Star spotting in Britain December 16, 2008
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So you thought Britain was rubbish for stargazing? Think again! The Campaign for Dark Skies, part of the British Astronomical Association, produced this cool map, highlighting areas of low light pollution and a good number of clear nights. There’s plenty of spots for great starspotting.
And while I’m on the topic, The Guardian ran this nice article today about the best places and organised events for stargazing around the country, including the Royal Observatories of Edinburgh and Greenwich which are both great to visit. There was a great plug for the International Year of Astronomy too. Good stuff.
Image credit: BAA
Red skies in the evening December 15, 2008
Posted by sarah in: random . Add a comment
Today’s APOD is very pretty and fits in with my mood today.
Image credit: Terry Holdsclaw
Black Hole Shocker! December 11, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . 2comments
Near-IR image of the galactic centre.
Astronomers have been able to confirm that the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy contains a supermassive black hole, read the headlines (here, here, here) yesterday. Brilliant! The galactic centre observations of the last 15 or so years, at both the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching and the University of California in LA are really exciting stuff. Videos like this one (and more here)of the stars whizzing round the galactic centre at immense speeds are great. Furthermore, and most excitingly, the mapping of these stars’ motions has allowed astronomers on both sides of the Atlantic to deduce independently that the central mass in our Galaxy is so dense and confined to such a small space that it can only exist in the form of a supermassive black hole. The observation of the ultra-powerful radio source, Sagittarius A*, in the central region of the Galaxy supports this conclusion, as radio jets are thought to be associated with infalling matter around black holes.
Technology played a crucial part in the discovery: astronomers have only been able to track the stars in the densely crowded galactic centre to the required precision with the aid of adaptive optics, which correct for distortions arising in the Earth’s atmosphere and give the necessary boost to the resolution of the instrument.
Women and Science December 10, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . 7commentsThis article appeared in today’s Guardian, about the reasons why women leave science careers after their PhDs. I take this problem very much to heart and can often relate to the reasons why women quit science – and like most people, male or female, I’ve often considered it myself. But I get so …. tired … with the whole argument. Let’s look at this article more closely.
It’s now a month since Bhatti, 27, took her PhD viva and turned her back on lab work. She has instead moved into science policy and spends her days meeting with politicians and scientists, and drafting submissions for government consultations on anything from biofuels to genetically modified crops.
The costs of science December 4, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . 1 comment so farOn the back of today’s news conference at NASA, Bad Astronomer Phil Plait wrote a pretty scathing post on NASA record of cost overruns. I didn’t see this bit of the conference, but apparently NASA big boss Mike Griffin tried to convince the gathered press, and unsuccessfully I gather, that the James Webb Space Telescope project is *not* suffering overruns at a current cost of $4.5 billion. Its original estimated cost was $900 million. Interesting…
