Dispatches from the Cosmos

The Universe Moves On

The cosmos of astronomers gathered here in Long Beach for our yearly January meeting is starting to fly apart, with the elements scattering in all directions. It’s been a good conference, with amazing things happening each day.

Adding to the excitement was the opening ceremony for the International Year of Astronomy, which I hope will bring a lot of new faces into the cosmic fold — whether from the ranks of interested skygazers, everyday folks, or even from the legions of professionals who study the sky. So, if you’re interested in participating in any IYA events, keep checking their web site for details as the year goes by. And don’t forget to tune in to 365 Days of Astronomy — every day!

In other news, I heard an interesting talk about an adopt-a-star program called Pale Blue Dot. Now, it is NOT one of those scammy “name-a-star” programs I’ve railed against in the past. This one involves public “adoption” of stars from a catalog of stars that astronomers will study in a search for planets using the Kepler satellite. To bring the catalog to life, some target stars that might have planets around them have been marked in Google Sky. People can browse through the sky and select a star, and for a $10 donation, “adopt” the star.  The money will be used to support the analysis of Kepler data when it looks at that star. Each donor receives an adoption certificate and updates whenever there’s any observation news about the star they’ve adopted. Each star will be tagged with the name of the sponsor in Google Sky and in a printed catalog, and no two people can adopt the same star.

This is kind of a unique idea that not only gets people interested in astronomy personally, but it also helps support the leaps forward that science must make with the data our satellites provide. So, if you want to adopt a star, check these guys out!

There are some other interesting projects coming up in the next decade as new telescopes and missions get under way. Some of them — such as the Atacama Large-Millimeter  Array, the Murchison Widefield Array, and the Thirty-meter Telescope — are ambitious ground-based efforts that will extend our eyes to the universe using new technology in novel ways. Others, like the SOFIA mission, the Swift mission, Fermi, and the James Webb Space Telescope, will do (or are doing) the same thing from space. There are exciting times coming up for astronomers, and their work will continue to open the universe for us. And, the good news is, future AAS meetings (and meetings of astronomers around the world) will continue to be exciting places where we can get the latest and greatest news from the cosmos!