Another accolade for CMB scientists May 30, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy . 1 comment so far
In another snippet of news, the Shaw Foundation that administers the annual Shaw Prize – the $1 million “Nobel Prize of the East”, on Thursday announced that the 2010 prize for astronomy has been awarded to Charles Bennett of Johns Hopkins and Lyman Page and David Spergel of Princeton. The trio have received the award for “for their leadership of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) experiment, which has enabled precise determinations of the fundamental cosmological parameters, including the geometry, age and composition of the universe”.
Cosmic Microwave Background scientists have been real favourites on the prize circuit – take a look:
- Penzias & Wilson, 1978 Nobel Prize, for their CMB detection
- Peebles, 2004 Shaw Prize, predicted the CMB
- Alpher, 2005 National Medal of Science, predicted the CMB
- Smoot & Mather, 2006 Nobel Prize, for their work on the Cosmic microwave Background Explorer satellite (COBE)
- Mather & COBE team, 2006 Gruber Prize
- Bennett, Page & Spergel, 2010 Shaw Prize, for their work on WMAP.
(… and I’m sure I’ve missed some…)
And quite right too – CMB studies of the last couple of decades have been massively influential in our understanding of the Big Bang, the earliest epochs of the Universe, and the origin of structure. I wonder if the Planck team will be just as successful?
Incidentally, nice to see that the 2010 Shaw Prize for mathematics was awarded to Belgian mathematician Jean Bourgain, who’s at Princeton. I don’t know him or his work, but as I haven’t seen it mentioned in any of the Belgian media I thought I’d flag it up here. Congrats!
Image: NASA / WMAP Science Team
Welcome back Atlantis, good luck Frank! May 26, 2009
Posted by sarah in: belgium, science, space . Add a comment
Welcome back Atlantis
After a fascinating 13-day mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, Space Shuttle Atlantis and its crew touched down safely at Edwards Air Force Base on Sunday 24 May. Welcome home Atlantis! The mission to repair and upgrade Hubble was closely followed by space and astronomy enthusiasts around the world (yup that includes me), thanks to the great coverage on NASA TV.
A welcoming ceremony is taking place today at 4 pm Central Time, watch it live here.
I’m delighted the astronauts got the job done and Hubble is ready for its final stint. Unfortunately I had to miss the landing as I was on a little jaunt around Britain to attend some meetings and catch up with friends and family.
Great also to have Mike Massimino back on live twitter, telling us all about the weirdness of being back on Earth.
Good luck Frank!
Three astronauts will take off from the Baikonur cosmodrome tomorrow for the International Space Station. Representing the European Space Agency is Belgian Frank De Winne, who will also become the first European commander of the ISS during his 6-month stay. Good luck Frank!
Read more about the mission here. Watch a Q&A session with him on ESA’s YouTube channel here.
Image: G. Blevins/LA Daily News
Europe's spacetastic 2009 February 11, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . 2comments
Herschel and Planck, snug as a bug
2009 is an exciting year for the European space community, with some high-profile launches, an astronaut recruitment programme, new launch vehicles, and, let’s not forget, a Belgian becoming the first ever European commander of the International Space Station.
Most anticipated for astronomers worldwide, however, is the launch of two major astronomy missions, Herschel and Planck. These two space telescopes are both designed to operate at the L2 Lagrangian point – a gravitationally stable point 1.5M km from Earth – and will be launched together on board an Ariane 5 on 16 April, from Korou.
Le Grand Jacques February 6, 2009
Posted by sarah in: random . 1 comment so farThe Guardian today has a nice article about a new Jacques Brel album recently released with the Belgian legend’s earlier songs from the 1950s – aptly named Jacques Brel in the 50s: The Birth of a Genius. The article has some great quotes from other musical legends like David Bowie about Brel.
Brel is one of my favourite musicians – one of many that I will sadly never get to see. But I never get tired of his music, and here is one of my favourites, Amsterdam. And did I mention he’s from Belgium?
[dailymotion id=k4k3WYxTeBrLX84e6T]
Today I'm in….. January 19, 2009
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The MIRI engineering model, ready for testing
Today, and for the rest of this week, I’m in the city of Leuven, Belgium. Together with some colleagues from the Catholic University of Leuven and various other institutes in Europe I’m spending a few days working on some aspects of calibration and testing for MIRI, the mid-infrared instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope. The JWST, although offcially its “successor”, will differ from Hubble in that it will be optimised for observations in the infrared, rather than the optical or ultraviolet. Although great science can be done at the shorter wavelengths, achieving top notch image quality is more demanding at shorter wavelengths – with the costs for JWST far exceeding initial estimates as it is, who knows what the budget would have had to be for an optical JWST?
