Fri January 20, 12
I saw WISE yesterday
I got up at 6 in the morning and saw WISE pass over Los Angeles from North to South. It was
easily visible in binoculars. WISE reached its maximum altitude of 80 degrees in the Western sky, while the Sun was 10 degrees below the horizon, giving a 70 degree phase angle.
You too can [...]
Mon December 5, 11
AGU Fall Session - Evolution and Exploration of Asteroids
There will be an oral session on Evolution and Exploration of Asteroids tomorrow from 8am to 10am, followed by a poster session from 1:40pm to 6pm, at the AGU Fall Conference, San Francisco, CA. Ben Weiss, Linda Elkins-Tanton (both from MIT) and myself are conveners of this session. It will be chaired by A. Mainzer [...]
Mon November 14, 11
A day in the life of an Astronomer on their birthday!
Today I am catching up on work related stuff, I’ve just returned from a great trip to Cyprus where I am currently setting up a science festival and schools national STEM fair, and some people might say hey its your birthday, relax and take a break but as the saying goes there is no rest [...]
Tue October 18, 11
Rock Star Paul Young encounters the Stars @ ESO
I am sick, at home. Stomach not working as originally designed. Therefore I find some time to blog. These last days have been very busy with the organization of the ESO Observing Programmes Committee, the board that selects the scientific projects that make to the ESO telescopes, including the VLT. I’ll tell you more about [...]
Fri October 7, 11
Is the triple Asteroid Minerva a baby-Ceres?
The official EPSC-DPS press-release about our latest discovery on the analysis of the moons of (93) Minerva and understanding of the composition of this main-belt triple system is finally out.
Two years ago, I reported on this blog the discovery of those moons. Let’s confess that I am glad to have finally solved secrets of this enigmatical [...]
Tue October 4, 11
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 goes to Supernovae!
Great news! The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 goes to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess,“for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”. This was somehow in the air since 2007, when they were assigned the Gruber Cosmology Prize. But now is real. No matter what the [...]
Thu September 29, 11
An ELT made of cardboard in your garden?
I am calling myself a Planetary Astronomer, essentially because I use ground-based telescopes to study our solar system bodies. Even if I often write posts on this blog about the wonderful results brought to us by space missions, space stations and other space-releated projects, my heart and my work are mostly dedicated to pushing the [...]
Fri September 23, 11
UARS reentry visible from the Bay area?
If you have been following the news about space over the past 5 days, you may have heard about this gigantic 6.5-ton satellite dedicated to the study of our Earth atmosphere (UARS for Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) that is supposed deorbit tonight on September 24 2011 UT. The question we all have in mind is [...]
Mon September 19, 11
Talk about SpaceX and the Dragon Spacecraft at SETI Institute
Join us for the ninth SETI Institute Evening Distinguished Speaker Talk Wednesday night at 7.00pm at the SETI Institute Headquarters at 189 Bernardo Ave, Mountain View. Abhishek Tripathi, lead for the Dragon to ISS Integration at SpaceX, will give a talk on SpaceX and the Dragon Spacecraft.
The talk will be recorded and available on our [...]
Thu September 15, 11
Kepler-16: Exoplanets around binary star systems DO exist
Kepler-16 is another great discovery coming from the Kepler telescope, the 10th NASA Discovery mission which is devoted to finding Earth-size exoplanets by monitoring variations of brightness due to transit. Today the Kepler team found a circumbinary exoplanet, an exoplanet orbiting a binary star system. Did they find Tatooine?
In the large 105 deg2 field [...]