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Size Matters (in a Word Cloud)

December 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Astronomer Jim Geach at McGill in Canada put his coding skills to excellent use to create word clouds from the author lists of the top 500 astronomy papers (by citation counts) from ADS. He created clouds for each 15-year interval since 1905, I’ve shown the most recent 2 below. See his webpage for more info on how the images were created, and please complain to him if the size of your name looks smaller than your ego academic prowess.

The cloud for the last 15 years shows how the subject, or rather the citation counts, are dominated by extragalactic science. Also, not surprisingly, by men – high fives to the Drs. Kauffmann, Dunkley, Freedman, Faber, Ferrarese et al for heading up the women in the field in the last 15 years.

Author cloud, 1995-2011

 

Author cloud, 1980-1995

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Kick-Off for ALMA

October 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

ESO‘s first call for proposals for the brand-new Atacama Large Millimeter Array earlier this year sparked a frenzy of proposal writing. Even though not all the antennae are in place yet, and the wavelength coverage is still limited, astronomers are hugely excited about the new millimeter facility coming online. The result of many years’ work by a huge international collaboration, ALMA is arguably one of the first of a new generation of mega-facilities in astronomy.

For the first round of observations, ESO requested short proposals rather than large programmes, particularly with some headline-grabbing potential to showcase ALMA’s capabilities to the world. With the start of observations just last month, ESO and its US and Japanese partners in ALMA, NRAO and NAOJ, organised some events for the press to welcome ALMA to the world. There’s been lots of nice media coverage of the array in its spectacular location and its first image.

I’m a little late to the story but as I keep seeing nice images and videos I thought I’d post a few things up here anyway.

Below is a video from Astronomy Now with Emily Baldwin at Chajnantor. The Guardian have this neat infographic about ALMA, and a good article-with-video. BBC also had a number of cool videos.

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NOVA Lives/Utrecht Update

July 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

NOVA, the Dutch School for Research in Astronomy, has had its funding line renewed beyond 2013. The organisation announced the good news in a statement on Monday (in Dutch), with comments from Leiden professors Koen Kuijken, who’s Chair of the NOVA Board, and Ewine van Dishoeck, NOVA’s Scientific Director. The renewal is not unexpected, as NOVA last year received the highest possible rating of ‘Exemplary’ in its review. Only two research schools were awarded this grade in the Netherlands.

You’ll remember of course that Dutch astronomy was thrown into some disarray following Utrecht University’s announcement of the imminent closure of its centuries-old astronomy department. This must have made for a pretty interesting backdrop to any NOVA-related negotiations. Now that the funding renewal is official, NOVA has provided an official comment to Utrecht’s decision, calling it “extremely regrettable”. Unique expertise is in danger of disappearing and the loss of Utrecht’s Masters programme will have consequences for the entire physical sciences education at the University.

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Good Night and Good Luck, Utrecht Astronomers

June 21, 2011 By 30 Comments
Utrecht - Maliesingel 1

Sonnenborgh Observatory in Utrecht, founded in 1853 (Image: flickr user uitdragerij)

 

Like many of you I was shocked to read last week that the University of Utrecht plans to close its astronomy department by 2015. This article in Dutch gives the official story – for those of you that don’t speak the language, here’s the gist of it.

The Dean of the Science Faculty, chemistry professor Gerrit van Meer, announced last Thursday that he intends to cut 107 FTEs over the next 5 years, around 50 of which will be redundancies (as opposed to retirements). This decision was made in the face of a 20% cut in the faculty’s budget. Rather than shave small bits off every group, they decided to identify three focus areas for his department: molecular life sciences, fundamentals of natural sciences, and sustainability.

Quite astonishingly, he does not see place for astronomy in his personal vision of “fundamentals of natural sciences” research , and the department consequently faces the axe. The astronomers aren’t the only ones who will feel the bite: research groups in science & society, solar cells, biochemistry, behavioural biology, marine biology and others are facing closure or severe downsizing.

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A supermassive star, all by its lonesome

May 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A visible/infrared composite view of the Tarantula, with VFTS 682 at its centre. (Image: ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit)

 

ResearchBlogging.org
The Tarantula Nebula is a gift that keeps on giving – if you’re into really massive stars, that is. It makes for a pretty picture, sure, but Tarantula, in our little galactic sibling the Large Magellanic Cloud at a distance of 170,000 lightyears (50 kpc), is the largest region of ionised hydrogen (HII)  in the entire Local Group of galaxies. That includes our own Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy, and a smattering of dwarfs. Tarantula’s huge mass of HII gas is testament to a rich star formation history: the region, also known as 30 Doradus, has given birth to at least 5 distinct populations of stars, hosting a complex of clusters. This nebula gets stellar astrophysicists really excited.

Some of the region’s clusters contain the most massive stars we know today. Stars so massive that our current theories have trouble explaining how they even are able to form. Their evolution too is very different from our billions of Average-Joe stars, and their impact on their surroundings far more profound, as their powerful winds heat and pummel the surrounding medium. And now, recent observations of these stars have thrown another curveball: a supermassive star that appears to be all on its own.

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