catdynamics | June 8, 2009Congratulations to Wendy, Rob and Jeremy.
Recipients of the 2009 Gruber Cosmology Prize
For calibrating the Hubble constant, using Cepheid pulsations and the Hubble Space Telescope to find that the current value of the Hubble is 72 km/sec/Mpc
$500,00 to Prof. Wendy Freedman (Carnegie), Robert Kennicutt (Cambridge) and Jeremy Mould (Melbourne)
Like this: NGC 4603
catdynamics | June 5, 2009are the odds of a meteorite downing an aircraft reasonable?
John at CV asks whether a meteorite could have downed fligh 447?
he concludes it is possible, but not very likely.
As he notes the meteorite hypothesis was also suggested for flight 800 from JFK back in 1996, but careful forensics showed it was due to a fuel vapour explosion in the central tank.
Learning from a Tragedy: Explosions and Flight 800 (.pdf) by Joe Shepherd
The CV comments have much discussion about the validity of the approximations John uses in deriving the odds of an impact on a plane in flight.
There is a simpler…
catdynamics | June 5, 2009We hear that Kepler scientists looking at commissioning data are rather pleased...
Kepler scientists after first look photometry...
Here is the official word.
Note "...data are of very high quality and the scientists are very pleased with the precision of the data..."
This is, I gather, what we might call an understatement.
There is unprocessed pipeline calibration photometry and apparently it looks very very good indeed.
Should get even better with post-processing, though of course long term stability is not yet known.
Kepler field
They are being careful, not going to release anything…
catdynamics | June 1, 2009had to stop at a large bank today and saw some signs of the time
no, no that one, another of the Too Big Too Fail banks
it was very busy, and the staff looked a bit frazzled, it being the first of the month and all, and a manager came to ask me if I didn't want to do my transaction through one of their "quick drop" services - especially since I "had little ones with me
I politely declined, and told her I wanted a dated receipt for the transaction,
and, no, the handwritten-by-me counterfoil would not do
- on a side note, an acquaintance recently told us how a cash deposit through a drop-off…
catdynamics | June 1, 2009Members of the Augustine Commission on Human Space Flight Plans announced.
h/t NASAwatch
and the winners are...
- Norman Augustine (chair), retired chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp., and former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
- Dr. Wanda Austin, president and CEO, The Aerospace Corp.
- Bohdan Bejmuk, chair, Constellation program Standing Review Board, and former manager of the Boeing Space Shuttle and Sea Launch programs
- Dr. Leroy Chiao, former astronaut, former International Space Station…
catdynamics | June 1, 2009Now do we have our spots back?
With bonus pretty pictures.
You'd think after my last debacle of prematurely pronouncing the reappearance of sunspots I'd have learned...
but, is it, could it be...?
click to embiggen
looks like a small complex of spots in the upper left quadrant...
there are associated emission lines, but today's magnetogram is not up yet
yup
is calling it, spot 1019, member of new solar cycle 24
close up from Robert Arnold
more pics at spaceweather.com 01/06/09
including this, rather cool one:
Sunspot 1019 and International Space Station transit, at the same time…
catdynamics | May 31, 2009in the short run
remake the Blues Brother's movie
creative destruction...
not, of course, that they can ever replace Belushi
this is business, not art
catdynamics | May 30, 2009US Navy is on the move again.
We like to keep an eye on what the US Navy's strike forces are up to, it is a habit I got into many years ago when I knew a couple of people likely to be on them, this became a more intense interest for a few years over the last half decade
anyway, the USS Reagan just set to see, in a bit of a rush, to head for the west Pacific/Middle East. One of those.
Now the Eisenhower is in the Middle East, should be back late summer;
the USS Washington is stationed in Japan and is out on exercises, preparing for their summer cruise;
the USS Stennis was in the west Pacific…
catdynamics | May 29, 2009magnitude 4.7 earthquake in the southwest of Iceland
in Svartsengi, near the Blue Lagoon,
moderately close to Reykjavík
Svartsengifell is part of a row of volcanic craters on the southwest spur of the Atlantic rift.
The area went through intense series of eruptions about 1,000 years ago, which came to a halt in 1227 - research suggests the eruptions cycle with a periodicity of about 1,000 years, so resumption of eruptions is expected on timescale of 1-3 centuries.
historical eruptions in the southwest of Iceland
from ferlir.is - some awesome pictures of the lava formations at the path…
catdynamics | May 29, 2009There has been a lot of blogospheric buzz about the nomination by President Obama of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Her opponents, of course, try to find something about her they can attack, and there have been gratuitous and poorly sourced attacks on her temperament, intelligence and even financial sense.
A major indicator of Judge Sotomayor's intellectual abilities are that she was the co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize for the class of '76 at Princeton.
The Pyne Prize is the top academic prize awarded to Princeton undergraduates, and is undeniably a sign of major scholastic…
catdynamics | May 28, 2009NASA is due to name the 10 panel members of the Augustine panel on human spaceflight and NASA goals, possibly today.
The Orlando Sentinel thinks it knows who most of the members are.
The Write Stuff blog at the Orlando Sentinel names 8 names they claim to know will be on the panel.
Chris Chyba (astrobio/policy - Princeton)
Sally Ride (astronaut UC)
Lester Lyles (USAF ex-general - NASA advisory cmt)
Edward Crawley - (MIT engineer - earth obs.)
Bo Bejmuk (Boeing/Sea Launch)
Jeff Greason (Rotary/XCOR)
Wanda Austin (CEO Aerospace Corps)
Wow.
I'm glad to see Bejmuk and Greason on the list.…
catdynamics | May 27, 2009it appears that my proposal page production rate is approximately constant at about one page per two cups of coffee
catdynamics | May 26, 2009Carnivalea and Culture Wars Galore
Carnival of Space 104
Carnival of Space 103 - at Chandra Blog
Chandra Blog also has a neat post on what is hidden in headers of astronomical images
Built on Facts considers the traffic jam problem - he considers the phase transition to jams as a statistical physics problem with growing correlation lengths - needs to show more work.
I personally prefer the continuum picture where traffic jams appear as breaking non-linear waves.
Advantage of that model is that it tells you how you ought to drive to minimize jams... if only it were safe...
Office of Special…
catdynamics | May 24, 2009North Korea is claiming a second, successful, nuclear device test.
Coincident with a shallow medium magnitude earthquake in the test region.
Earthquake is magnitude 4.7 or so on the Richter scale (Swiss are estimating 5.1).
Very shallow, consistent with surface origin, 380 km north east of Pyongyang, close to the Chinese border.
The North Korean's previous nuclear test was a fizzle, but this one is several times stronger and shallow enough there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to hide it.
So, probably few kiloton equivalent yield, depending on the local geology and where exactly they…
catdynamics | May 24, 2009Atlantis has landed safely. Hubble servicing mission is finished.
It woke me up coming down.
Atlantis landing had been delayed for two successive days because of weather, so this morning they diverted the landing site to the backup location at Edward's Air Force Base, just over the mountains from where I am.
Atlantis woke me up, the twin sonic booms of the shuttle coming in across the coast going slightly north-to-south and coming in from the west, were right over our house.
Cat was startled awake, and then the children - actually thought it might have been a small earthquake initially till…
catdynamics | May 23, 2009Obama has nominated Charles Bolden for NASA Administrator and Lori Garver as Deputy Administrator
h/t NASAwatch and kos
catdynamics | May 20, 2009Hubble is let go, and NASA puts out some new must see video from the Solid Rocket Boosters.
Absolutely astonishingly staggering awesome video of the launch, separation, fallback and splashdown.
video shot from one of the Solid Rocket Boosters, during launch up to and including drop off and splashdown!
The last few seconds are dizzying.
Watch all of it, it is worth it, trust me!
These videos from the NASAtelevision channel on youtube are amazing.
also
Hubble release
bye
(click to embiggen)
catdynamics | May 20, 2009Xodus.is has a webcam
showing a Sea Eagle nesting in Iceland
very cute. very very cute.
Remember the timezone, and note the camera is occasionally blurred by salt spray.
h/t Iceland Weather Report