Total Lunar Eclipse: 3 March 2007

on the 3rd of march, we will be treated to a total lunar eclipse, and the view will be great from here in north america. lunar eclipses occur, as demonstrated in the image below, when the moon passes through the earth's shadow. therefore, sunlight is prevented from being reflected off the moon's surface, and the moon is observed to turn a dark coppery color. it's a beautiful sight! here is the nasa website where you can get information on best to view the eclipse. (image credits: randy brewer and space.com)

South Pole Telescope

great, great news. the south pole telescope (SPT), headed by our own john carlstrom here at the university of chicago kavli institute, saw its first light on february 16th (i'm clearly still a bit behind the news, but i'm catching up!). SPT is a 10m telescope operating in the submillimeter wavelength range (between infrared and radio in the electromagnetic spectrum), with its camera cooled to a mere 1/4 of a degree above absolute zero. the first observations were made of jupiter at wavelengths of 2 and 3mm, and demonstrated that the scope was working as designed. ultimately, the goal of the telescope is to help astronomers understand the nature of dark energy by using the S-Z effect to map galaxy clusters, and to make measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. here is the SPT blog with stories of the assembly of the telescope and lots of nice pictures. here is the nsf press release.

oh and fyi, from march 2007-march 2008 is the international polar year. what a great thing that it's starting off on an astronomical note. see this page for wonderful images from the polar regions.

[ryan, who is part of the SPT team, was in the office the other day telling stories of the assembly of the telescope. i clearly immediately asked if they had seen any penguins, but apparently penguins don't live on the south pole. huge disappointment!]

Animated Physics

in a bit of a youtube/google video mood tonight, and found these animated tom lehrer songs: new math, that's mathematics, and the elements. and while we're on the video note, an absolute must-see is the classic "a is for atom" from 1953. (full video can be downloaded here.) wonderful stuff.

"What shocks me about an electron in a Penning trap is..."

this is absolutely hilarious: conan o'brian and jim carrey talk quantum physics. credit goes here.

[penning traps are actually quite cool: at CERN they are used to store antimatter.]

Sonofusion

an interesting article from the nytimes describing the process of sonofusion, or bubble fusion. in this process, sound waves are used to expand and collapse small bubbles, raising their temperatures drastically and thereby making fusion possible within them. the image above explains the process quite nicely. apparently quite a bit of research is going on in this field, though no energetically efficient systems seem to have been created. (image credit: nytimes)

as an endnote to this post, i am compelled to point out that the idea of bubble fusion clearly fascinates me since i am, indeed, a woman: women and bubbles.

More Spitzer: The Helix Nebula

the image above - featuring the helix nebula - was taken recently by the spitzer space telescope. the helix nebula is a beautiful example of a planetary nebula, the end state of stars with masses similar to that of our sun. the remnant of this energetic event is a white dwarf, which can be seen as the small white spot in the center of the image above. (image credit: spitzer)

Binary Stars HD 5980 in X-Rays

the european space agency's xxm-newton x-ray observatory has observed the collision of the winds from two binary stars in the smc radiating energy at a rate about a million times that of our sun. each star is emitting the equivalent of one earth mass of material in its wind every month; this material is then accelerated away from the star by the radiation it is simultaneously emitting. the result? the collision zone is emitting - in x-rays alone - 10 times the amount of energy emitted by our sun. the optical image is above, and the x-ray image below (click for animation). (image credits: esa)

No Water on Two Exoplanets

good news from spitzer space telescope: for the first time, astronomers have been able to analyze chemical signatures in the atmospheres of planets outside of our solar system. the image above demonstrates the basic idea behind how the planetary spectra were obtained: the spectrum of the star (obtained when the planet was passing behind the star) was subtracted from the combined spectrum of the planet and star (obtained when the planet was transiting the star). the most surprising result of the analysis? neither of the two exoplanets that were observed - both gas giants and with such inspiring names as HD 189733b and HD 209458b - showed evidence of water in their atmospheres, though most theories of planetary formation predict the contrary. one of the planets was found to have a very dusty atmosphere full of silicates, suggesting that water may simply be hidden from view (in fact, there are plenty of other reasons why water, even if present, would not show up in the planets' spectra). either way, these observations represent a critical step ahead in our search for life outside of the solar system. here is the nytimes article, and here is the spitzer press release. (image credit: spitzer)

Return to Posting

after a six-month hiatus (a consequence of my complete immersion into graduate student life at the university of chicago physics department), i'm back. here is what i consider the most beautiful image that hubble has provided us with this year: a star-forming region in the smc (small magellanic cloud). one of the most fortunate pieces of news coming out of nasa in the last few months is that servicing mission 4 has been approved, which will provide hubble with all sorts of great things, like new batteries, new gyroscopes, and two new instruments: the wide field camera 3 (WFC3) and the cosmic origins spectrograph (COS). the servicing mission will take place sometime next year, and will extend hubble's life until 2013. given the role that hubble has played both in providing data for professional astronomers and in inspiring interest in science in the general public, this is fantastic news. (image credit: hubblesite.org)