30 posts · 20,816 views
we are all in the gutter
30 posts
Astronomy Journal Club
0 posts
Sort by Latest Post, Most Popular
View by Condensed, Full
- December 14, 2011
- 04:37 PM
- 1,140 views
A Christmas burst
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Last Christmas something exploded in the constellation of Andromeda. Well, that’s not quite true. This gamma-ray burst (named GRB 101225A) went off a long, long time ago, but the resulting flash finally arrived last year and were picked up by the SWIFT satellite (which then probably interrupted several festive lunches with its Burst Alert alarm). [...]... Read more »
Thöne CC, de Ugarte Postigo A, Fryer CL, Page KL, Gorosabel J, Aloy MA, Perley DA, Kouveliotou C, Janka HT, Mimica P.... (2011) The unusual γ-ray burst GRB 101225A from a helium star/neutron star merger at redshift 0.33. Nature, 480(7375), 72-4. PMID: 22129726
Campana S, Lodato G, D'Avanzo P, Panagia N, Rossi EM, Della Valle M, Tagliaferri G, Antonelli LA, Covino S, Ghirlanda G.... (2011) The unusual gamma-ray burst GRB 101225A explained as a minor body falling onto a neutron star. Nature, 480(7375), 69-71. PMID: 22129725
- November 15, 2011
- 03:28 PM
- 373 views
How to (hopefully) not drown in data
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
More is better, right? Bigger telescopes and bigger surveys are both undoubtedly good things, but to make the best use of these advances we need to be able to handle the corresponding increase in data flow, and subsequent pressure on the astronomical archives which are going to have to cope with it. This is a [...]... Read more »
G. Bruce Berriman, & Steven L. Groom. (2011) How Will Astronomy Archives Survive The Data Tsunami?. ACM Queue. arXiv: 1111.0075v1
- October 26, 2011
- 04:24 PM
- 400 views
Dipping into the Royal Society’s archive
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
I’m not supposed to be blogging tonight but I’ve allowed myself half an hour to advertise the announcement from the Royal Society today that they’re making their entire journal archive permanently available online for free. The society was founded in 1660 with the aim of bringing together eminent scientists to discuss their research and promote [...]... Read more »
Herschel, W. (1785) On the Construction of the Heavens. By William Herschel, Esq. F. R. S. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 213-266. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1785.0012
Herschel, W. (1785) Catalogue of Double Stars. By William Herschel, Esq. F. R. S. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 40-126. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1785.0006
- October 19, 2011
- 05:20 PM
- 446 views
Space cleaner wanted: must have own laser
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957 we’ve launched tonnes of stuff (literally) into space. We’ve not kept things very tidy up there either, so we now have hundreds of thousands of pieces of junk orbiting around us, threatening to crash into important things like the International Space Station. Or the satellite that handles your [...]... Read more »
Claude R. Phipps, Kevin L. Baker, Brian Bradford, E. Victor George, Stephen B. Libby, Duane A. Liedahl, Bogdan Marcovici, Scot S. Olivier, Lyn D. Pleasance, James P. Reilly.... (2011) Removing Orbital Debris with Lasers. Advances in Space Research. arXiv: 1110.3835v1
- October 17, 2011
- 07:00 AM
- 390 views
SCUBA’s retirement home
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
A couple of weeks ago I paid a visit to the newly renovated National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Whilst the new galleries are fantastic (and it’s always great to see dinosaur skeletons) my main focus was on finding the new home of a red cylinder with more than a passing resemblance to a British [...]... Read more »
Holland, W., Robson, E., Gear, W., Cunningham, C., Lightfoot, J., Jenness, T., Ivison, R., Stevens, J., Ade, P., Griffin, M.... (1999) SCUBA: a common-user submillimetre camera operating on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 303(4), 659-672. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-8711.1999.02111.x
- August 19, 2011
- 12:56 PM
- 643 views
Making an Eclipse Megamovie in 2017?
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
If you live in the continental US and you want to see a solar eclipse then Monday 21st August 2017 may be your lucky day. The path of totality will stretch narrowly across around 11 states from Oregon to South Carolina, and the rest of North America will see a partial eclipse instead. The combination [...]... Read more »
Hugh S. Hudson, Scott W. McIntosh, Shadia R. Habbal, Jay M. Pasachoff, & Laura Peticolas. (2011) The U.S. Eclipse Megamovie in 2017: a white paper on a unique outreach event. arXiv. arXiv: 1108.3486v1
- August 1, 2011
- 07:47 AM
- 521 views
Waving solar seaweed
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Spicules shooting up from the Sun as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in April. The full disk image is also worth a look. Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA One of the many mysteries about our Sun is how its outer atmosphere (corona) gets heated to more than 20 times its surface temperature. Well, it looks like [...]... Read more »
McIntosh SW, De Pontieu B, Carlsson M, Hansteen V, Boerner P, & Goossens M. (2011) Alfvénic waves with sufficient energy to power the quiet solar corona and fast solar wind. Nature, 475(7357), 477-80. PMID: 21796206
De Pontieu B, McIntosh SW, Carlsson M, Hansteen VH, Tarbell TD, Schrijver CJ, Title AM, Shine RA, Tsuneta S, Katsukawa Y.... (2007) Chromospheric alfvenic waves strong enough to power the solar wind. Science (New York, N.Y.), 318(5856), 1574-7. PMID: 18063784
- July 24, 2011
- 11:59 AM
- 680 views
Seeing double in galaxy mergers
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
How do galaxies grow? One of the most common ways seems to be by merging with other nearby galaxies (a hot research topic that Rita’s talked about in more detail). Seems simple enough, but to really understand how this happens you need to look at a large number of them, at various stages of the [...]... Read more »
R.C. McGurk, C.E. Max, D.J. Rosario, G.A. Shields, K.L. Smith, S.A. Wright. (2011) Spatially-Resolved Spectroscopy of SDSS J0952 2552: a confirmed Dual AGN. Submitted to ApJL. DOI: arXiv:1107.2651
- May 20, 2011
- 04:40 AM
- 891 views
Finding Fred & friends
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
“What’s your name?” Kit said. “I mean we can’t just call you ‘hey you’ all the time.” True, the white hole said. My name is Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd’enagouni – and at the same time he went flickering through a pattern of colours that was evidently the visual translation. “Ky-elik-” Nita began. “Fred”, Kit said quickly. “Well”, he [...]... Read more »
Alon Retter, & Shlomo Heller. (2011) The Revival of White Holes as Small Bangs. Submitted to ApJ. arXiv: 1105.2776v1
- April 4, 2011
- 04:49 PM
- 704 views
Investigating the unexpected
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
One of the most interesting things in science is finding something unexpected in your data, and this is exactly what happened to a group of astronomers when they looked at the objects present in their large radio sky survey. Before I get to what they found though, we’re going to need a little bit of [...]... Read more »
A. D. Cameron M. J. Keith, G. Hobbs, R. P. Norris, M. Y. Mao, & E. Middelberg. (2011) Are the infrared-faint radio sources pulsars?. accepted by MNRAS. arXiv: 1103.6062v1
- March 3, 2011
- 05:38 PM
- 909 views
Periodic impact
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Engaging the public in science is something lots of us are passionate about but how do you measure its impact? This might seem like an unimportant question, but it’s something that funding agencies are increasingly interested in, as they understandably want to check their money isn’t being wasted. It’s also a question addressed by the [...]... Read more »
Haran B, & Poliakoff M. (2011) How to measure the impact of chemistry on the small screen. Nature chemistry, 3(3), 180-2. PMID: 21336314
- December 22, 2010
- 01:19 PM
- 678 views
Astronomy bottlenecks…
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Guess what’s the largest hurdle impeding scientific progress in astronomy? Lack of money? Governmental disinterest? Nope, according to a paper published yesterday it’s our bad programming skills. Modern astronomers are much more likely to be found in front of a computer these days than behind a telescope. We spend our time analysing our data and [...]... Read more »
Igor Chilingarian, & Ivan Zolotukhin. (2010) The True Bottleneck of Modern Scientific Computing in Astronomy. Astronomical Societ of the Pacific. arXiv: 1012.4119v1
- November 17, 2010
- 04:00 AM
- 643 views
Lunar lost and found
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Forty years ago today the Lunokhod-1 lunar rover landed on the Moon. This Soviet mission was the first remote controlled robot to operate outside Earth and it spent an impressive 11 months pottering around up there exploring the Mare Imbrium, even though, as you can see from the picture at the top of this post, [...]... Read more »
T. W. Murphy Jr, E. G. Adelberger, J. B. R. Battat, C. D. Hoyle, N. H. Johnson, R. J. McMillan, E. L. Michelsen, C. W. Stubbs, & H. E. Swanson. (2010) Laser Ranging to the Lost Lunokhod~1 Reflector. submitted to Icarus. arXiv: 1009.5720v2
- November 4, 2010
- 03:21 PM
- 378 views
First members of the ATLAS of lenses
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Its been a good week for the Herschel-ATLAS survey that I work on – last Friday we released our first set of data to the public and this Friday we’re publishing some exciting results, led by Mattia Negrello from the Open University, on a new way to find cosmic lenses. Gravitational lensing occurs when light [...]... Read more »
Negrello, M., Hopwood, R., De Zotti, G., Cooray, A., Verma, A., Bock, J., Frayer, D., Gurwell, M., Omont, A., Neri, R.... (2010) The Detection of a Population of Submillimeter-Bright, Strongly Lensed Galaxies. Science, 330(6005), 800-804. DOI: 10.1126/science.1193420
- October 14, 2010
- 06:01 PM
- 470 views
When a comet’s not a comet after all
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Back in January the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey saw something a bit odd amongst the asteroids in the main asteroid belt (found between Mars and Jupiter). Initially the mystery object, P/2010 A2, was designated as a main-belt comet (a rare object found within this region of the Solar System, unlike the majority [...]... Read more »
Jewitt, D., Weaver, H., Agarwal, J., Mutchler, M., & Drahus, M. (2010) A recent disruption of the main-belt asteroid P/2010 A2. Nature, 467(7317), 817-819. DOI: 10.1038/nature09456
Snodgrass, C., Tubiana, C., Vincent, J., Sierks, H., Hviid, S., Moissl, R., Boehnhardt, H., Barbieri, C., Koschny, D., Lamy, P.... (2010) A collision in 2009 as the origin of the debris trail of asteroid P/2010 A2. Nature, 467(7317), 814-816. DOI: 10.1038/nature09453
- September 27, 2010
- 06:00 AM
- 687 views
Correcting Hubble images
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
I’m going to be upfront here: this post is about CCDs and readout electronics. Wait, come back, it’s going to be interesting I promise*. It involves the Hubble Space Telescope. Everyone likes that, don’t they? Many astronomical instruments, including the ones on Hubble, use Charge Coupled Devices or CCDs. These detectors are like containers for [...]... Read more »
Massey, R., Stoughton, C., Leauthaud, A., Rhodes, J., Koekemoer, A., Ellis, R., & Shaghoulian, E. (2010) Pixel-based correction for Charge Transfer Inefficiency in the Advanced Camera for Surveys . Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 401(1), 371-384. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15638.x
Richard Massey. (2010) Charge Transfer Inefficiency in the Hubble Space Telescope since Servicing Mission 4. MNRAS. arXiv: 1009.4335v1
- September 2, 2010
- 06:20 PM
- 730 views
Probing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Ok, so you’re young, you’re surprisingly dusty, and you don’t match the models. No, not a picture of my geeky childhood, but the extrasolar planet HR 8799b. It orbits the star HR 8799 and, along with its two companions, is one of the two extrasolar planetary systems to be directly imaged, as shown above. Unsurprisingly [...]... Read more »
Brendan P. Bowler, Michael C. Liu, Trent J. Dupuy, Michael C. Cushing. (2010) Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of the Extrasolar Planet HR 8799 b. accepted by ApJ. info:/1008.4582
Knicole D. Colon, Eric B. Ford, Seth Redfield, Jonathan J. Fortney, Megan Shabram, Hans J. Deeg, & Suvrath Mahadevan. (2010) Probing potassium in the atmosphere of HD 80606b with tunable filter transit spectrophotometry from the Gran Telescopio Canarias. submitted to MNRAS. arXiv: 1008.4800v1
D. K. Sing, J.-M. Desert, J. J. Fortney, A. Lecavelier des Etangs, G. E. Ballester, J. Cepa, D. Ehrenreich, M. Lopez-Morales, F. Pont, M. Shabram, A. Vidal-Madjar. (2010) GTC OSIRIS Transiting Exoplanet Atmospheric Survey: Detection of potassium in XO-2b from spectrophotometry. submitted to A. info:/1008.4795
- August 27, 2010
- 06:19 PM
- 438 views
Serendipitous astronomy
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Within the constellation of Ursa Major, about 134 million light years away, an almighty collision is occurring between two galaxies. As the clouds of gas and dust are swirled together an intense burst of star formation is triggered, but is that all that’s been awoken? Has this galactic merger also provided a hidden central black [...]... Read more »
Perez-Torres, Miguel A.; Alberdi, Antxon; Romero-Canizales, Cristina; Bondi, Marco. (2010) Serendipitous discovery of the long-sought AGN in Arp 299-A. Accepted for publication in Letters to Astronomy and Astrophysics. info:/1008.4466
- August 24, 2010
- 07:36 PM
- 443 views
Library love
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
I love libraries. I’m a member of four, not including University ones. Without libraries and the ability to borrow whatever I fancy, I think I’d be broke and living in a book-cave! So, I was sad this morning to hear that the number of adults visiting libraries in the UK has been decreasing steadily over [...]... Read more »
Nissinboim, A., Ebel, D. S., Harlow, G. E., Boesenberg, J. S., Sherman, K. M., Lewis, E. R., Brusentsova, T. N., Peale, R. E., Lisse, C. M., & Hibbitts, C. A. (2010) The American Museum of Natural History Mineral Library for Spectroscopic Standards. Lunar and Planetary Institute Science Conference. info:/
- August 19, 2010
- 06:46 PM
- 726 views
Nemesis meets its, uh, nemesis
by Emma in we are all in the gutter
Interesting fact of the day: examining the fossil record suggests that mass extinctions on Earth occur approximately once every 26 million years (Myr). One possible explanation for this is a companion dwarf star to the Sun on a 26 Myr orbit. Every time is passes by, the theory goes, it messes up the Oort cloud [...]... Read more »
Adrian L. Melott, & Richard K. Bambach. (2010) Nemesis Reconsidered. MNRAS. arXiv: 1007.0437v1
topics
join us!
Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research.
If you don't have a blog, you can still use our site to learn about fascinating developments in cutting-edge research from around the world.
