diameter telescopes in the high plains of northern chile. the telescopes can be used together to create one large interferometer, or they can each be used individually with the unique instruments that have been crafted specially for each one.

A new instrument that will be attached to one of the VLT telescopes in the not-too-distant future (next year?) is the K-band (near-infrared) multi-object spectrograph, or more simply, KMOS.

as part of his backstage science series, brady was lucky enough to get a tour of the instrument as it is currently being constructed in scotland. we are lucky enough that he made a video of his experience that we can all watch!

KMOS is an instrument i'm excited to (hopefully) use one day and this video gives a good idea of how technically challenging these upgrades are (remember, the telescope is already built, this is just how the light is processed after it bounces off the main big mirrors!), and it gives some insight to purpose of the robot on the UK schmidt telescope that i showed photos of a few weeks ago.

enjoy!

flowery milky way

masahiro miyasaka shares gorgeous astrophotos among his flickr pages. as i was flipping though his images, i realized that i chose one last year for my april apparitions gallery for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year project sponsored by the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

looking forward to more great work!

found this time via luminous red nova

the aurora

an aurora is a colorful dance created by energetic particles from the sun interacting with a planet's magnetic field.

i. must. see. earth's. aurora. in. person. one. day!!!

this is just beautiful...

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

star wars is for *everyone*

i was completely disheartened the other day when i read an account of a 7 year old girl who was bullied because she liked star wars so much that she carried a star wars backpack and matching water bottle to school!

apparently some kids at her school think star wars is only for boys and made her feel so bad that she made up excuses for her mother in order to take a *pink* water bottle and blend in with the other girls at school. she didnt want to be different anymore. seven years old and these kids in groups are already absorbing nonsensical gender identifications and bullying other kids to conform.

the mother of the little girl solicited her female readers to share stories of their enjoyment of star wars, which she then shared with her daughter. the article is definitely worth a read.

so, here i am saying not only do i like (the original) star wars series, but i have an entire tag on this blog dedicated to the science fantasy space opera!

to show my enjoyment of how the series continues to inspire, i was going to choose just one of these great posters by olly moss to share. but i couldnt decide on only one and i really like the whole set. (just when i start to think there was no original star wars stuff out there...)

sculptured staircase

cool design!

link

messenger's orbit around mercury

in honor of the MESSENGER space craft successfully maneuvering into orbit around mercury this week, i thought i'd share a blast from the past from sixty symbols. if i remember right, this one one of first videos i recorded with brady :)

es ist wie es ist

it is what it is, it was what is was, and i'm working myself nearly into a stupor right now so i'm prepared as much as possible for what will be soon. life is good at throwing curve balls, and many at once!

(image link)

nuclear reactors in japan

i wanted to share some information about the issues surrounding the nuclear reactors in japan since the massive earthquake and tsunami hit last week.

you can read an informative article by maggie koerth-baker: nuclear energy 101.

or watch below as the professor from the periodic table of videos sits down to have a chat about what's going on inside the nuclear reactors in japan:



here's another video that really shows in the strength of flowing water. its amazing how quickly the volume increases. (thanks to commenter kevin for the public link!)

fun night time exposures

at the australian astronomical observatory, i work with the people behind a project called GAMA: Galaxy And Mass Assembly. my recent trips to the observatory have been to help the team collect data for the project and determine redshifts for the galaxies observed each night.

one particularly cloudy night (at least in the direction where our targets were located), we decided to have some photographic fun with long exposure images! what you see is the dome of the AAT telescope we use, GAMA, a capital greek letter "gama" in green, and the milky way galaxy with the southern cross to the left of the dome (can you spot it?)...

how did we do it?

we sat a digital camera on a tripod on the ground and opened the shutter for about 4 minutes. usually when you take a photo, the shutter opens for roughly a second and then closes again.... viola, a photo! but, you can usually set the shutter to stay open for a little longer if you want, if the target is faint and you want to collect more light, or shorter, if the target is particularly bright and you dont want to saturate the image. the trick is that you need the camera to remain very stable during the longer exposure or else the lights will form wiggly trails.

we had a slightly fancier-than-average digital camera that allowed us to expose for 4 minutes (and by "we" i mean el lobo rayato ;). there was one person up on the dome's catwalk who slowly spelled out "GAMA" (backwards) with his flashlight/torch during the exposure. meanwhile, i was standing next to the camera with my green laser pointer and i made a very quick shape of the capital greek letter gama on the side of the dome below. the rest of the 4 minutes we kept all our lights off so that the stars would come through. near the end of the 4 minute exposure, a flashlight/torch was passed over the whole dome in strips to illuminate it a bit in the shot... or else it would have been completely dark. the result came out really nice, i think!

here's another example of a long exposure photograph. this one was 15 minutes and shows the trails of the stars as they rotate around the southern celestial pole.