Wed August 31, 11
Lost a chance, maybe forever
Yesterday, while digging into more than 800 emails (already excluding spam) received during my summer vacation, I realized I have lost one of THE chances of my life. Scrolling down the list, searching for the most urgent things, I stumbled upon a message with a strange subject:
From the Dark Side of the Moon to Paranal
The [...]
Mon August 29, 11
Una serata assurda - An absurd evening
Just back from holidays. Many things happened, and maybe I’ll find the time to report about a few of them. But the funniest, and at the same time the most frustrating one was a public talk I gave together with Margherita Hack. She is the most famous Italian popularizer of astronomy, and she appears quite [...]
Tue August 23, 11
WISE finds Y's
WISE has discovered a new Y class of brown dwarf stars, the y dwarfs, which show methane, water and ammonia absorption. These stars have effective temperatures as low as 300 K, about room temperature.
Thu August 11, 11
The South East Asia Young Astronomers Collaboration
It has been such a long time i didn’t write for my blog. Much activities should be prioritized, nevertheless, it just kind of ancestral recall, there is an urge for me to write something in between time. So, what is the catch?
Last july, i have been invited to give talk about ‘current status of [...]
Thu July 21, 11
An Occultation by the double asteroid (90) Antiope seen in California
Last Tuesday July 19 at 3:25am PDT, several SETI REU students and colleagues from SETI institute and Observatoire de Paris were on the road. They were looking at the sky with tiny telescopes and surrounding by complex instruments somewhere in the middle the Californian countryside to witness and record a rare event: the occultation [...]
Wed July 6, 11
Observing Saturn
Amazing experience!
With my student Jorge Lillo, I have been observing Saturn with the 2.2m telescope and Astralux, a lucky imaging camara capable of delivering images with resolution almost similar to those of the Hubble Space Telescope.
If you do not beleive, have a look…
Thu May 26, 11
Mark your calendar for June 1st! Open House & Evening Speaker at SETI Institute
If you live in the Bay Area, you should definitely know about two events scheduled in conjunction at the SETI Institute : an Open House and an interesting talk & panel discussion.
As you may know if you read my blog on a regular basis, the SETI Institute moved to its new location at the end of [...]
Wed May 25, 11
A completely new experience
Many things happened since my last post here. One of them is that I got a new job. Well, yes, I’m still an astronomer, but after ten years of work as support astronomer in the Users Support Dept., I now moved to the Observing Programmes Office of ESO, which I am now leading.
What? Those of [...]
Fri May 20, 11
“Floating” planets: questions from a journalist
1/ Do you think these free floating planets, detected by micro-lensing very far away from us, are the same objects than those you observed years ago in the Sigma Orionis cluster?
There are two options (for both types): either they have been formed in a similar way as stars (collapse and fragmentation of molecular clouds, with [...]
Sun May 15, 11
WiA: Women in Astronomy
Last week I attended the WiA Workshop here in Sydney. The website is here. I found the workshop very good, even if I didn’t get to attend it fully (because of issues related to being a mother)!
Having missed the first talk, because I really had to be a parent helper at Year 1 Maths groups, [...]