Today’s the next-to-last full day of the AAS meeting, and the news just keeps rollin’ out! Here are the cosmic stories making the press release headlines today:
While we’re talking about places in New Mexico (well, we weren’t, but VLA is in Socorro, NM), there are two new state-of-the-art telescopes coming on line in New Mexico at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory.
Speaking of new equipment, the McDonald Observatory is upgrading its telescopes and instruments to help astronomers delve more deeply into studies of the mysteries of “dark energy.”
The Sloan Digital Survey is beginning a new set of surveys to study the distant universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and giant planets around other stars.
Spitzer Space Telescope has detected what astronomers are calling “plump” black holes in skinny galaxies. For the skinny on that one (and a cool artist’s concept of what this might look like) go to the Spitzer Space Telescope site.
Finally, astronomers at NaSA Goddard Space Flight Center are studying a bizarre side effect of black holes: light echoes.
I just got back from an overview of the state of the art in radio astronomy, preceded by a code-writing workshop using GoogleSky. The Google folks are here in force, helping astronomers make use of Google tools on their web pages and in the classroom. Now… I’m headed down to the exhibit hall! I’ll have more thoughts and stories later on.