Space and astronomy news
My good friend (and forum co-admin) Phil Plait has been working on a super secret project for a few months. But now the project has been revealed in all its glory… it’s a television show called “Bad Universe“. Phil made the announcement a couple of days ago, but had to remove the video for technical purposes (or perhaps it’s a vast conspiracy). Anyway, the trailer’s back online, so now you can check it out.
Nice work Phil!
Nancy and I thought Universe Today was getting a little long in the tooth – its design was so 2008 – so we updated it. Hurray! The goal here was simplicity, so we’ve cleaned things up, threw things out that didn’t really matter any more, and tried to give it a hip 2010 look.
Of course, we broke all kinds of things, which now need fixing. So if you see any problems, font strangeness, or stuff that just looks plain ugly, post a comment below, or drop me an email ([email protected]) and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.
Thanks!
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David Bradley is a first-class science writer from the UK, who writes with a chemistry slant at his blog Sciencebase. He’s also an interesting guy to follow on Twitter, and coined the term “Scientwists.” David also must be incredibly creative (or have more time on his hands than I could ever imagine) as he has created a Periodic Table of Science Bloggers. There you’ll find over 100 different science blogs, covering topics from astrobiology to zoology. While the blogs aren’t listed in topical groups similar to how the elements on the real periodic table are grouped, most are listed as an element whose abbreviation comes close to the blog or blogger’s name. For example, Universe Today is listed as “Uut – Ununtrium.” Check out this very cool periodic table to expand your horizons and bit and find some new blogs and new subjects to read about.
I have to admit I hadn’t heard of Ununtrium before, but here’s what it is:
“Ununtrium is the temporary name of a synthetic element with the temporary symbol Uut and atomic number 113.”
“It is placed as the heaviest member of the group 13 (IIIA) elements although a sufficiently stable isotope is not known at this time that would allow chemical experiments to confirm its position. It was first detected in 2003 in the decay of element 115 and was synthesized directly in 2004. Only eight atoms of ununtrium have been observed to date. The longest-lived isotope known is 284Uut with a half-life of ~500 ms, although two newly discovered heavier isotopes probably have longer half-lives.”
While Ununtrium is nothing like Universe Today — which is one of the longest-lasting blogs (over 10 years!) — the abbreviation fit well!
It goes by the super-catchy (not!) title “A Catalog of MIPSGAL Disk and Ring Sources”. I chose it, over 213 competitors, because it’s pure astronomy, and because it’s something you don’t need a PhD to be able to do, or even a BSc.
Oh, and also because Don Mizuno and co-authors may have found two, quite local, spiral galaxies that no one has ever seen before!
Some quick background: arXiv has been going for several years now, and provides preprints, on the web, of papers “in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics”. It’s owned, operated and funded by Cornell University. astro-ph is the collection of preprints classified as astro physics; the “recent” category in astro-ph is the new preprints submitted in the last week.
When I have any, one of my favorite spare-time activities is browsing astro-ph (Hey, I did say, in my profile, that I am hooked on astronomy!)
Briefly, what Mizuno and his co-authors did was get hold of some of the images from Spitzer (something that anyone can do, provided their internet connection has enough bandwidth), and eyeball them, looking for things which look like disks and rings. Having found over 400 of them, they did what the human brain does superbly well: they grouped them by similarity of appearance, and gave the groups names. They then checked out other images – from different parts of Spitzer’s archive, and from IRAS – and checked to see how many had already been cataloged.
And what did they find? Well, first, that most of the objects they found had not been cataloged before, and certainly not given definite classifications! Many, perhaps most, of the new objects are planetary nebulae, and their findings may help address a long-standing puzzle in this part of astronomy.
But they also may have found two local spiral galaxies, which had not been noticed before because they are obscured by the gas-and-dust clouds in the Milky Way plane. How cool is that!
Here’s the ‘credits’ section of the preprint: “This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA in part through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. This research made use of the SIMBAD database and the Vizier catalog access tool, operated by the Centre de Donnees Astronomique de Strasbourg. This research has also made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.”
And here’s the preprint itself: arXiv:1002.4221 A Catalog of MIPSGAL Disk and Ring Sources; D.R. Mizuno(1), K. E. Kraemer(2), N. Flagey(3), N. Billot(4), S. Shenoy(5), R. Paladini(3), E. Ryan(6), A. Noriega-Crespo(3), S. J. Carey(3). ((1) Institute for Scientific Research, (2) Air Force Research Laboratory, (3) Spitzer Science Center, (4) NASA Herschel Science Center, (5) Ames Research Center, (6) University of Minnesota)
PS, going over the Astronomy Cast episode How to be Taken Seriously by Scientists is what motivated me to pick this preprint (however, I must tell you, in all honesty, that there are at least ten other preprints that are equally pickable).
Just to let you know, I’ve moved Universe Today to a new server today. Everything seems to be working, but I’m sure there are still going to be problems (there are always problems). I’m hoping this should make the site a lot faster and more responsive. If you notice something misbehaving, please email me at [email protected].
Thanks!
Fraser
Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that our Universe Today senior editor, Nancy “The Space Encyclopedia” Atkinson has her own blog. She’s been twittering and blogging here, but now she’ll have another outlet for all that space news. Check it out and add her to your RSS feeds and blogrolls.
The Nancy Atkinson blog.
Since she’s already doing full time writing for Universe Today, producing Astronomy Cast and project managing 365 Days of Astronomy, I believe she’s opened up a portal to a parallel universe, and enlisted the help of a duplicate Nancy Atkinson with a little spare time to help her keep track of it all.
Hey everyone, I updated the design of Universe Today to support mobile devices, but it sounds like it was a little overaggressive and displayed the mobile version to regular browsers. I’ve stripped it back so it should be displaying to iPods, iPhones and Android browsers right now.
If you’re seeing the mobile edition and don’t want to see it, please let me know. And if you’ve got a mobile device and want to see that instead of the regular webpage, let me know as well.
Only email me if you’re seeing the opposite of what you want to see. (Or if you’re a Nigerian prince who wants some help getting money out of the country.)
Thanks!
Fraser
I know this has nothing to do with space exploration, but my Dad posted a video of his trip up and down the spiral staircase he built around the outside of a tree on his property (I grew on up Hornby Island, BC). The staircase has 99 stairs and goes up for about 75 feet (25 meters). He’s built a platform at the top where you can sit and see mountains and the ocean. And I spend my summer visits pulling the kids off the thing. Here’s a link to Dad’s blog (he’s a photographer, by trade, so I have a well documented childhood).
P.S. Oh, and Dad made it clear that the bird’s nest was old and empty.
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Sure, I love the Mars Global Surveyor, who doesn’t? But Universe Today minstrel Nancy Atkinson has put her heartfelt feelings to song in today’s episode of 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Seriously, Nancy wrote a song, and performed it for the podcast. Of course, this is the second time Nancy has performed a song for the podcast. Her first was an ode to the International Space Station. Thanks Nancy… you rock!
Universe Today has a new position open for a researcher, and we were wondering if anyone out there on the Internets is interested in applying.
We’re looking for a researcher who can help support the blogging team to find space and astronomy news stories and aggregate them together. This means tracking thousands of RSS feeds, watching twitter feeds until your eyes bleed, and lurking through many many discussion forums. You’ll cosy up to NASA press officers and university researchers, deriving hidden meaning from their slightest innuendo. And then, like a mighty hunter, you’ll return to Universe Today HQ with a bag filled with breaking space news to keep the bloggers busy.
Are you the right person for the job? Ask yourself:
I’m thinking that this’ll be a part-time job – 20 hours/week? And you’ll be able to work from the comfort of your own home – in any country. Oh, and it doesn’t pay very well. But it does pay.
So, if that’s you, send in an email to [email protected] and tell me your story.