As you probably know, I’m extremely active on Google+, and I think you’ll really enjoy it too. But I think people don’t realize how much the service really has to offer. People set up a Google+ account, don’t see any of their friends there, and then abandon it. The trick is that you need to circle really interesting people. Suddenly, your stream will fill with amazing content and compelling conversations – you’ll be hooked… like me.
Don’t worry that your friends aren’t on Google+. We’re there, and we’re more interesting.
And just to sweeten the deal, remember that we record every episode Astronomy Cast as a live Google+ Hangout. And now I’ve got access to Google+ Hangouts on Air, so we’ll be doing more live space and astronomy discussions, like the one we did yesterday with Phil Plait, Alan Boyle, Nancy Atkinson, and Emily Lakdawalla.
So let me help make this really easy for you with 3 simple steps:
Import my space circle, filled with 100+ bloggers, space agencies, and even an astronaut
At this point you should have 300+ amazing people to follow with very interesting conversations, you’ll be notified when we’re recording new Hangouts, and you can chat with me, Phil and most of the Universe Today team.
Here’s a great video that explains more about how to do this.
P.S. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not getting compensated by Google+. 🙂
Hi readers, I scraped together that terrible header image with my terrible photoshop skills and hate it more and more every day. The logo is pixelated, the font is cruddy, the background nebula thingy is blurry.
Does anyone want to take a crack at making something better?
I’ve got a nice high-res version of the logo available here. Thanks to Sam Cashion for cleaning it up.
The header needs to be 1060 pixels wide, and approximately 100 pixels tall. Just email me at [email protected] and I’ll post different versions to see how they fit on the blog.
Thanks!
Update: Thanks to everyone sending in new designs, I’m going to start trying them on for size. 🙂
[/caption]I know I rarely share the business side of Universe Today, but here’s a very interesting metric: visitors to Universe Today viewed a total of 5 million pages in November, 2011. That’s up about 100% from this time last year.
So, if you think that interest in science and astronomy is declining, allow me to offer this retort. You’re totally wrong. Millions of people every month are subscribed to, or seeking out, the material we’re offering here on Universe Today. People are choosing to read a website that’s only about space and astronomy. You can see the demand for shows like Mythbusters, podcasts like the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, or blogs like Bad Astronomy.
I’ll put most of the kudos on Nancy Atkinson’s leadership and the amazing writing team we’ve got here: 15 contributors at last count, growing every month. But the real heroes (to steal a line from Stephen Colbert) are you, the science enthusiasts. It’s your interest in science news that keeps the whole engine going; it’s thrilling to be a part of it, and I guarantee you haven’t seen anything yet.
Thank you for reading, sharing and participating in Universe Today.
Fraser Cain
Publisher
P.S. And for those of you wondering if you can actually make a living as a “blogger”. The answer is yes, and it’s getting easier every day.
Shown at lower right is the "Violin Clef" galaxy merger. Click for larger image. Credit SDSS
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About a month ago, a Galaxy Zoo contributor named Bruno discovered a very unique galaxy merger in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. The merger appeared to be a triple, or possibly quadruple system, which are indeed quite rare, and it includes curiously thin and long tidal tails. The Galaxy Zoo team has been informally referring to this merger as the “Violin Clef” or the “Integral” based on the unique shape as shown above.
What about this merger make it so interesting to scientists? What can they learn from these type of galaxy mergers?
Galaxy Zoo contributor Bruno had some insights on what makes the merger so interesting, stating: “These are some really beautiful tidal tails – They are extremely long and thin and appear curiously poor in terms of star formation, which is odd since mergers do tend to trigger star formation.” Bruno also added at the time of discovery: “There is no spectrum so we do not know the redshift of the object. It is also not clear if the objects at either end are associated or just a projection.”
(Note: Redshift is a term used to measure distance to distant objects. The higher the number, the older and more distant the object)
Based on Bruno’s curious discovery, the Galaxy Zoo team put in significant efforts to learn more about this merger. Galaxy Zoo team member Kyle Willett provided an update this week, highlighting several new insights, along with more information on this merger’s significance.
Close-Up view of Violin Clef galaxy merger. Image Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey ( http://www.sdss3.org )
One of the additional reasons the system is of scientific interest is that while merging galaxies are quite common in our universe, the merging process is fairly quick compared to the lifetime of a galaxy. What is not common is to observe a system with long tails and multiple companions, which gives researchers an opportunity to test their models of galaxy interaction against a system “caught in the act”.
Researchers are also interested in the content of galaxies and their tails – specifically the gas and stars. In most mergers, there is a compression of gas by gravity, which leads to a short burst of new star formation in the galaxies and their tails.
The resulting star formation results in young, hot stars which are typically blue. (Note: Younger/hotter stars are bluer, older/cooler stars are redder). What is odd about the Violin Clef merger is that all four galaxies and the tidal tails are red.
Willett stated “If that’s the case, then we want to estimate the current age of the system. Were the galaxies all red ellipticals to begin with, with very little gas that could form new stars?” Willett also added, “Or has the starburst already come and gone – and if so, how long-lived are these tidal tails going to be?”
By using analyzing the light given off by the merging galaxies, researchers can obtain a treasure trove of information. By measuring how much the spectra is redshifted, researchers can determine an accurate distance. In the case of the Violin Clef merger, an accurate redshift would let the team know for certain if all four galaxies genuinely belong to a single interacting group.
Once researchers have a distance estimate, they can study UV and radio flux data and determine an estimate of the total star formation rate. Additionally, if researchers have very accurate data from light received (spectroscopy), it’s possible to measure the relative velocities of each interacting galaxy, and build a sort of “3-D” picture of how the four galaxies are interacting.
Since there wasn’t any existing spectral analysis data of the merger system, Danielle Berg, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, observed the Violin Clef in September using the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona and provided the additional data needed to answer some of the questions the Galaxy Zoo team had about the system.
Spectral analysis of the "Violin Clef" galaxy merger. Image Credit: Danielle Berg/University of Minnesota/Multiple Mirror Telescope
After the team analyzed the spectral data, they learned that all four galaxies are at the same redshift (z=0.0956 +- 0.002), and as such, are most likely members of the same group. Further analysis reinforced the lack of evidence for strong star formation, which helps to confirm the red colors see in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data.
Based on these recent discoveries, the Galaxy Zoo team is putting out a second call for assistance on analyzing the Violin Clef merger. According to the team, the next step in the analysis will be working with simulations like the ones in Merger Zoo. Now that the team has confirmed the Violin Clef is almost certainly a quadruple merger, the number of merger models than need to be ran is greatly reduced.
How can citizen scientists help the Galaxy Zoo team with this step of their research?
You can start by visiting the Galaxy Zoo mergers project page at: http://mergers.galaxyzoo.org/
By participating in the Galaxy Zoo mergers project, you can identify simulations that resemble the Violin Clef. Your participation can also provide the Galaxy Zoo team with additional data which may enable them to have another scientific publication, plus these types of projects can be very fun and exciting to work with!
Learn more about becoming a Galaxy Zoo participant at: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/how_to_take_part
I’ve decided I’m going to be the official curator for the list of space bloggers/reporters/researchers on Google+. My current list only contains about 35 people, so it’s missing lots of people. Tyson? Cox? If you’re not on Google+, I can’t get you on the list. And Google+ is free for anyone to join.
So, if you’re a space blogger, and you’re not on Google+, take a second, register and then email me or somehow communicate that you’re on Google+.
If you’re a writer for Universe Today and you’re not on Google+. I’m at a loss for words. 😉
I’m sharing this list every week or so with the people who have me circled, and people are reporting hundreds of new followers every time I share it.
Did I mention we record every episode of Astronomy Cast as a Google+ hangout? so you can watch us record, ask us questions, and even correct our stupid mistakes, live as we record.
I’ve handed out hundreds (maybe thousands?) of Google+ invites to Universe Today readers, but now the service is open to everyone. If you’re interested in joining, you can go over to the Google Plus homepage and sign up.
We record every episode of Astronomy Cast as a live Google+ Hangout, so 8 lucky listeners can watch the fearsome reality of our recording process. Once seen, it can’t be unseen! As soon as Google lets us start using Google Hangouts on Air, we’re planning to widen the audience. Oh, and if there are any Googlers reading, please, give us access… please?
(I know what you’re thinking, but I promise, Google didn’t pay me for this.)
Hi everyone, Google+ has given me 150 invites I can use to hand out to people. You should be able to just click this link and sign up for the service if you want:
For those who want to learn a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes at Universe Today, here are a couple of interviews I did recently with Search Engine Journal and SEO Theory.
Hi everyone, if you look over on the right-hand side of the page I’ve added the new Google +1 button to every page on the site. Now you can click that button to endorse pages on the site that you enjoyed. An obvious place to click that button is on the Universe Today homepage. 🙂
If you’re wondering what the +1 button is, here’s what Google has to say. +1 is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.” Let visitors recommend your pages right in Google search results and help your site stand out. Here’s more info on the +1.
You might have noticed that the comments for Universe Today look and behave a little differently today. That’s because we’re testing out a commenting platform called Disqus. If everything works out, it should provide a more feature rich, better looking, spam-defending comment system. The other cool thing is that it’s integrated with the rest of the Disqus network. Once you create a profile, you can write comments on thousands of other websites without having to create a profile on each one – something like this is going to be the future, so we might as well get on board now. Since Disqus is focused on creating the best possible commenting system, we should get carried along as they make improvements.
It’s still importing comments in from the WordPress system, so that’s going to take a few hours/days. Once that’s done, comments made in Disqus will be mirrored within WordPress, so we can always retreat to that system if this doesn’t work.
There’s one important decision that I still haven’t resolved yet: Who Can Comment? It can be set so anybody can reply to an article, which means there will be a lot of SPAM, but a lot of comments. I can tighten it down more (the current setting), so only registered users can comment. Or I can tighten it down even further so that users need to validate their email. I’m leaning towards the tightest control already, since I had a few nasty SPAM comments come in when I had it on the most open settings.
Anyway, let me know if you run into any problems. Let me know if things are displaying strangely for you, or you’re having trouble registering with the system.
