Not a planet, still interesting February 7, 2010
Posted by sarah in: new astronomy, pics . Add a comment
Despite Mike Brown’s best efforts, Pluto is not dead (yet). These cool new images of the tiny non-planet taken with the Hubble Space Telescope show that it is by no means a boring lump of icy rock. When comparing these images, taken in 2002-2003, to a previous set dating back to 1994, scientists noticed some striking changes. This would suggest that Pluto, just like many bodies in the solar system, shows seasonal activity and all kinds of interesting chemistry as it moves along its looong orbit around the Sun.
Image: NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute)
Behind the Webb January 1, 2010
Posted by sarah in: new astronomy . Add a commentFirst of all – best wishes for the new year to you all!
Working on an instrument for James Webb Space Telescope I regularly receive emails from NASA when the telescope features in the media or new images are released. Recently I discovered that there’s a new site for JWST called webbtelescope.org – in the style of hubblesite.org – and it contains a couple of episodes of a relatively new video podcast series called Behind the Webb. The first episode was about the detectors for MIRI, the mid-infrared instrument whose testing and calibration I work on. As the components that actually transform the incoming photons from the teelscope into a digital signal that we can see, record, process and interpret, the detectors are the heart of the instrument – and this episode is a nice intro to how it all works. Watch it below via YouTube or go to the original page (whose embed code doesn’t seem to work).
Future facilities: Coming quite close now actually November 22, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, me, science . Add a commentThis week saw several major developments in my work on instrumentation for astronomy, and as I got lots of Twitter response, I thought I would talk a bit more about them here.
Astronomers nab photography award September 27, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, science, space, women . Add a comment
Two excellent ambassadors for astronomy have been awarded a prestigious Swedish award for their accomplishments in astrophotography. Carolyn Porco, planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and Babak Tafreshi, Iranian science journalist, photographer and IYA enthusiast, were awarded the 2009 Lennart Nilsson Award for Medical, Technical and Scientific Photography, named after the renowned Swedish medical photographer.
Moon River? September 24, 2009
Posted by sarah in: geology, new astronomy . Add a comment
Spectral cube images from Chandrayaan-1
There’s a lot of internet chatter about the recent discovery of water on the Moon – or rather, the discovery of LOTS of water on the Moon. Most of the reactions have focused on the press embargo that was (once again) thrown to the wayside by some naughty journalists, or been rather muted at best. Water on the Moon is not such a big deal: just from looking at the Moon you can tell that plenty of stuff has smashed into it in the past; something was bound to have left some water behind at some stage.
