Here’s a short video presentation in which it is demonstrated that astronomers like to move their hands while talking. It’s frightfully amusing, but I can’t help thinking it would have been even better if the musical accompaniment had been, well, musical. Anyway, keep watching until 2:17 or thereabouts and you’ll see that I have a small part.
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Wave your hands and think of Astronomy….
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy on October 12, 2011 by telescoperTelescoping
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, observatories, Pink Panther, telescope, telescopes, Twinkle Twinkle Little Pink on October 2, 2011 by telescoperI stumbled upon the following cartoon on Youtube and, since it’s about a mad astronomer, I thought I’d post it here.
It strikes me how comic depictions of astronomical observatories, such as the example on the left, always seem to show the telescope pointing out of the dome like the barrel of a gun poking out of a turret, which they never do. I venture to suggest that a great many members of the general public think that’s how they work also. I wonder why?
Perhaps it’s connected with the origins of the verb form of telescope which the OED gives as
a. trans. To force or drive one into another (or into something else) after the manner of the sliding tubes of a hand-telescope: usually said in reference to railway carriages in a collision. Also fig. to combine, compress, or condense (a number of things) into a more compact or concise form; to combine or conflate (several things, or one thing with another); to shorten by compression.
b. intr. To slide, run, or be driven one into another (or into something else); to have its parts made to slide in this manner (see quot. 1882 for telescoping n. and adj. at Derivatives, s.v. telescoping below); to collapse so that its parts fall into one another (quot. 1905).
The inference being that large astronomical telescopes must extend in the same way as the much smaller hand-held variety. Anyway, this idea is taken to a ludicrious extreme in the cartoon, with hilarious consequences…
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Back to the Drawing Board
Posted in Art, Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags archaeology, Architectural Association School of Architecture, astronomy, drawing, Galileo, handouts, lecture notes, Moon, sketching, teaching on August 30, 2011 by telescoperI came across a press release this morning which contains the following
More should be done to encourage students to use their drawing skills in science education, researchers at The University of Nottingham say.
In a paper being published in Science this week, academics say that although producing visualisations is key to scientific thinking, pupils are often not encouraged to create their own drawings to develop and demonstrate their understanding.
In the paper the authors, led by Dr Shaaron Ainsworth in the University’s School of Psychology and Learning Sciences Research Institute, said: “Scientists do not use words only but rely on diagrams, graphs, videos, photographs and other images to make discoveries, explain findings, and excite public interest.
In the light of this I thought it would be topical to post an updated version of an old piece I wrote on the theme of sketching. This is quite a strange subject for me to have picked pick because drawing is something I’m completely useless at, but I hope you’ll bear with me and hopefully it will make some sense in the end. I always thought that drawing was an important and neglected aspect of education, but I hadn’t until today any solid research to back it up!
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What spurred me on to think about this subject was the exhibit I was involved with for the Architecture Biennale in Venice as part of a project called Beyond Entropy organized by the Architectural Association School of Architecture. In the course of researching this project I came across this image of the Moon as drawn by Galileo
This led to an interesting discussion about the role of drawings like this in science. Of course the use of sketches for the scientific representation of images has been superseded by photographic techniques, initially using film and more recently by digital techniques. The advantage of these methods is that they are quicker and also more “objective”. However, there are still many amateur astronomers who make drawings of the Moon as well as objects such as Jupiter and Saturn (which Galileo also drew). Moreover there are other fields in which experienced practioners continue to use pencil drawings in preference to photographic techniques. Archaeology provides many good examples, e.g.
The reason sketching still has a role in such fields is not that it can compete with photography for accuracy or objectivity but that there’s something about the process of sketching that engages the sketcher’s brain in a way that’s very different from taking a photograph. The connection between eye, brain and hand seems to involve a cognitive element that is extremely useful in interpreting notes at a later date. In fact it’s probably their very subjectivity that makes them useful. A thicker stroke of the pencil, or deliberately enhanced shading, or leaving out seemingly irrelevant detail, can help pick out features that seem to the observer to be of particular significance. Months later when you’re trying to write up what you saw from your notes, those deliberate interventions against objectivity will take you back to what you saw with your mind, not just with your eyes.
It doesn’t even matter whether or not you can draw well. The point isn’t so much to explain to other people what you’ve seen, but to record your own interaction with the object you’ve sketched in a way that allows you to preserve something more than a surface recollection.
You might think this is an unscientific thing to do, but I don’t think it is. The scientific process involves an interplay between objective reality and theoretical interpretation and drawing can be a useful part of this discourse. It’s as if the pencil allows the observer to interact with what is observed, forming a closer bond and probably a deeper level of understanding patterns and textures. I’m not saying it replaces a purely passive recording method like photography, but it can definitely help it.
I have not a shred of psychological evidence to back this up, but I’d also assert that sketching is very good for the learning process too. Nowadays we tend to give out handouts of diagrams involved in physics, whether they relate to the design of apparatus or the geometrical configuration of a physical system. There’s a reason for doing this – they take a long time to draw and there’s a likelihood students will make mistakes copying them down. However, I’ve always found that the only way to really take in what a diagram is saying is to try to draw it again myself. Even if the level of draftsmanship is worse, the level of understanding is undoubtedly better.Merely looking at someone else’s representation of something won’t give your brain as a good a feeling for what it is trying to say as you would get if you tried to draw it yourself.
Perhaps what happens is that simply looking at a diagram only involves the connection between eye and brain. Drawing a copy requires also the connection between brain and hand. Maybe this additional connection brings in additional levels of brain functionality. Sketching iinvolves your brain in an interaction that is different from merely looking.
The problem with excessive use of handouts – and this applies not only to figures but also to lecture notes – is that they turn teaching into a very passive process. Taking notes in your own hand, and supplementing them with your own sketches – however scribbly and incomprehensible they may appear to other people – is a much more active way to learn than collecting a stack of printed notes and meticulously accurate diagrams. And if it was good enough for Galileo, it should good enough for most of us!
Follow @telescoperIt’s not a planet. It’s a white dwarf. (via Matt Burleigh’s Blog)
Posted in Astrohype, The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, diamond, planet, pulsar, white dwarf on August 27, 2011 by telescoperWhen is a planet made of diamond not a planet made of diamond?
Perhaps when it’s a White Dwarf?
Perhaps when there’s not a shred of evidence that it’s actually made of diamond?
More Cosmological Haiku
Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, Cosmology, Haiku, Physics, Poetry on August 18, 2011 by telescoperIn view of my current rather hectic schedule – why else would I be up at this ungodly hour? – I thought I’d combine another bit of recycling with some audience participation. I’ve updated below the list of Haiku I posted some time ago with some new ones I’ve jotted down at random intervals over the intervening months.
How about a few Haiku of your own on themes connected to astronomy, cosmology or physics?
Don’t be worried about making the style of your contributions too authentic, just make sure they are 17 syllables in total, and split into three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively.
Here are some of my own to get you started:
Quantum Gravity:
The troublesome double-act
Of Little and Large
Gravity’s waves are
Traceless; which does not mean they
Can never be found
The Big Bang wasn’t
So big, at least not when you
Think in decibels.
Cosmological
Constant and Dark Energy
Are vacuous names
Microwave Background
Photons remember a time
When they were hotter
Isotropic and
Homogeneous metric?
Robertson-Walker
Galaxies evolve
In a complicated way
We don’t understand
Acceleration:
Type Ia Supernovae
Gave us the first clue
Cosmic Inflation
Could have stretched the Universe
And made it flatter
Astrophysicist
Is what I’m told is my Job
Title. Whatever.
“Clusters look cool,” said
Sunyaev and Zel’dovich,
“because they are hot”.
Gaussianity
is produced by inflation,
normally speaking.
Gravity waves are
a kind of perturbation;
they make you tensor
Bubble collisions
Leave marks in the C-M-B
To please A. Linde
This Haiku contains
“Baryon Oscillations”
in its middle line.
What should we build next:
S-K-A or E-L-T?
Or maybe neither…?
J W* S T,
(the James Webb Space Telescope);
long name, big budget
* “W” has to be pronounced “dubya” for this one to work!
Contributions welcome via the comments box. The best one gets a chance to win Bully’s star prize.
Follow @telescoperBest Evidence Yet for Flowing Water on Mars (via Well-Bred Insolence)
Posted in Astrohype, The Universe and Stuff with tags astrobiology, astronomy, liquid-water, Mars on August 5, 2011 by telescoperA nice blog on the evidence (such as it is) for water on Mars, which is good because it means I don’t have to try writing about it!
I’m not sure it is water. That dark colour suggests to me it might be Guinness…
The Curious Case of the Twisted Ring
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, bar, Cardiff University, European Space Agency, Herschel Space Observatory, Milky Way, School of Physics & Astronomy, twisted ring on July 21, 2011 by telescoperJust time for a quickie this morning, prompted by the appearance of our own Professor Matt Griffin on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 earlier on talking about newly published results from the Herschel Space Observatory. I didn’t hear it live as I’m strictly a Radio 3 person, but it must have made a pleasant change from stories about the imminent collapse of the euro and continuing extraordinay revelations about widespread corruption involving the British media, police force and political establishment. Among all this doom and gloom it’s nice to hear news of something that’s actually successful.
Anyway, the news from Herschel is that it has unveiled a ring structure in the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The ribbon of gas and dust is more than 600 light years across and appears to be twisted, for reasons which have yet to be explained. The origin of the ring could yield important clues about the history of the Milky Way.
Warmer gas and dust from the Centre of our Galaxy is shown in blue in the image below, while the colder material appears red. The ring, in yellow, is made of gas and dust at a temperature of just 15 degrees above absolute zero. The bright regions are denser, and include some of the most massive and active sites of star formation in our Galaxy.
and here it is with the curious ring drawn on with crayons:
The central region of our Galaxy is dominated by an elongated structure, rather like a bar, which stirs up the material in the outer galaxy as it rotates over millions of years and is probably connected with the spiral structure seen in the disk of the Milky Way. The ring seen by Herschel lies right in the middle of this bar, encircling the region which harbours a super-massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The ring of gas is twisted, so we see two loops which appear to meet in the middle. These are seen in yellow in the image above, tilted slightly such that they run from top-left to bottom-right. Secondly, it seems to be slightly offset from the very centre of our Galaxy. The reason for the ring’s twist and offset are unknown, but understanding their origin may help explain the origin of the ring itself. Computer simulations indicate that bars and rings such as those we see in the centre of our Galaxy can be formed by gravitational interactions, either within the Milky Way itself or between it and the nearby Andromeda galaxy, M31.
For the experts, and others interested, the scientific paper containing these results can be found here.
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Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, Atlantis, ESA, NASA, Particle Physics, Space Shuttle, Space Travel on July 10, 2011 by telescoperLast week I found myself a bit perplexed by the frenzy of twitter angst surrounding the last ever launch of the Space Shuttle. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. I’ve often felt like there must be something wrong with me for not getting agitated over such things. After Altantis returns to Earth in a couple of weeks’ time she will be taken out of service and, for the foreseeable future, America will no longer have the ability to put humans into orbit. This does mark the end of an era, of course, but is it really something to get all upset about?
I find myself agreeing with the Guardian editorial, which I’ve taken the liberty of copying here:
Fewer than 600 people have been admitted an exclusive club: space travel. Now, with the last flight of the space shuttle under way, the membership list is harder to join than ever. When Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth, half a century ago, and when astronauts landed on the moon eight years later, it would have been inconceivable to think of a time when manned space flight began to slip from the present to the past. But America, at least for the moment, no longer has the capacity to send people into space. In terms of national pride, this may be a failure. In terms of scientific advancement, it may not matter that much at all. Deep space exploration – using robot probes – is a very different and more useful thing than the expensive and unreliable effort to send human beings into low earth orbit, no further from Cape Canaveral than New York. The shuttle has been an icon of its age, but its human passengers – however brave and skilled – have made their flights as much to show the world what America could do as for any particular and necessary purpose. Even the International Space Station, extraordinary though it is, could operate without a human presence, its experiments automated. The only good argument for sending people into space is the simple daring of it – the need, as Star Trek used to claim, “to boldly go where no man has gone before”. Visit Mars, by all means – but there is little to be gained by sending astronauts to orbit this planet, not all that far above our heads.
For me, the most remarkable thing about the Space Shuttle is how matter-of-fact it has become. It’s rather like Concorde, which was an engineering marvel that people would drop everything and gawp at when it first appeared, but which soon became a part of everyday life. Technology is inevitably like that – what seemed remarkable twenty years ago is now pretty commonplace.
I had similar feelings a couple of years ago, when Planck and Herschel were launched. Of course I was extremely nervous then , because many of my colleagues had invested so much time and effort in these missions. However, watching the behaviour of the mission control staff at ESA during the launch it struck me how routine it all was for them. It’s a great achievement, I think, to take something so complex and turn it into an everyday operation.
Incidentally, it always strikes me as curious that people use the phrase “rocket science” to define something incredibly difficult. In fact rocket science is extremely simple: the energy source is one of the simplest chemical reactions possible, and the path of the rocket is a straightforward consequence of Newton’s laws of motion. It’s turning this simple science into working technology where the difficulties lie, and it’s a powerful testament to the brilliance of the engineers working in the space programme that workable solutions have been found and implemented in working systems.
So now the era of the Shuttle has passed, what next? Should America (and Europe, for that matter) be aiming to send people to Mars? Should manned spaceflight resume at all?
Different people will answer these questions in different ways. Speaking purely from a scientific point of view I would say that manned space exploration just isn’t cost effective. But going to Mars isn’t really about science; going to the Moon wasn’t either. It’s partly an issue of national pride – note how loss of the Shuttle programme has effectively ended America’s dominance in space, and how keenly that has been felt by many US commentators.
Others argue that manned space flight inspires people to become scientists, and should be done for that reason. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, and I’m sure there will be many who disagree with me, but it wasn’t the Apollo missions that inspired me to become a scientist. When I was a kid I found the footage of people jumping around on the Moon rather boring, to be honest. What inspired me was the excellent science education I received at School. And just think how many physics teachers you could train for the cost of, e.g. the ESA Aurora program…
Another argument is “because it’s there” or, as Walt Whitman put it,
| THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted, | |
| Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find. |
As a species we have an urge to set challenges for ourselves, whether by asking difficult questions, by designing and building difficult devices, or by attempting difficult journeys – sometimes all three! This is our nature and we shouldn’t shy away from it. But we should also recognize that “going there” is just one of the ways in which we can explore the cosmos. Modern telescopes can see almost to the visible edge of the Universe, the Large Hadron Collider can probe scales much smaller than the nucleus of an atom. I worry sometimes that the political lobbying for manned space flight often seems to be arguing that it should be funded by taking money from other, more fundamental, scientific investigations. Astronomers and particle physcisists are explorers too, and they also inspire. Don’t they?
Follow @telescoperJWST: Too Big to Fail?
Posted in Finance, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, Cosmology, HST, Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, JWST on July 7, 2011 by telescoperNews emerged last night that the US Government may be about to cancel the James Webb Space Telescope, which is intended to be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. I’m slow out of the blocks on this one, as I had an early night last night, but there’s already extensive reaction to the JWST crisis around the blogosphere: see, for example, Andy Lawrence, Sarah Kendrew, and Amanda Bauer; I’m sure there are many more articles elsewhere.
The US House Appropriations Committee has released its Science Appropriations Bill for the Fiscal Year 2012, which will be voted on tomorrow. Among other announcements (of big cuts to NASA’s budget) listed in the accompanying press release we find
The bill also terminates funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.
It is undoubtedly the case that JWST is way over budget and very late. Initial estimates put the cost of the at $1.6 billion and that it would be launched this year (2011). Now it can’t launch until at least 2018, and probably won’t fly until as late as 2020, with an estimated final price tag of $6.8 billion. I couldn’t possibly comment on whether that is due to poor management or just that it’s an incredibly challenging project.
There’s a very informative piece on the Nature News Blog that explains that this is an early stage of the passage of the bill and that there’s a long way to go before JWST is definitely axed, but it is a worrying time for all those involved in it. There are serious implications for the European Space Agency, which is also involved in JWST, to STFC, which supports UK activity in related projects, and indeed for many groups of astronomers around the world who are currently engaged in building and testing instruments.
One of the arguments against cancelling JWST now is that all the money that has been spent on it so far would have been wasted, in other words that it’s “too big to fail”, which is an argument that obviously can’t be sustained indefinitely. It may be now it’s so far over budget that it’s become a political liability to NASA, i.e. it’s too big to succeed. It’s too early to say that JWST is doomed – this draft budget is partly a political shot across the bows of the President by the Republicans in the House – but it does that the politicians are prepared to think what has previously been unthinkable.
UPDATE: A statement has been issued by the American Astronomical Association.
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Bright and Early
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags astronomy, black hole, Cosmology, ESO, quasar, redshift, UKIDSS on June 29, 2011 by telescoperSome interesting astronomy news emerged this evening relating to a paper published in 30th June issue of the journal Nature. The press release from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is quite detailed, so I’ll refer you there for the minutiae, but in a nutshell:
A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope and a host of other telescopes to discover and study the most distant quasar found to date. This brilliant beacon, powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, is by far the brightest object yet discovered in the early Universe.
and the interesting numbers are given here (with links from the press release):
The quasar that has just been found, named ULAS J1120+0641 [2], is seen as it was only 770 million years after the Big Bang (redshift 7.1, [3]). It took 12.9 billion years for its light to reach us.
Although more distant objects have been confirmed (such as a gamma-ray burst at redshift 8.2, eso0917, and a galaxy at redshift 8.6, eso1041), the newly discovered quasar is hundreds of times brighter than these. Amongst objects bright enough to be studied in detail, this is the most distant by a large margin.
When I was a lad, or at least a postdoc, the most distant objects known were quasars, although in those days the record holders had redshifts just over half that of the newly discovered one. Nowadays technology has improved so much that astronomers can detect “normal” galaxies at even higher redshifts but quasars remain interesting because of their extraordinary luminosity. The standard model for how a quasar can generate so much power involves a central black hole onto which matter falls, liberating vast amounts of gravitational energy.
You can understand how efficient this is by imagining a mass 
The point is, though, that black holes aren’t built in a day, so if you see one so far away that its light has taken most of the age of the Universe to reach us then it tells us that its black hole must have grown very quickly. This one seems to be a particularly massive one, which means it must have grown very quickly indeed. Through observations like this we learn something potentially very interesting about the relationship between galaxies and their central black holes, and how they both form and evolve.
On the lighter side, ESO have also produced the following animation which I suppose is quite illustrative, but what are the sound effects all about?
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In the Dark 