Dr. Pamela L. Gay
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Archive for the 'Astronomy' Category
May 13th, 2008
Comments(3) Falling out of a Cluster: The history of the SunOne of my favorite things to do with students in the late fall is to take them outside and point first to the Orion nebula, then to the Pleiades, and finally to the Hyades cluster, saying “these are snap shots in the evolution of open clusters.” Each of these systems is the home of […] Read more...
Apr 12th, 2008
Comments(1) BAA/AAVSO Day 2: Women & MenEarlier today I was talking with Rebecca Turner, another alumni of Slacker Astronomy and a staff member of the AAVSO. She and I are about the same age and often have our hair dyed the same random shades of red (I’ve let myself go to a boring auburn this semester). Looking around the room of […] Read more...
Apr 12th, 2008
Comments(3) BAA/AAVSO Day 2: Observing the Sun with Small ScopesThe nearest star to the Earth is easily observed during the day. It just happens to be called the Sun. The problem is, it’s quite close and this can make it very hard to observe safely without hurting yourself or hurting your eyes. The current speaker, Lee MacDonald, is discussing several simple rules for attaining […] Read more...
Apr 12th, 2008
Comments(2) BAA / AAVSO Day 2: Novae & Supernovae for allThe word Novae generally refers to a “New Star,” or a “Guest Star” - An object that springs up in the sky quite suddenly as a new but non-permanent object. Today we give these non permanent sky features a dozen or more names: Supernovae (types I & II with all sorts of extra letters), Recurrent […] Read more...
Apr 11th, 2008
Comments(3) AAVSO/BAA Day 1: Chasing Rainbows (or Spectra)One of the hardest things you can observationally do in astronomy is spectroscopy. You have to guide really well to keep the light on the slit. You have to calibrate the sensitivity across you chip (flat fielding like you do in imaging), the sensitivity as a function of wavelength (using a hot standard star as […] Read more...
Apr 11th, 2008
Comments(6) AAVSO/BAA Day 1: Remote ObservingSo, if you’re like, you may not own a telescope (story later, because I know you’ll ask). Like me, you may love looking through telescopes, taking images through telescopes, and just being able to intellectually get your hands dirty doing observational astronomy. If you are like me, you just can’t quite afford the scope you […] Read more...
Apr 11th, 2008
Comments(0) AAVSO/BAA Day 1: Binary AdventuresVariable stars come in many forms - there are happy little regular stars, widely separated and merrily circling ones dancing an eon long dance. Some white dwarfs - dead stars, cooling into stellar embers of stars - become vampires as they gravitationally suck mass from their companion and heat themselves back out of the stellar […] Read more...
Apr 11th, 2008
Comments(0) AAVSO/BAA Day 1: Paula and Pulsating White DwarfsAfter several days of travel, I’ve settled into the front row of the BAA/AAVSO meeting in New Hall, in Cambridge, UK. Dr. Paula Skody is giving an excellent talk on pro-am collaboration to make Hubble Space Telescope observations of cataclysmic variables. She studies pulsating white dwarfs - stars whose outer 99% have oscillations that […] Read more...
Apr 5th, 2008
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Mar 31st, 2008
Comments(3) IYA taking shapeAbout a year ago I got a random email from Doug Isbell asking me if I’d be interested in being part of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). I’d previously heard about this project, but having gotten a good last out of the non-event that was the World Year of Physics, I have to admit […] Read more... |