Plotting Astronomers July 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, science . 1 comment so far
(click to enlarge)
The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is one of the fundamental plots in astronomy. I remember it being one of the very first “sciencey” things I learnt about astronomy. It’s a very elegant plot, as it relates two very basic quantities about stars, their temperature and their brightness, and presents a visually memorable picture. The main known classes of stars each, like white dwarfs or red giants, populate their own corner of the diagram.
And now Stuart has taken the HR diagram and made a human version of it: the Astronomer HR diagram! It’s very neat, and lots of astronomers have been figuring out where they would place on the plot. If I count my SPIE Proceedings papers, not strictly refereed but usually counted as such for intrumentalists, I’m at [17,4500], nicely along the Main Sequence. Counting just my very strictly peer-reviewed papers, I’m at [3,4500], in the new media section. Either’s fine by me!
Image: S. Lowe
The Astronomer’s Mating Call January 28, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, politics . 1 comment so far
Every winter is the time for an age-old mating ritual that takes place in the astronomy community: a special courtship dance where graduate students and postdocs parade round, flashing their colourful feathers, trying to appear smarter and savvier than their peers in the desperate quest for a new mecenas who will support their addiction to MacBooks and airmiles. It’s jobs season, when the friendships we’ve cherished for the past year become meaningless and it’s each astronomer to their own.
IAU: The singular future of astronomy August 18, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, astronomy, dotastronomy, science . Add a comment
The Hubble Deep Field
For many centuries, astronomy has been a powerful inspirational force driving people to look further, build bigger, go deeper. Indeed, other physical sciences, mathematics and engineering have benefited greatly, and continue to benefit, from astronomical research. At the IAU general assembly I heard many speakers comment on the “Golden Age” of astronomy we currently finding ourselves in. But as one speaker argued, when was astronomy not in a Golden Age? An entire 4-day session at the GA was devoted to the topic “Accelerating the rate of astronomical discovery”, which had some fascinating talks about the way astronomical discoveries are made and how technological changes underpin progress in astronomy.
An important theme running through many talks in the session was the power of the individual in astronomy. The balance between the individual and the crowd has always been a delicate one. Many early scientists faced disbelief or even wrath from peers and society for their discoveries, from Copernicus‘ “heretic” claims of a heliocentric universe to the initial rejection of Saha‘s equation of ionisation equilibrium by the 1920′s scientific establishment. Several talks were love stories to the mavericks whose doggedness, eccentricity and creativity changed the face of astronomy, culminating in Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell‘s wonderful own account of her discovery of the first pulsars in the 1960s.
