Browsing all posts in January, 2008.

If it’s Thursday it’s must read Carnival Time

Yes, that was a lame title. The carnival on the other hand, is very much not lame, so go check it out on Visual Astronomy. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this many people participate.
Go mingle with the astronomy crowd at the Carnival.

Dark Energy is Real

This is apparently the post I wasn’t supposed to publish. I wrote it yesterday, and had it somehow utterly disappear from my HD after a crash. I then was writing it in wordpress and had Firefox crash on it before the first auto save…
In a really cool press release that I got yesterday but couldn’t [...]

Not your (academic) Papa’s Laser Pointer

One of the cool things about my life is that I occasionally get asked to review things. Mostly, I get to read books I otherwise couldn’t afford, but sometimes some really cool technology crosses my desk too. Most recently, techlasers sent me an Infiniti 125mW Green (532nm) laser. (For reference the Federal Laser Product Performance [...]

Many ramblings

I am so so annoyed at myself. I have been frantically working to find time to write between classes because I got this really really cool press release and I wanted to share its findings with you. I just about have the story done (and I’m done with students for the day, so I can [...]

Remembering the Space Shuttle Challenger

Sometime this weekend I looked up at my calendar and realized, “I didn’t hear the Space Shuttle Challenger mentioned at all this weekend.” Twenty-Two years ago today, during middle school lunch block on the East coast, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral with a crew of 6 astronauts and one schoolteacher from [...]

Carnival of Space Noir

This Thursday’s carnival of space raised the bar on writing a Space Carnival post. I bow down before the whim of imagination that is this week Space Carnival over on Sorting out Science. Go read. Have fun.

Random and Unsundry things

To give you an idea of my day, I originally (thanks to not paying enough attention to spell check), named this post “Random and Incendiary Things.” I have absolutely no ideas how Phil and Fraser so gracefully balance writing, family, interviews, online activities, and their inboxes. I am in awe of their rapid fire [...]

Resonating Worlds

I want to start by saying the following story is drawn from a pre-print, and the planet I’m about to talk about has not yet been directly detected. This is just a really neat little paper that offers a new way to look at things.
In a new pre-print over on arXive, astronomers Ignasi Ribas (ICE/CSIC-IEEC, [...]

Building a wall free Digital Tomorrow

I live a strange life. There is no way around it. My husband works for an office in San Jose, I have contracts to do work with a university in Sonoma, I teach for universities in Arizona, Australia, and Illinois, and I also do a bit of contract work for an association in D.C. (and [...]

Carnival of Space

This weeks friendly neighborhood carnival is planting its tents over at Colony Worlds. Check it out and come back tomorrow, when hopefully I’ll be do a comments roll questions roundup (including info on buying Astronomy Cast pins).