Cosmic Vertigo

I'm pleased to announce the LAUNCH of my new space podcast, Cosmic Vertigo, made with co-host Alan Duffy and our amazing producer Joel Werner.

"Do you ever feel dizzy when you think about the incomprehensible scale of space? We call that feeling Cosmic Vertigo. Welcome to a head-spinning conversation between two friends who study the sky for a living."

Rest state: Alan and I cracking up (Photo: ABC/Radio National)

The three of us had a lot of fun creating this series, and I'm in awe of Joel's editing and production genius.

Dream Team: Alan Duffy, Joel Werner, and yours truly (Photo: ABC/Radio National)

The first two episodes are now LIVE with a new one released every two weeks.... so GO LISTEN and COMMENT and SUBSCRIBE wherever you get your podcasts!

the gravity of new life

the rumour is that the LIGO project has detected a significant signal of gravitational waves originating from two distant black holes orbiting each other and merging together!

a big press release from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) is scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016 10:30 AM US EST).  you can WATCH the news of the project update HERE.

so what are gravitational waves?  PhD Comics explains them very well in this video:



and if you're curious about how we detect these amazingly weak gravitational waves?  check out this post by Markus Pössel.


in other major life events... i'm 40 weeks along and ready to meet my tiny baby ANY TIME NOW!  very exciting :)

All 5 bright planets up in the morning sky!

all of you early risers may have noticed the lovely line of bright planets across the sky in the morning hours before sunrise lately.  definitely get out and have a look between jan 20th and feb 20th for a spectacular view, no matter where on earth you live!

you'll need to be able to see low on the horizon to spot mercury until early february or so, but you can do it if you have an unobstructed view!

this alignment of the planets has not occurred for over ten years. it's rare because all the planets have to be on the same side of the sun in their orbits.  while venus, mars, jupiter, and saturn have been in the morning sky all year, mercury is just getting ready to transition from being visible in our evening sky to being visible in the morning sky.  hopefully the visualisation below makes that clear.

via The Conversation

so... get out early and LOOK UP! 

collecting SAMI galaxies

I've been up at Siding Spring Observatory visiting this beauty this week.

The dome of the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope

I enjoy walking around the dome's catwalk to see the views in all directions.

Hello from the catwalk!

 The first night provided a lovely (cloudy) sunset.

But then the skies cleared BEAUTIFULLY for most of the observing run and the Milky Way glowed brilliantly across the early evening sky.

We have been using the SAMI instrument during this run to observe over 100 galaxies so far!

Perched at Prime Focus with SAMI

Kristin was the telescope operator for the beginning of the run. Here she is with the original control panel that was installed 40 years ago!  while it still looks roughly the same - systems and displays have been upgraded over the years :)

we had some time for enjoying the clear night skies while exposing with the big telescope

The Magellanic Clouds and the AAT dome. (Credit: Jesse van de Sande)

Milky Way (Credit: Angel Lopez-Sanchez)

And we may have started to write a few songs for "SAMI - then Musical"  ;)

astro anecdotes

there are all sorts of astronomy folklore stories passed down through generations of astronomers.

did you know that the 107'' telescope at McDonald observatory has bullet holes in the primary mirror?

Six bullet holes in the primary mirror of the 2.7m telescope at McDonald Observatory.
Photo credit: McDonald Observatory.

I used to observe with that telescope all the time during my PhD and it was always fun to walk down the solid tube to see the "damage" up close.   the six holes only block 1% of the light and were filed smooth and painted black to stop any reflected light from invading the observations!

there is a blog now dedicated to recording all these stories i keep hearing over a beer at the pub - and many more i havent yet heard in person!

you can read them all here: astro anecdotes.

Observing Galaxies with SAMI

I've been out at Siding Spring Observatory for the last week observing galaxies for the SAMI survey with the 4-metre Angle-Australian Telescope (AAT).  Here's the story. 

arrive at siding spring observatory and hope to see crisp blue skies above the telescope dome.

check the instrument hardware

plug the optical fibres into SAMI field plates.  each of the silver ones will look at individual galaxies. the orange ones look at sky. 

hope that you get to go for a ride with SAMI at prime focus (spot the astronomer!)

take a walk around the catwalk to enjoy the view of the warrumbungles and check the sky

get comfortable in the control room, where you will spend most of you waking hours for the next many nights. (there are a lot of monitors around!)

check the software to make sure it works (SAMI uses python mostly)

check software that talks to the instrument (SAMI) on the telescope

take some calibration frames and look at the raw data to check that it looks ok.

once the sky is dark and the stars are shining in the all-sky camera, focus the telescope and start collecting photons!

enjoy seeing those squiggles in SAMI raw data - gas in a distant galaxy! Each horizontal line is a single spectrum ("rainbow fingerprint") from a different place across the face of a galaxy. The very bright white streaks are cosmic rays, while the vertical dotted lines are glowing gas in Earth's atmosphere. squiggles show gas doppler shifted as it swirls around the center of the galaxy far, far away.

a quick reduction of SAMI galaxy data! each bundle on the right covers a single galaxy and has 61 individual optical fibres looking at a different spots across each galaxy. the left shows a quick reduction of the spectra collected from the light in each fiber. the squiggly lines show gas emission in the galaxy (hydrogen, nitrogen and silicon here). a single exposure points at 13 galaxies for a total of 800 spectra!

replug the fibres in the SAMI field plate in the spooky light of the middle of the night.

start to get goofy in the wee hours of morning by noticing you blend in with the couch.

and again the next night, unintentionally!

take a walk around the mountain during the days to get some sun and enjoy the views!

adding it all up, this observing run was 5 nights long, during which we collected new data for 84 galaxies!  that means we have 5,124 individual spectra.  woohoo!

the SAMI run continues for another five nights, but my shift is finished and i drive back to sydney tomorrow.  time to get back on a day schedule. 

siding spring obs fires: one year later

watching the natural process of regrowth around siding spring observatory after the fires that swept through exactly a year ago has been fascinating.  AAO's zoe holcombe took all these photos and i put them together to directly compare the detail.   

the trees all look fuzzy!

on the news!

just before the starfest weekend at siding spring observatory, channel 7 sunrise national news morning program sent their weather team to site to feature all the great views of the recovering landscape and cutting edge astronomical technology.

this video shows all the footage from siding spring, condensed into a 12 minute collection.   can you spot edwina's major faux pas?  she apologised afterwards, sort of, but we all screamed off-camera when we heard her say it!

also, i dont remember feeling so short standing next to her!   she had heels on her shoes, but seriously, i look small.  remind me to wear some higher shoes next time!



fun stuff!

Sunrise news crew and several AAO staff

siding spring observatory open to the public!

excellent news - siding spring observatory is now open to the public!   all hazardous building materials have been removed from the site and most potentially dangerous trees have been removed and are continuing to be monitored.  

Regrowth at Siding Spring Observatory #SSO (Credit: Matthew Colless)

A long recovery begins (Credit: Matthew Colless)

sources tell me that the skymapper telescope took its first observations this week, after the bushfires swept through in january this year.   the angle-australian telescope (AAT) has been observing since late february, mostly in remote observing mode with observers stationed in north ryde near sydney.

Green begins again (Credit: Kyler Kuehn)

some astronomers have been traveling up to site to work on equipment and see for themselves what has happened.  researcher kyler kuehn took this footage from the catwalk of the 4-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope.   it's amazing how quickly green is growing again. 




hazzah!

the moon, mars, saturn and spica

we managed to get a few good shots around siding spring observatory this week, including the lovely trio of mars, saturn and spica! 

the dome of the AAT 4-meter telescope

Photo Credit: @mehmsy

you can see the AAT dome's silhouette in the lower left.   the top of the triangle is a mars, the bottom right is saturn and blue star at the bottom left is spica.  what struck me about this conjunction on the sky was how obviously the distant star spica twinkled through the atmosphere while the mars and saturn shined unflinchingly.

Photo Credit: Gabriela Iacobuta

Photo Credit: Gabriela Iacobuta

you can see the coalsack dark nebula right in the middle of this lovely image.

Photo Credit: @mehmsy

and because i never get tired of watching these creatures hopping around and eating grass....

Photo Credit: @mehmsy

high atop the parkes radio dish

during the routine maintenance period this week, we got to climb high up to the focus cabin of the parkes radio dish to see what the receivers that we are using to collect data actually look like!

to get to the focus cabin, first we have to go onto the dish (if only i had a cup of tea ;)

up there is where we're climbing!

the incoming signal from a distant source bounces off the dish and gets focused up where the receivers collect the signal. radio waves are electromagnetic radiation, just like light you see with your eye, but they have longer wavelengths and carry less energy. any electromagnetic signal with a wavelength over 1 millimeter is a radio wave.

since radio waves are much weaker than optical light, the signal needs to be amplified through a whole series of electronics that i honestly don't completely understand. but i'll show you some photos anyway ;)

happily up at the focus cabin!

the cabin has two stories - it doesnt look so big from way down on the ground!

the receiver you can see the top of in the photo above looks like this:

the engineer who is giving up our tour has a last name of armstrong, and in the true aussie fashion of shortening words and giving everyone nicknames, they call him "army" :)

the multi-beam receiver we are using this week is this beast, which is kept at a cool temperature of 18 Kelvin (-255 Celsius = -427 Fahrenheit!).

of course we climbed on top of the focus cabin to enjoy the view...

and then climbed back down.