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30 Years of Asteroids August 28, 2010

Posted by sarah in: astronomy, space . Add a comment

This video from Arecibo observatory has been doing the rounds on the interwebs. It shows the increasing number of known asteroids in the Solar System over the period 1980 to 2010. It gets very pretty around the 2:00 mark, which roughly coincides with the year 2000 (see the time ticker in the lower left corner).

The Culture of Science (Thoughts on the Decadal Survey) August 16, 2010

Posted by sarah in: astronomy, science . 4comments

The global astronomy community is buzzing this week after the publication at last of the Decadal Survey for Astronomy & Astrophysics by the US National Academy of Sciences, which will serve as a roadmap for US astronomy for the coming decade. Following a flurry of tweets and live blogs during the presentation of the report by the Chair of the review, Prof Roger Blandford, which was broadcast live on the web, I’m sure the report will be read, chewed over, and discussed at length online in the weeks to come (see e.g. here, here, here, here); if you’re interested, the report is publicly available here, all 225 pages of it – happy reading.

It’s also worth noting that the European astronomy community produced a similar document, the Astronet roadmap, in 2008. The report, equally beefy, is available from the Astronet website.

I just finished reading In Bluebeard’s Castle, a collection of lectures by George Steiner from 1971, presented as  “Notes towards a Redefinition of Culture”. Steiner is a fascinating writer, he displays an huge breadth of knowledge in his writing. When commenting on a concept as broad as that of “culture”, this allows him to create connections between the many aspects that it encompasses in original and exciting ways. The World Wars and the Holocaust feature heavily in his writing, and indeed WWII serves as a pivotal point in his discussion.

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Want to build cool stuff for telescopes? August 11, 2010

Posted by sarah in: astronomy, me . 2comments

For over three years now I’ve been working here in Leiden’s instrumentation group. My time here in Leiden is coming to an end – I’m sad to leave but such is the life of a postdoc, and I’m excited about new things ahead (more about that later). I’ve written here about my own work on a few occasions, here’s a few examples:

Making my software open

MIRI crosses the pond

Future facilities: Coming quite close now actually

Today I’m in….

If my work sounds like fun to you, and you have a PhD and experience in working on instrumentation projects, why don’t you apply to join the group?

I’ve enjoyed my time in Leiden immensely, both from a personal and professional perspective. The Observatory sets a high standard to its staff and students, but is very open and inclusive with a great “can-do” attitude. So if you’re passionate about your science, it’s great place to push the limits of your skills and creativity. If you’re interested, check out the ad on the AAS register and apply!

Hubble Gotchu introduces JWST August 3, 2010

Posted by sarah in: astronomy, space . 1 comment so far

The James Webb Space Telescope featured in last night’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon!

AstroInformatics I: From Data to Knowledge June 23, 2010

Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, astronomy . 1 comment so far

Optical layout of LSST, the catalyst for many semantic headaches

Like many sciences, astronomy is becoming increasingly data-rich. The next generation of observatories, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, will produce staggering amounts of data every night and push the subject into the petabyte regime. The large surveys that feed a substantial portion of the research community today, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, are already demonstrating the difficulties of converting large datasets into knowledge: converting the data into catalogues, estimating selection biases and performing robust statistics are all common problems to those working with the data. Astroinformatics, or the science behind the information captured in our wealth of astronomical data, is therefore becoming an increasingly relevant field of study. The AstroInformatics 2010 conference was organised with the aim of essentially defining this emerging field.

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