A session to watch out for in case you’re planning to go to the IAU General Assembly Beijing this summer?
Milky Way Project: Data Release 1
February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Spitzer's view of the central regions of our Galaxy (NASA/Milky Way Project)
Since its launch little more than over a year ago, Milky Way Project, the citizen science initiative to identify bubbles in the interstellar medium of our Galaxy, has gathered an amazing amount of classifications: over half a million bubbles drawn by around 35,000 users. Before Christmas we reached a major milestone when we submitted our first scientific paper for the project to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).
Following some nice iterations (never said I didn’t like peer review….) with the referee for the paper, and coverage by the BBC at the AAS conference in Austin, TX, in January, we posted the paper to Arxiv a couple of weeks ago. From here it’s available to anyone to download and read. The paper was formally accepted today (yay!) but we haven’t uploaded the final revision to the Arxiv yet – keep an eye out for it in the replacements section if you’re interested, we did improve it significantly with the input of the referee.
As the project was only made possible by NASA publicly sharing the data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, we have of course made our first data catalogues publicly available as well on a dedicated site and on FigShare.
RB Editor’s Selections: Coaxial Lasers, The Moonless Earth, And Origins of Life
February 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.
[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News]
On All That Matters, Joerg Heber writes about a neat variation on the familiar coaxial cable: the coaxial laser. A new member of the family of light emitters with a host of potential applications.
How would the Earth have evolved without its Moon? Greg Fish describes how life on Earth might have been dramatically different without our little companion - though possibly still present.
Thinking about the origins of life has never been more topical, now that we’re learning about the strange new worlds all around us. On the Genealogy of Religion blog, this interesting post talks about pioneering experiments in this area.
That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next Monday with more selections.
Instrumentation School
February 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Not much blogging activity in the last week as I’m travelling around Europe for a bunch of meetings – expect updates on dotAstronomy and Milky Way Project in the next week, once I’m back at home.
In the mean time, I wanted to share the announcement of this interesting instrumentation school taking place in Toronto this summer. Since a few years, the University of Toronto hosts the Dunlap Institute, which is specialised in astronomical instrumentation. It’s really great to see such centres of excellence being set up – after all, very little science without good instruments. This course looks excellent for students who would like to get involved in instrumentation.
RB Editor’s Selections: Tiny magnetic storage devices, Glow in the dark materials, and Self-cleaning clothes
January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.
[Cross-posted from ResearchBlogging News.]
Today’s selections all seem to show us a glimpse of awesome new technology in a bright if distant future.
The shrinking magnetic storage devices story made some waves in the media, but not all stories got the science right. On All that matters Joerg Heber sets the record straight, and describes really nicely why this work should excite us.
Char’s Basal Science post on glow in the dark materials reminded me of the disappointingly faint glowing stars I once decorated my bedroom with. The science behind the phenomenon is pretty cool though, and the newly developed long-duration phosphorescent material he describes holds promise for exciting future applications.
How much water could we save if we could clean our clothes by just leaving them out in the sun for a few hours? Also on Basal Science, Cath talks about new developments in the quest for self-cleaning fabrics.
Have a great week, and I’ll be back next Monday with more picks.
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