It’s day one of the American Astronomical Society meeting, being held this week in Austin, Texas. Most of us from the colder climes are enjoying the little bits of shirtsleeve weather we’re having here, even though we’re mostly inside for talks and presentations.
The big news conference today was about the Hubble Space Telescope refurbishing mission, currently scheduled for later this year. Astronaut John Grunsfeld talked us through the mission sequence, and then demonstrated with a pair of astronaut gloves just how tough it’s going to be to accomplish parts of the mission.
There are other news stories being reported here today. As is my usual practice I’ll put some links here to them; later on I’ll be posting a little video about the meeting and how it’s going so far. Suffice to say, I’m psyched! It’s a week of great astronomy and cool topics! This pic shows just HOW psyched…
TheSpacewriter and the Bad Astronomer and the Astronaut Gloves
Here are today’s news stories:
The National Optical Astronomy Observatory has a stunning new image the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. Check it out!
Elizabeth McGrath of the University of California, Santa Cruz, gave a very interesting presentation about some of the first massive galaxies to form in the universe. This is a very hot area of study right now as astronomers try to trace the evolution of structure (galaxies) in the cosmos.
NASA’s Swift Satellite and Gemini Observatory are jointly probing a gamma-ray burst (GRB 070714B) that was detected in July, 2007. This work has put the age of the explosion farther back than astronomers previously thought short-burst GRBs were occurring.
You can read here about mysterious “blue blobs” in space seen by Hubble Space Telescope.These are orphaned clusters of stars near larger galaxies.
Finally, astronomers at Rutgers and Penn State universities have discovered galaxies in the distant universe that are ancestors of our own Milky Way Galaxy.
It’s the start of a new year and, as with many years past, I’m getting ready to go to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. I’ve been a member since the mid 1990s and have been going to their meetings nearly every year since then.Most years I try to post here about some of the latest and greatest and hottest news in astronomy and astrophysics that we find out about at the meeting. I’ll do that again this year, and I’m going to try and put up a vodcast or two from the meeting as well. So, keep your eyes peeled for astronomy news and maybe a little video program with an “insider look” at the AAS meeting!Also in the new year, I’ll be working on more vodcasting for Haystack Observatory. We have a contract to do a series called Space Weather FX for them, and the first episode is up! You can watch it here as a flash animation, but by all means, go over to their site for downloadable versions and read the background info on the series and who’s working on it. Eventually it will be syndicated to iTunes and other places on the web.Finally, I’ve been working on updating my web site so, if you haven’t checked out my other pages, head over to TheSpacewriter.com and see what I’ve done.
Space Weather FX Vodcast
Note: to see this video here, you need to tell your browser not to block active content, or you need to get the Flash player.
