Space Station 2010 Calendar

Available here, just in time for the New Year. Enjoy!

What came first: the galaxy of the black hole?

One of the biggest questions in galaxy formation is this: which came first, the galaxy or the supermassive black hole observed in the center of practically every galaxy. Go here to read about recent results which might help answer this question.

Lakes on Titan

Read this interesting article concerning why almost all of the lakes on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, are found on one side of this object. Enjoy!

Aurora on Saturn

Check out this movie courtesy of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Enjoy!

Merge Galaxies on your computer!

In my opinion ne of the best astronomer projects out there, Galaxy Zoo, has branched out to cover galaxy mergers. Go here for more information. Enjoy!

The History of Globular Cluster Terzan 5

one of the oldest, densest, and most massive collection of stars in the Milky Way. Go here for more information.

Astronomy Gift Idea #1

If you are thinking of the perfect gift to get the (radio) astronomer in your life, how about “Under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy, Ruby Payne-Scott.” Miller Goss, one of the authors of this book, is one of the most pre-eminent radio astronomers in the US and was a former director of the Very Large Array. Go here for more information, and check back this site soon for an interview with Dr. Goss on this fascinating subject (I know it is on my hard drive someplace....)

Happy Holidays!

From Hubble.

WISE telescope launched

A "small" (only 40 cm in diameter) telescope launched to survey to entire sky at mid-infrared wavelengths (where brown dwarfs, stars and AGN behind lots of dust, and dusty galaxies are easiest to detect), WISE is going to be an extremely important telescope for years to come (even though it is only designed to work for a year). Because it will make the most sensitive all-sky map at these wavelengths, it is likely to discover new classes of sources, and identify interesting objects for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter Array to observed in detail. Go here for more information, and wish them luck!

Update: Here is a nice summary of different news articles regarding what different astronomers hope WISE will discover. Even though most of the objects I work on (neutron stars, pulsar wind nebulae) are unlikely to be detected by this satellite, I think projects like this one are some of the most important in astronomy. All-sky surveys have the greatest potential of discovering new things we didn't know and didn't guess exist, that is almost always the most exciting discovery of all. Stay tuned!

Planet 51 and NASA

Not surprisingly, NASA and Planet 51 the movie have banded together to make some public service announcements about space exploration. Go here to see them. Hope you enjoy!

Investigating a Galaxy's "stomach"

As I've discussed on previous shows, astronomers believe that the major way galaxies grow is by merging with other galaxies. Read here how astronomers have detected the remnants of one of these mergers in a nearby galaxy, Centaurus A. Hope you enjoy!

Edge-on Spiral Galaxy

From this picture you can see this thin layer of dust and gas believed to lie in the inner part of every spiral disk galaxy, including the Milky Way. Courtesy of Hubble, of course.

Robot Probe from Jupiter

Sort of. Go here to see what I'm talking about.

Happy 10th Birthday XMM-Newton

Launched ten years ago TODAY, XMM-Newton - the European Space Agency's X-ray satellite and the largest X-ray satellite ever (and likely to hold that title for at least 20 years) - is still going strong (for the most part). Go here for more info on the birthday celebration. I'm presonally hoping for at least 10 more years of XMM and Chandra...

Want to be a Martian?

Well, thanks to a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Microsoft you can. Sort of. Go to this webpage to see for yourself. Hope you enjoy! And please let me know what you think...

Star Formation Movie

This is NOT an artist rendition of gas collapsing gravitational to form a star, but a movie made from REAL data showing this process. Go here to learn more. Hope you enjoy!

Gorgeous Galactic Center Image

Available here courtesy of NASA's Great Observatories. Taken just in time for the holidays as part of the International Year of Astronomy celebrations (and for lots of very interested scientific reasons. The center of the Milky Way is a hotbed of star formation, stellar explosions, etc. that is very poorly understood). Also available here.

Solar Sails!

Continuing our mini-theme of new technologies in space travel, read this New York Times Science article on Solar Sails. Hope you enjoy!

High School Summer Internships at JPL

JPL is looking for a few highly motivated high school students who have a strong interest in and aptitude for science, technology, engineering and/or math for its JPL Summer High School Internship Program (JPL SpaceSHIP). This program runs for eight weeks during the summer of 2010. Applicants must be at least 16 when the program starts. They must also live within a 50-mile radius of JPL, which is located in Pasadena, Calif., and have a 3.0 GPA. Each student has a mentor – a NASA/JPL scientist, engineer or staff member who provides guidance about the project and answers questions about careers in science and engineering. For more details about this opportunity, go here, and good luck.

If you get it, I'd love to hear about what you did....

Space Elevators!

Long a staple of science fiction, NASA has been funding some research to try and make them a technological fact. Go here for some neat little computer games to describe what a space elevator is. Hope you enjoy!

NASA "Moon Work" Competition

From the official NASA email:" The 2010 NASA Moon Work engineering design challenge seeks to motivate college students by giving them first-hand experience with the process of developing new technologies. To participate in the contest, students will submit their original design for tools or instruments that can help astronauts live and work on the moon. Top-ranked students will be offered a chance to intern with a team from NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program.

Students should submit a notice of intent to enter the contest by Dec. 15. Final entries for the Moon Work challenge are due May 15, 2010. All entries must be from students at U.S. colleges or universities. Although non-citizens may be part of a team, only U.S. citizens may win NASA internships or travel awards.

For complete details and to enter the contest, visit: http://moonwork.larc.nasa.gov."

Good luck!

BLAST! DVD Discount Extended

The best Astronomy movie of the year, BLAST! is no available for a 20% educator's discount using code 5G7S5K now through December 11th. Go here for more information. Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I hope to rectify that soon, but I really hope that you are have a good Turkey (or Tofu-rkey) Day today.

ESA Rosetta flyby blogged live

Go here to read live updates from ESA's Rosetta last flyby of the Earth before it chases some comets around the Solar System. Enjoy!

Want to be Lunar Certified?

Well, if you are an elementary school teacher in the greater Los Angeles / Southern California area, it is possible. NASA/JPL Education Resources Center is offering a free class in Lunar Certification, which allows you to borrow actual lunar rock and soil samples as well as meteorite samples from NASA. It will be held November 12 from 4 p.m. to 6:00 p.m at the Educator Resource Center, 1460 Holt Ave., Pomona, CA 91767. RSVP by calling 909-397-4420. Enjoy!

NASA iPhone app

Have an iPhone? Interested in keeping track of NASA's activities? Go here to learn about the free iPhone app NASA has designed for space enthusiasts out there. Enjoy!

Space Engineering website

ESA has recently developed a new website, available here, describing the technologies that goes into its spacecraft. Hope you enjoy!

Jupiter / Moon conjuction tonight

Just after sunset. Go here for a skymap. I hope there are clear skies in your area!

Poor LCROSS....

It hit the location on the Moon it was supposed to, but unfortunately didn't create the plume of dust and gas the scientists were hoping for. Go here for a funny, yet sad, synopsis.

New Sunspot

Just because the Sun is in the midst of one of the deepest Solar Minima ever recorded, producing far fewer sunspots than average, does not mean it isn't producing anyway. This weekend, a very large and powerful sunspot formed in the Sun's corona. Go here for more information and some pretty pictures / movies. Enjoy!

The Future of Human Spaceflight in the US...

... may indeed be largely determined by this report. The short-term future, in any case. What do you think? I'm very interested to hear/read your opinions, so please leave them below.

The Milky Way's neighbors

In addition to M31 (Andromeda galaxy), orbiting the Milky Way are a collection of small, irregular galaxies which likely had lost gas and stars to the Milky Way's gravitational attraction when they get too close. Go here for some new, pretty pictures of one of the galaxies that may form the building blocks of the Milky Way's halo.

Virtual Spacewalks

NASA has developed a new video game, Station Spacewalk, to give you the opportunity to experience (somewhat) what it is like to float outside the International Space Station into the emptiness of space. Without, you know, actually going up in space and floating outside, unfortunately. Go here to try it out.

Astronomers Do It Again: Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Astronomers Do It Again: Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Posted using ShareThis

Cosmic Pearls by Herschel

I honestly don't see the "pearls" in these images, but the latest results from Herschel are stunning. Available as an e-postcard from JPL here. Enjoy!

September 14th Radio Show: Solar System News

Wrapping up the radio shows originally broadcast on WVKR, here is a show trying to wrap up the latest Solar System news (I run out of time, and will do this on my first web-only podcast). Hope you enjoy! As always, please leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening

NASA Sponsors Student Water Recycling Competition

NASA is sponsoring a waste limitation management and recycling design challenge for fifth through eighth grade students, where participants will design and test water recycling systems that could be used for future exploration of the moon. The top three teams will receive awards, and the first place team will receive an expense-paid trip to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Teams of up to six students and one teacher or mentor must submit their proposals and results to NASA for evaluation by Feb. 1, 2010. For more information, go here, and good luck!

String Theory Comic

Available here. According to a friend of mine who actually studies string theory, it is a pretty good summary of the field. I particularly like silly string theory...

Frozen Water on Mars

While results from the Phoenix Mars Lander suggested this was the case, measurements of the ground composition from layer recently exposed by meteorites hitting the surface of Mars by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter strongly suggest the presence of sub-surface water ice. Go here for more information. Very interesting, to say the least.

Want to be a radio astronomer?

The Lewis Center for Educational Research (LCER) has announced a pretty cool opportunity for elementary school teachers to get their classes involved in radio astronomy. Cribbed from their announcement: "The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope Program (GAVRT) is an education partnership involving NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and LCER. It is a K-12 project using radio astronomy to provide an opportunity for students to experience real science and to learn that science is an ongoing process and actual discovery is possible. Using their classroom computer, 32,000 students have taken control of a 34-meter, 500-ton, 9-story-high radio telescope located at NASA's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, CA. They learn how to gather data, understand what the data mean and how to follow through with analysis. We are excited to include Radio JOVE with our training in 2010. Radio JOVE is a NASA education program: Solar and planetary radio astronomy for schools. It is a hands-on educational activity that brings the radio sounds of the sun, Jupiter, the Milky Way galaxy and terrestrial radio noise to students, teachers and the
general public. We target grade levels 6 - 14 to build a simple radio telescope kit, speak with professional radio astronomers, make scientific observations, and interact with radio observatories in real-time. For further information, see http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov
Teachers need to attend a 5-day class in order to take this program back to their
students, and can apply online at this time at http://www.lewiscenter.org/gavrt/opportunities.php. We are conducting a 5-day teacher training class at the Lewis Center on March 8 - 12, July 19 - 23, and October 25 - 29, 2010, at our facility in Apple Valley, CA. We strongly recommend at least two teachers attend the training from your school or area. While this is not a requirement, it will definitely serve to help in program support once back in the classroom. The cost of the 5-day class is $745. For questions, e-mail gavrt-info@lcer.org or call (760) 946-5414 X234.
More information about GAVRT can be found at http://www.lewiscenter.org/gavrt/ ."

Images of LCROSS crash into the Moon

Though it didn't produce the large plume that astronomers were hoping to see, LCROSS did hit the lunar surface, as evidence by photos compiled by spaceweather.com. Enjoy!

August 31st Radio Show: The Outer Solar System

Originally broadcast over a month and a half ago (I'm really sorry for the delay), finally available here is the August 31st episode of this radio, where in addition to the latest (at that time) Astronomy news I also discuss interesting scientific results concerning the outer Solar System. Thank you very much for listening and your patience, hope you enjoy, and please leave any questions or comments you might have below.

One small step for a telescope...

... one big step for ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, currently being constructed by ESO, NRAO, and Japan to image the sky at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths in the Atacama dessert in Chile (the dryest place on Earth not in Antarctica) like never before. Go here for updates.

Happy 20th Birthday Galileo!

The NASA mission to Jupiter and beyond!, not the Italian astronomer (who is much older). Go here to read more. Enjoy!

Saturn's amazing rings

Thanks to Cassini observing Saturn's rings when they appeared edge-on relative to the Sun, we now know much more about thickness and 3D shape of Saturn's rings. Go here for more information. And, thanks to Spitzer, it now appears that Saturn's ring extend much further out that previously before (go here for an artist's rendition), as explained here. Wow!

GigaGalaxy 2 and 3

According to this, now you can zoom in on the Galactic Center using GigaGalaxy 2, or the Lagoon Nebula with GigaGalaxy 3. Enjoy!

More astronaut twitter

Go here to read tweets from Astronaut Jeff Williams, who will command the next International Space Station mission. Ah, twitter. Enjoy!

First results from ESA's Planck

Planck, the latest satellite to measure the properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background - essentially residual heat from the Big Bang, has released its first results and it looks very good indeed. Go here and
here to look for yourself. Enjoy!

NASA's newest astronomy satellite

... and WISEist so far. (sorry couldn't resist the bad pun). Click here to read an article on NASA's next astronomy satellite, the WISE mission, which will make the most sensitive all-sky infrared map to date. There have been lots of advances in infrared astronomy thanks to Spitzer, but much of the sky has not been imaged at this wavelength in over a decade so all the interesting objects out there have almost certainly not been identified yet. This mission will hopefully discover good targets for more sensitive infrared telescopes, like Herschel and James Webb Space Telescope, and personally looking forward to its launch.

I'm really sorry...

... for the lack of activity here in the past month. Between this conference, proposal deadlines for these two satellites, and everything else, I just haven't had time to work on this podcast. Over the next two weeks, I hope to work through the backlog of past shows and news items and then, beginning November, start the regular monthly (at the minimum) podcasts.

New interactive 360 degree image of the night sky

Courtesy of the Giga-Galaxy Zoom project (with a name like that, how could not be cool), he is a ESO press release where you can find a new image of the night sky that allow you to zoom in on interesting regions, etc. Hope you enjoy!

The End is a New Beginning

Due to a (on the whole, positive, shockingly enough given the lousy economy) change in my work situation, it saddens me to say that tomorrow marks the end of my weekly radio show on WVKR. This show requires about 8-10 hours a week, and my new work circumstances just doesn't give me that amount of time. However, the podcast will continue, but will now be a monthly - not weekly, unfortunately - program. I'm planning on kicking off this new phase with a treat, a series of programs on astrobiology that features interviews with some of the leading experts in this new and very exciting field of Astronomy. I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

After this series, the format is still up in the air and, as such, I'd really appreciate feedback as to what types of programs you enjoy the most. Do you enjoy shows focused on a single topic, or general "news" programs that covers (lightly) a lot of fields? Do you like series of related shows, or more standalone programs? Do you want more (or fewer) interviews? Are there topics you wish I'd discuss more - or less? Please let me know - either through emails or contacts below, and thank you so much for listening!

The International Space Station and You

If interested in how research onboard the International Space Station impacts your daily life, read this NASA report. Hope you enjoy!

New Hubble Images

As many of you already know (and, if you don't, check out this show), the Hubble Space Telescope was recently refurbished - with new instruments being installed, critical components being fixed, etc. The first images from the new and improved version of Hubble were released today, and are available here. I personally think they are incredible (it is also nice to have a square field of view as opposed to one corner missing as was the case for WFPC2), and hope you agree. For more details, go here and here. Enjoy!

Mars in High Definition

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has beening imaging the surface of Mars with its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera since 2006, taking some spectacular images during this time. To look at the newest batch of released images, go here. Enjoy!

Astronomy Comics

One on asteroids, another on the expansion of the Universe, and this one on the possibility of human-powered flight on Titan. Both xkcd and Brewster Rockit often have Astronomy-related cartoons and are quite funny (though XKCD is not always appropriate for kids), so check them out. Hope you enjoy!

WVKR Pledge Drive

As many of you know, this show would not be possible without the help of WVKR, the non-profit student-run radio station of Vassar College. When I was looking for a radio station to host this show / podcast, I called/emailed/sent demos to 30-40 radio stations in the New York area, and they were the only one who showed any interest. Starting today is their pledge drive and, if you can, I encourage you to donate here. I know times are tough, but I will mail to anyone who donates any amount and lists my show as their favorite will get an Astronomy goodie (educational DVDs, etc.) in addition to whatever pledge drive merchandise you request. Thank you very much.

How do you wash clothes in space?

Carefully, probably.

If you want a more satisfying answer, go here to watch ESA astronaut Frank De Winne explain how it is done on the International Space Station. Enjoy!

Happy Labor Day!

Hope you had a good summer, and have a safe and happy Labor Day. Hope you are enjoying the last official day of summer!

By the way, no radio show today, to those of you who listen live on WVKR, since I'm enjoying the long weekend out of NY.

August 17th Radio Show: Saturn

Now available here is the August 17th episode of this radio show where, still continuing our little tour of the Solar System, I discuss the recent science results concerning Saturn. Being the second largest planet in the Solar System, having the most extensive ring system and several moons of great interest, there is a lot to talk about - especially thanks to all of the instruments on board the Cassini spacecraft. As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you very much for listening!

Stephen Colbert's Message to the International Space Station

Apparently forgiving NASA (somewhat) for not naming the most recent addition to the International Space Station after him, Stephen Colbert did record this message for those onboard who a receiving a new treadmill named in his honor. Enjoy!

August 10th Radio Show: Mars, Asteroid Belt, and Jupiter

Picking up where I left off discussing Mars, and continuing further out of the Solar System to the asteroid belt and Jupiter, here is the August 10th episode of this radio show. As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you very much for listening!

Gravitational Waves Result

I promise to do a whole series devoted this, relatively soon-ish, but as I've talked about on previous shows, one of the key predictions of General Relativity is that objects orbiting around each other while produce ripples in space-time (and how we interact with space-time through gravity) called gravitational waves. While indirect evidence that gravitational waves has been gathered by measuring the orbital period of pulsars around each other, LIGO and other experiments are trying to detect them directly on the Earth. To listen to a recent webcast on this project - and an interesting non-detection of gravitational waves from the early Universe, go here. Hope you enjoy!

August 3rd Radio Show: Mars

Now available here is the August 3rd episode of this radio show. Continuing the on-going brief tour of the Solar System, on this program I (try to) discuss all of the recent results concerning Mars from its atmosphere to its core - between the orbiters, landers, and rovers there are tons! As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

NASA Now Accepting Applications for Aeronautics Scholarship Awards

Cut and pasted directly from a NASA release:

NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate began accepting scholarship applications today for the 2010 academic year. The application deadline is Jan. 11, 2010. NASA expects to award 20 Undergraduate and five graduate scholarships to students in aeronautics or related fields. Undergraduate students entering their second year of study will receive up to $15,000 per year for two years and the opportunity to receive a $10,000 stipend by interning at a NASA research center during the summer. Graduate students will receive up to $35,000 per annually for up to three years, with an opportunity to receive a $10,000 stipend interning at a NASA research center up to two consecutive summers. All applicants must be U.S. citizens. Scholarship money may be used for
tuition and other school-related expenses. For details about this scholarship program, including how to apply, visit: http://asee.org/nasaasp. Good luck!

Edible Asteroids?!?!?

As a classroom activity to get elementary school interested in space rocks, NASA has cooked up a recipe to make your own "edible rocks." Go here for the recipe, and enjoy! Please let me know below how it tastes, I'm always on the look out for good recipes.

July 27th Radio Show: Venus, Earth, and the Moon

Continuing on the Solar System theme started two weeks ago, and the focus on the Moon from last week, finally available here is the July 27th episode of this radio, where I discuss recent scientific results pertaining to Venus, Earth, and the Moon. As always, please leave below or email me any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening.

Happy 10th Birthday Chandra X-ray Observatory!

The highest angular resolution X-ray observatory ever (and likely to hold this title for at least 20 years, maybe more) and first of the current, new generation of X-ray telescopes, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into space onboard the space shuttle Columbia about 10 years ago. For more information on the wonderful science this satellite has helped accomplish, read this article. Chandra really is an amazing facility, and hopefully will last (at least) another 10 years!

July 20th Radio Show: 40th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing

Celebrating the crowning achievement of human spaceflight, here is the July 20th episode of this radio show where I discuss the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings. As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

No, Mars is not going to look as large as the Full Moon...

... but will be a pretty sight tomorrow night regardless. Go here for more information.

“Avian Einsteins”

Now available here is a full-length video of an event from this year's World Science Festival titled "Avian Einsteins." Hope you enjoy!

July 13th Radio Show: The Sun

Slowly working through to backlog of radio shows I need to put online, now available here is the July 13th episode. This program begins my current discussion of recent scientific results concerning the Solar System and, since it lies at its center, I appropriately start with the Sun. And because it is so close to the Sun, I cover Mercury as well. As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

Want to hunt for Supernovae?

Galaxy Zoo, which I personally feel is one of the best ongoing Astronomy programs out there, is looking for people to help identify supernovae - bright flashes of light believed to be produced by explosion of white dwarfs or massive stars - in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Go here for more details, and good luck!

June 29th Radio Show: LRO and LCROSS

Finally available here is the June 29th episode of this radio show. Continuing on the previous show's theme of discussing recent satellite launches, on this program I discuss the NASA's newest (unmanned) missions to the Moon. As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

Shadowy Moons...

Moons can eclipse each other as the orbit their respective planets, as proven in this pretty amazing video from Christopher Go, an amateur astronomer in the Phillipines. Video courtesy of spaceweather.com. Enjoy!

The Ethics of Space Travel

Before reading this New York Times article, I hadn't really thought it was an issue - but after reading it I can see why NASA employs someone to think about these things. Definitely worth a read, I feel. Hope you agree.

June 8th Radio Show: Herschel and Planck

Now available here is the June 8th episode of this radio show, not devoted to the wonderful contributions of the scientists whose names are in the title of this post, but the recently launched European astronomy satellites which bear their name. Both Herschel and Planck promise to do some very impressive science, which I hope I did justice too in this show. As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

"Notes And Neurons"

Click here to see Bobby McFerrin's performance of "Notes and Neurons" at this year's World Science Festival. Hope you enjoy!

Pretty Sky tomorrow morning

Well, actually, right at Dawn. According to spaceweather.com,
at dawn Monday, Aug. 17th, Venus and the crescent Moon will be near each other in the eastern sky. For much of North America, the International Space Station (ISS) will also appear. Check spaceweather.com (naturally) for a sky map and ISS flyby predictions. Enjoy!

June 1st Radio Show: Conclusion of the Hubble Servicing Mission

Now available here is the June 1st edition of this radio show, where I cover more wonderful science results from the Hubble Space Telescope and discuss the repairs which were accomplished during the latest (and, unfortunately, almost certainly the last) servicing mission. As always, please email or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

BLAST! Colbert Report! Tonight!

Prof. Mark Devlin, leading scientist on the BLAST Balloon Experiment and subject of the documentary BLAST! The Movie, will be the guest on tonight's episode of the Colbert Report. This airs tonight at 11:30pm EST on Comedy Central, or starting tomorrow, available online here. Enjoy!

Asteroid Watch

NASA has recently started a new webpage, available here, where you can track of all the latest news on Near-Earth Asteroid. Hope you enjoy!

May 13th Radio Show: Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission

Finally available here is the May 13th episode of this radio show, where I cover the very successful (though we didn't know that at the time) final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as some recent scientific results from observations which only Hubble could have performed. As always, please email me or leave below and questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening!

Dark Matter Fueled Rockets

No, I do not jest. Read this article for details.

Human History of the Perseid Meteor Shower

Peaking right about now is the the Perseid Meteor shower, when the Earth runs into debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle as it orbits around the Sun - causing these rocks to enter the Earth's atmosphere where they burn up as little meteorites should, producing lovely little trails of fire. In today's New York Times there is an interesting article by Prof. Christopher Cokinos of Utah State University on the history of this meteor show. Go here to read it, I personally enjoyed it quite a bit. Enjoy!

Astronaut Tweets

Is that what you call it? Anyway, NASA astronaut Col. Tim Kopra is the first International Space Station crew member to "tweet" about living and working in orbit, in partciulat the International Space Station. To follow Kopra on Twitter, click here. He will also be periodically answering questions submitted here. Enjoy!

Perseid Meteor Show

The Perseid meteor shower, one of the most active of the year, will peak between sunset on Tuesday, August 11th, and sun rise on Wednesday, August 12th. This is the result of the Earth passing through the tail of dust and ice left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle as it passes around the Sun. This material isn't stationary, but actually in orbit around the Sun, which is why each year the Earth hits some material. This year the Earth is expected to pass through a denser-than-usual filament of dust, so it should be even more active than normal - with a meteor rates possibly as high as 200 per hour. For more information on this event, read this NASA Science article and visit spaceweather.com. Lots of Astronomy clubs in the NY area are holding observing events, look at the calendar to the right to see if there are any convenient for you. Enjoy!

Also, if you take any pictures, I'd love to link to them from this site. Just leave the URLs in the comments section below.

May 6th Radio Show: Telescope News

Here is the May 6th episode of this radio show where I discuss the latest telescope news: from recycling radio telescopes to launching new satellites. Thank you very much for listening, and hope you enjoy.

New NASA competition

NASA has just announced a new competition where a team of undergraduate and graduate students can design and build excavation systems that could be used for future lunar exploration. Full competition proposals can include a request for up to $5,000 to cover designing, building, and travel expenses. NASA anticipates funding the first 10 approved team requests. Teams will test their designs in a "head to head" challenge to see which design can excavate the most simulated lunar regolith, or dirt, over a specific timeframe. The competition also involves submittal of a
systems engineering paper, as well as an educational outreach project. The event will be held at the Astronaut Hall of Fame near NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., May 25-28, 2010. For information on the competition and how to apply, go here. Good luck!

Spacefront Property

Go here to read about the latest addition to the International Space Station - a space porch. Enjoy!

April 29th Radio Show: Supernovae and their Aftermath

Now available here, but broadcast an embarrassingly long time ago, is the April 29th episode of this radio. In addition to the last Astronomy news, I discuss recent results concerning exploding stars (supernovae) and the neutron star, black holes, and energetic particles they leave behind. Please email me or leave below and questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Hope you enjoy!

April 22nd Radio Show

Available here is the April 22nd episode of this radio show. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find my folder containing all the articles, press releases, etc. so I'm a little foggy as to what I actually talked about. Hope you enjoy anyway! As always, please leave below or email me any questions, comments, or concerns you might have.

April 15th Radio Show: Astronomy News

Definitely covering a grab-bag of topics, here is the April 15th episode of this radio show, where I discuss the latest Astronomy news, from the launch of NASA's Kepler satellite to evidence for the smallest known galaxies in the Universe having significant amounts of dark matter. Please leave below or email me any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening

March 25th radio show: Solar System News

Available here is the March 25th episode of this radio show, where I quickly summarize the latest results on the Solar System. I'm currently doing another series of shows discussing individual objects in the Solar System - so stay tuned if you are interested. As always, please leave below or email me any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

Sorry...

(again) for the lack of radio show postings. I do have several months of backlog shows to put here, and hopefully they will be appearing every other day or so until I am caught up. Unfortunately, I did have to move offline all of the 2007 shows due to disk space concerns - if you want them, please email me and I can temporarily put them back online. Again, thank you very much for your patience.

NASA Programs and Contests

NASA (as does ESA, by the way) sponsors a good number of programs for museums, students, etc. to get people interested in science and engineering. It is currently accepting proposals here (Deadline Oct. 28) for experiments in microgravity conducted by undergraduates, as well as here (for more information, go here) from museums and planetariums for educational activities, and super-efficient aircraft (here).

It also awards prizes for engineering excellence (for example, here), or superb designs of a supersonic aircraft (here). Congrats to the winners, good luck to the applicants, and I'll post information on any further contests as I get them.

Bilingual NASA

To any of you out there who speak Spanish, NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez has recently started his own bilingual twitter, is accepting questions in both English and Spanish here for the next Space Shuttle crew. Enjoy!

Perseid Meteor Shower

Earth, as it travels around the Sun, is passing through the trail of ice and dust left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle (again), bringing not death and destruction but a very pretty sky show (for free!) known as the Perseid Meteor shower. Go here to read a NASA science article with more details - the Perseid meteor shower is one of most active, and really is a site to behold. Please leave below links to any pictures you take of this event, I'd love to see them. Enjoy!

Astronomy and Art

Astronomy has appeared in art pieces for a long time, from stars in cave drawings to art-quality images coming out of telescopes today. Here is an interesting article on telescopes in the paintings of J. Brueghel the Elder, whose works is actually very useful in tracing the development of telescopes. Enjoy!

Longest Solar Eclipse of the 21st Century Longest Solar Eclipse of the 21st Century

The longest solar eclipse of the century is tomorrow. For more information on this event, go here. The New York Times will actually be blogging this event, which you can follow here. Hope you get a chance to see it. I remember seeing a solar eclipse my freshman year of high school, it was pretty amazing.

Poor Jupiter....

... first it was hit by Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, and now this. This impact was actually first discovered by an amateur astronomer, and is observable from small ground-based telescopes. I'd love to link to any pictures you might take of this event, please leave them below. Enjoy!

40th Anniversary of the First Apollo Moon Landing and You

As I'm sure many of you already know, today is the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing by Apollo 11. To commemorate this truly historic occasion, many publications have entire series of articles discussing the important of the Lunar Landings, what the future of human space flight should be, etc. etc. A small sampling of these are :

• Nature magazine
• New York Times
• Science magazine
• NASA (of course), which includes some amazing articles like this and pictures like this.

(feel free to post your own links below in the comments section). This got me the thinking: What does the Moon landings mean to you? Personally, I feel some ambivalence because I was born after the Apollo program ended, so I (obviously) have no personal memories of the Lunar landings. My first memory of human spaceflight was watching the Challenger launch in elementary school, once it was in the air my teacher let the class go outside for recess, and then when we returned we learned it had exploded. Not exactly the high point of human spaceflight. My interest in Astronomy was sparked more by seeing the night sky for the first time during a family trip to Yellowstone and the amazing picture returned by the Hubble Space Telescope than by dreams of going into space - though I would absolutely do so if offered. My officemate, on the other hand, remembers watching some of the latter Moon landings as a child in Communist China - and these memories are a significant reason why he is an Astronomer.

I wondering if this is lack of personal memories is why I'm not particularly enthusiastic about NASA's current plans to return to the Moon and eventually send people to Mars - which it would be exciting, I worry much more about how the considerable cost will likely end NASA's astronomy satellite program which I use in my research quite a bit. I'd be curious to hear what you think: do you think the worldwide excitement that might be generated by a permanent Moon base is worth the potentially trillion dollar cost? Did the Apollo missions play an important role in science? Do you think the future of humanity really is in spaceflight, and therefore we should start now? Please email me your thoughts or post them below - I'd be very curious to read them.

Happy Apollo 11 anniversary!

Space Puzzle!

Courtesy of the New York Times, here is a space puzzle for the entire family to enjoy. Good luck!

BLAST!: The Movie

No, it's not about space flight or rockets, but a documentary of the BLAST balloon experiment which made some of the most sensitive images of the sky at sub-millimeter wavelengths ever. Some friends of mine watched it (one because he went to graduate school with some of the people in the movie) when it was playing in New York City, and absolutely loved it. Go here for more information on showtimes, DVD release, etc. Enjoy!

NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video

As part of its celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landings, NASA has released a restored version of the Apollo Moonwalk video, available here. Not that it is going to make these people happy. Enjoy!

Radio Show tomorrow (Monday, July 20th)

For those of you who listen to this show live on WVKR, my show tomorrow (Monday July 20th) is most likely going to be 9 - 10 AM USET (United States Eastern Time), instead of 10 - 11 AM USET , since I have a meeting I need to go to tomorrow afternoon in NYC. Sorry for the inconvenience, and hope you are having a good weekend!

Apollo 11 Mission Audio

Continuing its celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first Lunar Landings, probably NASA's greatest achievement, NASA has made available a full audio recording of the Apollo 11 mission. To listen, go here. Enjoy!

40th Anniversary of the First Moon Landings

The New York Times today has a very nice series of articles, available here, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the countdown for the launch of Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon. Hope you enjoy!

Happy Independence Day!

American Independence Day, that is. Enjoy!

Congratulations...

... to the winners in NASA's Second Annual Lunar Art Contest. Go here to see the winning entries, and stay tuned for information for next year's contests.

A July 4th present from the International Space Station

This July 4th, coincidentally, the International Space Station will be passing overhead much of the US at night. For more information, read this article and to find out when it will be appearing over your town, go here. It's a pretty impressive sight, so hope you get a chance to see it!

New Topographic Map of the Earth

NASA and the Japan Space Agency have teamed up to produce the most complete, detailed topographic map of the Earth to date use the Japanese instrumrent Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, aboard the NASA spacecraft Terra. Go here to see the gorgeous pictures and here to download the data. Enjoy!

40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Events

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of its greatest success, NASA has scheduled a whole slew of events in honor of the first moon landing. For a listing events, go here. Enjoy!

Are you an amateur radio astronomer?

Yesterday, a group of HAM radio operators communicated with each other by bouncing radio signals off the moon (go here for more information). I'd be very interested in either posting more information about this here or devoting a whole show to amateur radio operators / astronomy - so if you were involved in this please let me know. Thank you.

von Braun and NASA

As controversial as this relationship might be, von Braun did a lot of (important) work for NASA, and NASA is currently wondering how best to present all of the paperwork he generated. Go here to present your opinion.

The oldest blobs in the universe

Yes, "blobs" is the scientific term they use. Given that this article is about diffuse clouds of gas in the early universe, it is a pretty appropriate term.

Congratulations NASA Scholarship winners

As part of its "Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology" program, NASA has selected 100 full-time undergraduate students to receive a one-year college scholarship. For more information on this program, and how you can hope to receive one of these scholarships next year, go here. Good luck!

Steven Colbert in space?

Well, it's not the node of the International Space Station he wanted, but it is something. Go here for more info. I personally really like the logo.

What's next for Hubble?

Now that Servicing Mission 4 is over and, for the most part, successful - what is the Hubble Space Telescope doing now? Go here for the details, but the short answer is testing all of the wonderful new hardware (gyroscopes, detectors, etc.) installed during the astronaut's visit.

NY Times Article on Transiting Planets

Here is a pretty good article on the search to find another Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star (you know, in addition to the one we live on.). Enjoy!

March 18th radio show: String Theory

Broadcast almost two months ago but finally available here is the March 18th episode of this radio show where, in addition the usual Astronomy calendar, Prof. Matt Kleban of NYU talks about string theory and how it can actually impact in cosmology. As always, please email or post below and questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thanks for listening, and sorry for posting this so late.

Interview with Dr. Katie Mack (Princeton University)

Broadcast way too long ago, and recorded well before that, finally available here is my interview with Dr. Katie Mack of Princeton University on her research into microscopic black holes and other bizarre particles which might have been created during the Big Bang. For more information, check out her webpage here and a comic strip that features her work here. Hope you enjoy, and as always, please email or leave below and comments, questions, or concerns you might have. Thanks for listening!

New Apollo Mission book

NASA and Abrams Books have partnered to put out a new book on the Apollo Mission featuring photographs selected by each of the surviving astronauts who take part in this program. For more information, go here

NASA High School Program

NASA's INSPIRE program is currently accepting applications from high school student through June 30th for a summer program. Go here for more information, and good luck!

Congratulations NASA Contest Winners

NASA holds several contests for high school, college, and graduate students, and it recently announced the winners of its 2009 Aeronautics Scholarships contest (list here) and its supersonic research essay contest (list here. Congratulations! These contest are held yearly, and will post info on next year's when it becomes available.

Upcoming Solar Cycle

As some of you might remember, about 6 months ago there was a lot of discussion over the utter lack of sunspots being observed at the beginning of this solar cycle. Well, some have been detected, and now NASA has revised its prediction for the upcoming solar cycle. To read more, go here. Enjoy!

Congrats to NASA's new interns!

Go here to learn more about this program.

Congrats to NASA's new interns!

Go here to learn more about this program.

NSF's Science Nation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) now has a weekly Science magazine / webshow titled Science Nation, available here. No astronomy content yet, but I'm sure that will change soon. Enjoy!

World Science Festival 2009

The second annual World Science Festival is starting this Wednesday in NYC, and tickets for all their events are now on-sale. Go here to see what events they are and how much the cost. Several look really interesting, and hope you enjoy!

NASA Review of American Human Space Flight

NASA is beginning (a probably long overdue) review of its human spaceflight program: what should its goal be? what is the best way of doing it? - that sort of thing. They've created a website where you offer your opinion here, which is important since you are basically funding the whole thing (NASA, the review, the federal government).

Arietid Meteor Shower this Weekend

Courtesy of spaceweather.com:

The annual Arietid meteor shower peaks on Sunday, June 7th. The Arietids are unusual because they
are daytime meteors; they stream out of a point in the sky not far from the sun. The best time to look is just before dawn on Sunday morning when it may be possible to spot a small number of Arietids skimming the top of Earth's atmosphere. Such "Earthgrazing" meteors tend to be long, colorful, and very pretty. After daybreak, when the meteors are no longer visible to the human eye, you can listen to radar echoes from the Arietids by tuning in to our online meteor radar: http://spaceweatherradio.com .

Times, they are a' changing...

I probably should have posted this last week, but during the summer (starting tomorrow!) my radio show will be airing live Monday mornings from 10 - 11 AM USET, instead of Wednesday mornings from 7 - 8 AM. Hope this doesn't inconvenience any of you, and thanks a lot for listening. This week's show is going to cover the end of the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission and recent Hubble results which explains why this servicing mission was so important.

Astronaut Twitter

NASA Astronaut Mark Polansky, commander of upcoming shuttle mission STS-127 to the International Space Station, is twittering (is that a verb?) about his training for the upcoming mission here, as well as taking questions to answer while in orbit. Enjoy.

3D Images of Mars and the International Space Station

Courtesy of NASA and Microsoft, new 3D images of Mars rovers and the International Space Station are available here though you need to download Microsoft Silverlight to view it. Enjoy!

Public Talk Tomorrow

I know I'm very behind posting past shows, show descriptions, astronomy websites, etc., but tomorrow night at 7:30 PM I'm giving a public talk on white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes at the Custer Institute and Observatory in Southold, NY (on the north fork of Long Island). Hope you can make it!

NASA and you

NASA has recently put out a new webpage describing how its activities (mainly technologies it develops) impacts everyday life. Enjoy!

February 25th Radio Show: The Earliest Universe

Broadcast a long time ago but finally available here is the February 25th episode of this radio show, which in addition to the usual calendar features an interview with Katie Mack of Princeton University on the early universe. As always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thanks a lot for listening, and your patience!

How do you take a lens cap off in space?

NASA's Kepler telescope, whose mission is to detect Earth-sized planets in Earth-like orbits around Sun-like stars in other solar systems, recently removed the dust cover over its CCD camera. Go here for a movie of how this is done. Enjoy!

Peak of Lyrid Meteor Shower tomorrow morning

Earth is currently passing through the stream of debris left behind by Comet Thatcher as it orbits the sun, are the resulting (Lyrid) meteor shower should peak tomorrow morning before dawn
with 10-20 meteors per hour crashing through the northern hemisphere. For full coverage, go here. And don't forget the Moon occulting Venus tomorrow morning around 5 AM. Go here for more information, and hope for clear skies!

Disappearing Venus

Next Wednesday, Venus will disappear from the sky! Well, for a short time anyway. Because the Moon will be blocking it from view. At the same time, the Lyrid meteor shower - one of the most active meteor showers of the year - will also be going on. Should be a fun time to be observing the sky. Go here for more information, and clear skies!

World Science Festival 2009 Volunteers

The second annual World Science Festival to be held June 10-14 in New York City is now looking for volunteers. Go here if you are interested.

Pretty picture of the Triangulum Galaxy (M 33)

Available here, courtesy of scientists at NASA's JPL.

Astronaut twitter

If you are interested in what life as an astronaut is like, as well as how preparations for the fifth and final Hubble servicing mission is going, check out the Twitter of Mike Massimino (username is Astro_Mike or @Astro_Mike, or just go here). Enjoy!

Radio bursts from Jupiter (and beyond)

Jupiter is actually an extremely bright radio source, and NASA has a pretty impressive program that lets you build your own radio telescope and observe Jupiter for yourself - and other sources as well I imagine. Go here for more information. Enjoy!

I'm back....

I'm really sorry for the lack of posts over the last 3 weeks, but I recently attended an Astronomy conference and only returned late last week. I'm back, and hope to resume posting on a more regular basis. Thank you very much for your patience.

Vote on the Name of NASA's next Mars Rover

While "Mars Science Laboratory" is a fairly descriptive name for a rover - it is going to be on Mars to do Science with its on-board Laboratory, it is pretty dry and not that exciting. Too come up with a new name, NASA held a nationwide contest for suggestions, and now you can vote for which name you like here starting today until March 29th. This poll is non-binding, much to the chagrin of Stephen Colbert, I'm sure (though I personally kinda like the sound of "Mars Truthiness Rover" but that is just me). Enjoy!

Quadruple Saturn Moon Transit Snapped by Hubble

This February, the Hubble Space Telescope took a picture of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet which can be seen here and here. Such events are rare, and only happen when the tilt of Saturn's ring plane is nearly "edge on" as seen from Earth. Enjoy!

New NASA movie: "Frozen"

NASA has recently produced a "unique 'spherical' movie" (their words, not mine) showing how the ice and snow cover of the Earth changes over time as imaged by NASA spacecraft. This movie is called "Frozen," 12-minutes long, and meant to view on a six-foot sphere which has been installed in more than 30 locations around the world. For more information about "Frozen," including a list of locations showing the film, go here. Enjoy!

NASA Celebrates Sun-Earth Day With Illuminating Webcast TODAY!

Cut-and-paste directly from their press release:

NASA scientists will reveal new information and images about our sun and its influence on Earth and the solar system for Sun-Earth Day, recognized each year in conjunction with the spring equinox. The highlight of this year's celebration is a webcast for students and teachers around the world, beginning at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT), Friday, March 20.

This year's theme, "Our Sun, Yours to Discover," celebrates the International Year of Astronomy and emphasizes daytime astronomy. During the live, interactive event, participants from around the world and NASA scientists will share new discoveries and visualizations about our sun. Participating students will have the opportunity to demonstrate personally designed sundials, while others will be monitoring the sun and preparing their own space weather forecast.

"Tremendous strides have been made with satellite and ground-based observations of the sun, which have enabled us to monitor the sun to gain a better understanding of the processes that govern its influence on our solar system," said Eric Christian, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Sun-Earth Day is a celebration of the sun and how it affects life on our planet and the space around Earth, known as geospace. For the past nine years, NASA has sponsored and coordinated education and public outreach events for Sun-Earth Day that highlight NASA heliophysics research and discoveries. NASA's goal is to use celestial events to engage the public and students in kindergarten through 12th grade via webcasts, podcasts, space science activities, demonstrations and interactions with space scientists.

"These events also support the spirit of international collaboration," said Lou Mayo, project manager at Goddard for Sun-Earth Day 2009. "We are excited about sharing the latest discoveries about our sun and encourage others to join our quest for a greater understanding of our closest star."

Goddard is producing the Sun-Earth Day webcast. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago also are participating in the broadcast. NASA Television and the agency's Web site will broadcast the event live. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: here. For more information about Sun-Earth Day, visit: here. For more information about NASA's Education programs, visit: here.

February 18th Radio Show: "The Theory of Everything"

Over the past few months, I've done my best to explain what Astronomers believe is going on in the universe. An equally interesting and difficult question is how did the universe get to be the way it is, and that is focus of the very-delayed-but-finally-posted February 18th episode of this radio show. Thanks a lot for listening!

Description of January 21st Radio Show: Galaxy Formation

Previously available here, below is a description of the January 21st episode of this radio show, where I try to describe the current thinking (and many questions) on how galaxies formed:

• Galaxy Formation: Pretty much every galaxy is believed to have a super-massive black hole (SMBH) at its center, but is unclear if the galaxy formed before the SMBH or vice versa. Recent radio observations of distant galaxies suggest that the SMBH formed first, and then the galaxy around it (link), though recent optical observations of other distant galaxies suggest the opposite. As matter falls into the SMBH, it heats up and radiates a lot of energy, which is absorbed by the surrounding gas, causing it to heat up and possible decreasing the amount of future gas will fall into the SMBH. This process was originally believed to be very sporadic and violent, but recent evidence suggests this process may be gentler in some galaxies (link). Most galaxies are either spiral galaxies currently forming stars (like the Milky Way, referred to as "blue spirals" because young, massive stars cause the galaxy to appear bluish) or elliptical galaxies consisting almost entirely of old stars (referred to as "red ellipticals" or "red, dead galaxies" which old, low mass stars give the galaxy a red color). A population of red spirals do exist, and are either cases where the spiral galaxy ran out of gas and dust to form new stars, or have so much gas and dust that the blue light produced by young, massive stars is absorbed and the galaxy appears red (link). Galaxies where a lot of material appears to be falling into (a process astronomer call "accretion") the SMBH are often referred to as AGN, or "Active Galactic Nuclei." Discoveries of AGN with the Swift telescope have found differences in the types of galaxies that host nearby and distant AGN (link). It is currently believed that the massive (Milky Way-sized) galaxies observed today or the result of smaller, proto-galaxies merging together in earlier times. This process predicts that the relationship between different current properties of a galaxy (e.g., its size, mass, total light output, gas content) is complicated because they are effected differently by the merging process. However, a recent study found that all of these parameters just depend on the mass of the galaxy - which is very puzzling indeed. Even if this is true, there is a wide diversity in the properties of nearby galaxies, and to study this the Hubble Space Telescope has been measuring the properties of individual stars in these galaxies to determine the history of how quickly they formed stars, etc. (link). One feature of spiral galaxies is that some of these appear to have "bars" in the center (like the Milky Way does, actually), while others don't. A recent survey of galaxies done as part of the COSMOS project has found that the fraction of spirals with bars has tripled over the last 7 billion years (link) . It is currently believed that the merger of two galaxies together will lead to a short-lived but intense increase in the rate at which the resultant galaxy forms stars - called a starburst galaxy. If this correct, then astronomers expect that all startburst galaxies should either show morphological evidence for a recent merger, or be in a crowded regions of galaxies where mergers are likely to occur. An exception to this was NGC 1569, but recent Hubble observations allowed a new measurement of the distance to the galaxy, placing it in the midst of 10 other galaxies (link). Starbursts galaxies are a very active area of research since they play an important role in understanding the history of star formation in the universe, and observations of distant galaxies suggests that star formation in the universe peaked ~2 billion or so years after the Big Bang (about 12 billions years ago; link). The rate of star formation in these galaxies is huge, star formation rates as high as 4000 new stars a year (the Milky Way current makes about 10) has been estimated in some galaxies (link).
• News: Op-ed article in the November 24, 2008 New York Times on on-going problems at NASA with astronomy programs and others going over budget. Also in the New York Times, Dr. Aaron Hirsh write a guest column for their "The Wild Side" arguing for "citizen science" - stepping up a widespread data taking and analysis network. Astronomy has some similar networks, e.g. amateur astronomers searching for supernovae and other transient events, and projects like Galaxy Zoo.
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer: In this article, Gregg Easterbrook speculates that the excess of radio emission from deep outer space is the sound of interstellar war (No. Radio waves are actually light, not sound waves), and discusses recent observations of the Sun's motion around the center of the Milky Way that suggests the inner part of the Milky Way has 50% more mass than previously thought. One reader writes in that this was discovered using a simple method - which is very true, but very hard to do precisely.
• Calendar of upcoming Astronomy/science events in the greater Poughkeepsie/New York City area.
Galaxy Formation (continued): As I mentioned earlier, the merger of galaxies is believed to be the most important process in producing the galaxies we see today. Not surprisingly, what happens when two galaxies merge is very complicated, and much of our current understanding comes from studying the Antennae Galaxies - the nearest example of a galaxy merger. Recent observations of this pair of interacting galaxies change the distance from 65 million light-years to 45 million light-years, important in measuring the properties of these galaxies (link). A recent survey of interacting galaxies suggest that all galaxies have undergone a "major merger" in the last 6 billion years, and the peak in the merger rate of galaxies corresponds with the peak of the fraction of starburst galaxies in the universe - suggesting a link between the two. Evidence for a recent merger in a very distant galaxy has been uncovered thanks to gravitational lensing - which makes this galaxy appear much brighter than it ordinarily would (link). New observations suggests that SMBH were common inside galaxies 12 billion years ago, based on observations of two colliding galaxies at this time (link). The merging of two galaxies is also believed to drive gas towards the center of the galaxy, where it falls into the SMBH - creating a Seyfert galaxy. If so, the distribution of hydrogen gas inside such galaxies show evidence for being disrupted by such a merger - and they do (link). I said before that the merger/collision of two galaxies can lead to a period of intense star formation. Well, there is evidence that in some cases, this actually can cause star formation to stop (link). Additionally, the energy radiated by gas falling into the SMBH triggered by a galaxy merger/collision can also stop star formation in the outer part of the gas (link). Not just galaxies can merge / collide, this happens to galaxy clusters as well, and one example of a colliding galaxy cluster is surrounding by a diffuse haze of very low frequency radio emission (link). These collisions may also explain the existence of the magnetic field which exists in the void between galaxies inside galaxy clusters. (article)

As always, please leave below or email me any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

Description of January 7 Radio Show: Milky Way Galaxy

Long available here, below is a description of the January 7th episode of the radio show, where I continue the "Tour of the Universe" with a description of the Milky Way:

• Galactic Center and Galactic Plane - At the very center of the Milky Way, there is believed to a black hole which has a mass approximately a million or so times that of the Sun called Sgr A*. Pretty strong evidence for the existence of such an object comes from studying the orbit of stars very close to Sgr A* (link). Measuring the mass of similar black holes believed to be at the centers of other galaxies is much more difficult since there you can't resolve the orbits of individual stars. Other methods which have been proposed are the tightness of their spiral arms (link), the temperature of the hot, X-ray emitting gas surrounding the galaxy (if it is a galaxy without much ongoing star formation; link). Surrounding Sgr A* is a disk of stars including the Sun, referred to as the Galactic Plane. They stars orbits Sgr A*, and a new, precise measurement of the rotation of stars in the Milky Way was recently made using a particular class of pulsating stars called Cepheids - which have also been used to measure the distance to other galaxies (link). The spiral arms in the Milky Way are not believed to concentration of particular stars, but where a significant number of stars are born "at once" - which is why they appear brighter than other parts of the Milky Way and contain a vast majority of the most massive (and therefore, very short lived) stars in the Galaxy. There is evidence that our Sun has traveled a considerable distance from its birth site in the Milky Way. Since young stars are clustered along spiral arms, and young, massive stars are the dominant source of ultraviolet radiation in a galaxy, ultraviolet images like the one the Swift satellite recently made of M33 (link), are good ways of studying the spiral structure in a galaxy. Spiral arms, and other features of the galactic disks make the results of gravitational interactions between galaxies (link). The Milky Way also contains clusters of stars, the densest and oldest of which are called "globular clusters", which are believed to be stars formed at the same time out of the same cloud of gas. A recent study of the a particular globular cluster measured its age using three different methods and got three different answers - a bit of a puzzle (link). As discussed on a previous show, the most massive stars in the Milky Way are believed to end their life in a supernova explosions, which actually plays a very important role in the properties of the gas which fills the Galactic plane of the Milky Way. Recent Chandra and Very Large Array observations have discovered the remnant of the most recent supernova explosion in the Milky Way, believed to have occurred only 140 years ago (link). The material released in these explosion expand with a very high velocity, heating the surrounding gas to very high temperatures and compressing into a thin shell of material which make for lovely Hubble images - and very interesting science (link). The hot gas and cosmic rays produced in the interaction between the material ejected in a supernova and its surrounding might explain the flow of gas out of the Milky Way's Galactic Plane, and carve bubbles out of nearby cold gas as observed in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud (link). This is believed to explain why clusters of young stars are often surrounding by "holes" in gas, though this is not the case for nearby dwarf galaxy IC 2574. In most galaxies like the Milky Way, ionized hydrogen is only found in the center of these galaxies, most likely the result of star formation occurring only in certain regions and not distributed uniformly around a galaxy (link). Spitzer observations of a nearby spiral galaxy M101 shows that organic molecules are only present towards its center and not its edges (link; image. In the Milky Way, most star formation is currently taking place near the center of the galaxy, but not so in M83 where GALEX recently observed star formation at the outer edge (link)
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer: I understand and don't necessarily disagree with his point in this article, but astronomers did not "cavalierly" come up with the idea of Dark Matter - it was first proposed to explain some observations in the 1930s I believe, did not gain acceptance for at least 30 years, and still bothers many people, dark matter has been "located" (though not yet explained), the every controversial "dark flow" observed in distance galaxy clusters might be due to an unknown force, but not one outside our universe but one important on distances greater than the speed of light times the age of the universe which defines the "observable universe." I know that is pretty subtle, but it is an important distinction.
• Calendar of upcoming Astronomy/Science events in the greater Poughkeepsie/New York City area.
• Globular Clusters and Galactic Halo: Outside the Galactic Plane there are dense concentrations of millions of old stars referred to as globular clusters. Recent observations suggest that, even though they are "only" 9-13 billion years old, the structure of stars inside globular clusters is still evolving (link). It is though the some globular clusters are actually the remnants of the centers of dwarf galaxies which have been absorbed by the Milky Way. Since such galaxies are also believed to have black holes at their center, the presence of a massive black hole (much more massive than the Sun) might be proof this occurring. Such a black hole might have been found in globular cluster Omega Centauri (link), which - unlike other globular clusters - also contains dust (link). A similar process might explain the large number of globular clusters in M87, the giant elliptical galaxy in the center of the Virgo cluster - it "stole" them from lower mass galaxies which got too close (link). By measuring the velocity of the stars in the halo of the Milky Way, the diffuse "cloud" of stars which surrounds the Galactic Plane, it is possible to estimate the total mass of our galaxy. A recent such measurement suggests a lower mass than previously estimated (link). How the Milky Way's halo got there is an open, and interesting question. The two possibilities are that the stars formed out of the same cloud of gas that collapsed to form the Milky Way, or that it is the remnants of galaxies which have merged into the Milky Way. Recent studies of the structure of the halo suggest the second possibility, as do the presence of streams of stars in the halos of two nearby galaxies (here). It is expected that there are stars in the vast empty space between galaxies, and astronomers are searching for them (link). Last, but not least, it appears that most of the mass of galaxies is not in stars, gas, or dust, but in "dark matter" - this mysterious stuff that has mass but doesn't seem to produce light. Dark Matter is present in the dwarf galaxies which orbit the Milky Way - in fact, one of these has the highest ratio of dark to "normal" matter of any known object (link), and the galactic plane might be enclosed in a larger disk of dark matter(link). The distribution of dark matter in a galaxy is not expected to be entirely smooth but contain clumps and streams (link) which might be measurable using the motion of nearby stars in the night sky. An alternative to dark matter is the Newton's equation for gravity is wrong on very large distances (called MOdified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND), which can do a good job reproducing the orbit of dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way (link). There are many fewer known dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way than expected, a problem for our current understanding of galaxy formation, though possible solutions have been suggested (link)

Thank you very much listening, and please email or post below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have.

February 11th Radio Show: Cosmology

Over a month after it first aired, here is the February 11th radio show on cosmology, where I discuss why astronomers think the universe is mostly composed of dark matter and dark energy. Hope you enjoy and, as always, please leave below or email me any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thanks for listening!

Description of December 31st Radio Show: Latest Astronomy News

Long available here, below is a description of the December 31st episode of this radio show, where I discussed the major Astronomical results to come out in December 2006. They were:

• Solar System News: Recent powerful solar flare produced both neutral and charged particles, first time neutral particles detected from such an event; ESA's Venus Express detects hydrogen leaving Venus's atmosphere from the day-side for the first time - gas appears to be result of water being broken down into hydrogen and oxygen in upper atmosphere, and might explain why there is so little water on Venus; NASA's THEMIS satellites detect the opening of a large hole in the Earth's magnetic field due to the interaction with a clump in the solar wind; NASA instrument on India's Chandrayaan-1 Lunar spacecraft measures changes in chemical composition of lunar surface on small physical scales (link, image); next NASA mission to the Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Oribter; completes major milestone before April 2009 launch (website); evidence for climate change on Mars resulting from regular changes in the tilt of its orbit around the Sun - deduced from studying patterns of rock layers in a large crater (link); results from ESA's Mars Express satellite suggests that peculiar light-toned deposits result on ground water bursts onto the surface (link); NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completes primary mission (website), releases new 3D images of surface (link), and found evidence for carbonite on Martian surface which requires the past presence of neutral or basic water on Mars's surface (article); evidence that site of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is currently going through a "dry" phase; next NASA mission to Mars - the Mars Science Laboratory - delayed until late 2011 due to cost over-runs, delay expected to have implications for future planetary missions; ongoing debate whether future joint NASA/ESA Solar System mission should be to Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Titan; recent flybys of Saturn's moon Enceladus by Cassini show continuing activity and of Titan show evidence for volcanos spewing ice in to this moon's atmosphere; Swift satellite detects X-ray emission from Solar System comets (link)
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer: Yes, an ice cream carton hurtling towards the Earth at 99% the speed of light would be a very bad thing (article); no, the astronomical theory for what Voorwerp might be is not an attempt to upstage the Dutch schoolteacher who found it, but is an attempt to understand a still very bizarre object (link); star formation in the universe is actually on a decline, and if the current thinking on the universe is correct, the ultimate fate is a starless night sky - a very depressing prospect indeed (link); and I think it is definitely a good thing that the more we look, the less we understand (link).
• Calendar of upcoming Astronomy/Science events in the greater Poughkeepsie/New York area.
• More News: Evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars not planets (link); up and coming sub-mm radio interferometer ALMA gets its first telescope; astronomers discover the two faintest brown dwarfs known (link); analog to young Sun identified by CoRoT satellite (link); turbulence in proto-planetary disk important in determining how planets form (link); Spitzer images massive stars destroying proto-planetary disks of their neighbors (link); Dutch undergrads discover first extrasolar planet orbiting a fast-rotating star (link); Hubble Space Telescope discovers carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet (link) and measure the size of a different extrasolar planet (link); proposal to look for moons around extrasolar planets through the "wobbles" they create in their orbits (link); new technique proposal to look for water in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet; direct imaging of extrasolar planets is Science magazine's #2 breakthrough of the year; Kepler spacecraft - which will search for Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars - shipped to Florida (just launched last week!!!)

As always, please post below or email any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you for listening!

International Space Station webcam

Ever wonder what the view from the International Space Station looks like? Thanks to a new onboard webcam camera you can see for yourself between 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. CST. To check it out, go here. Enjoy!

Sorry...

I'm really sorry for the lack of posts lately, especially the large delay in putting up recent radio shows as well as descriptions of past ones. Between a death in the family and work, I've fallen quite a bit behind. Thank you for your patience...

Want to help the European Space Agency design their first Lunar Lander?

It's pretty technical, but they would like to hear from you. Go here for more information.

Have a question about Space Shuttles?

The next space shuttle is scheduled to launch on March 12th, and during the NASA TV broadcast covering the launch, the commentators will be answering questions submitted by you (and lots of other people around the globe)! If you have a questions you would like answered on air, go to
http://webcast.ksc.nasa.gov. Discovery and its seven astronauts are tentatively targeted to launch March 12 at 8:54 p.m. EDT from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA commentary will begin about five hours before liftoff. For more information about the STS-119 crew and mission, go here. Good luck!

Make Astrophysics, Not War

Just a cool little video I found on the web, hope you enjoy:

Docking from Mato Atom on Vimeo.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but I've been dealing with a death in the family.

Past Interview: Dr. Daniel Babich (Caltech)

To supplement the February 4th radio show on cosmology, here is a past interview I conducted with Dr. Dan Babich of Caltech on the Cosmic Microwave Background. Hope you enjoy and, as always, thank you for listening!

February 4th Radio Show: Cosmology

Too long coming, I know, but here is the February 4th episode of this radio show, where the "tour of the Universe" begins its close with the first episode on cosmology - the study of the Universe as a whole (as opposed to studying individual objects in the universe). Hope you enjoy and, as always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you very much for listening.

Great Cosmic Coincidence Tomorrow Night!

Tomorrow night, Saturn and Comet Lulin will converge in the constellation Leo only 2 degrees apart. Even better, Comet Lulin will also be making its closest approach to Earth--the comet at its best!-- while four of Saturn's moons transit the disk of the ringed planet in view of backyard telescopes. Oh, and the Moon will be New, providing dark skies for anyone who wishes to see the show. The best time to look is around 1 a.m. when the planet-comet combo ascend high in the southern sky. To the unaided eye, Comet Lulin looks like a faint patch of gas floating next to golden Saturn. Point your backyard telescope at that patch and you will see a lovely green comet with a double tail. For more information, visit spaceweather.com and/or read this NASA science article. Hope you have clear skies!

Name the next module on the International Space Station

NASA is hosting a competition to help name the International Space Station's next module - a control tower for robotics in space and the world's ultimate observation deck. You can vote for the module's name online, choosing one of four NASA suggestions: Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity or Venture, or writing in a name. Submissions will be accepted Feb. 19 through March 20. The name should reflect the spirit of exploration and cooperation embodied by the space station and follow in the tradition set by Node 1, named "Unity," and Node 2, named "Harmony." To participate, go here. Good luck!

January 28th Radio Show: Galaxy Formation and Evolution

Sorry for the delay, but here is the January 28th edition of this radio show, where I continue my discussion of galaxy formation and evolution. Thank you for listening, hope you enjoy, and, as always, please email me or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have.