Space, Science, Technology
The image above shows the Bullet Cluster. Also known as 1E 0657-56, this is a pair of clusters of galaxies some 3.4 billion light years away. As Jon Davies told us in yesterday’s Astrolunch meeting however: you should be careful about believing everything you see. This image is not a regular photograph by any means. […]
MoreI have a big notebook from the National Astronomy Meeting filled with notes and asterisks and doodles on abstracts for talks that I wanted to come back to. I’ll be blogging many of them in the coming days and weeks in what I have decided to tastefully call my ‘NAM Flashback’ series of posts. first […]
MoreNASA researchers using the Spitzer space telescope have laid out what they have called ‘planetary danger zones’ around stars. In these zones, extending from bright O-stars, protoplanetary disks will be swept away by the strong stellar winds given out by the star. Smaller,cooler stars will continue forming planets from accretion disks so long as they […]
MoreYou may recall I blogged about The Jodcast. There are some podcasts I find I listen to on my iPod and there others I listen to on my Mac. The former is easy but the latter can be annoying – you have to open iTunes and open it there etc etc – how tiresome(!). So […]
MoreAt NAM I heard a great talk by Gary Fuller on Methanol Masers (a sort of laser created by gas in space). Whilst I find the topic quite interesting its a bit beyond this blog for now. However the telescope used as part of his research is the Parkes 64m telescope in Australia, shown above. […]
MoreMy NAM 2007 photos are up on Flickr. not very astronomy related, more the social side. Will put up a scientific version soon…
MoreWhat do you call a podcast from Jodrell Bank? Well duh, its a Jodcast (Link). Running since early 2006, the Jodcast from Manchester’s world-class, historical radio scope is quite good fun. I’ve listened to the latest episode and also the special NAM episodes so far and have to say I rather like it. It does […]
MoreDay two of the UK’s National Astronomy Meeting was very good. It started with two excellent talks given by two excellent speakers. It ended with drinks and dancing at Preston’s National football Museum (odd venue choice, in my opinion). The day began with a talk titled ‘50 Years of Nucleosynthesis’ and it was given by […]
MoreNASA head Mike Griffin has said that they will go and fix Hubble in September 2008. Service Mission Four (SM4) will not leave for Hubble any earlier than August 2008 but could be later than September if it means a better result in the end. Either way the mission could extend Hubble’s life to 2015. […]
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