July 8, 2009 Image of Charlie Bolden (credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)

Charlie Bolden is giving the NASA Policy talk today. The last several of these that I’ve heard (excepting when Alan Stern spoke) have left me angry or discouraged. Griffin was not an astronomers’ NASA director. But it’s a new day and a new administration, and just 30 seconds into Charlie’s talk I can tell I’m going to leave with faith in his ability to communicate to my community and to support our dreams.

[Note: Bad Astronomer Phil Plait as coverage as well. Check it out?]

NASA Director Charlie Bolden is a grandfather (he talks about his grand kids all the time), an astronaut, a communicator who brings laughter, and a person willing to admit with humility that he’s not the smartest person in the room, and to admit with pride that he likes working with all the smart  -icists in the room.

As he speaks, he is looking forward to a great year of new launches and new science. He remembers the 1990’s discussions of how Hubble would change our understanding of the world we live in as it brings us understanding of the Big Bang and so much more (which it did). We live another new era of discovery.

• Kepler is finding planets (5 announced yesterday).
• Last month WISE was launched and it will bring a deeper, higher resolution survey of the sky in the Infrared. The mission is launched, the cover is off, and tomorrow we get to see the first images and see if it is in focus (Charlie points out each mission has three hurdles: Does it launch? Does it get first light? Is it in focus? Remember why we worry about that third one?)
• There is also SOFIA, which was resurrected from the desert and is now flying, door open, on the verge of having the telescope installed
• Fermi has revealed whole new classes of pulsars
• Spitzer found the largest ring around Saturn, and
• A combination of images from many of the great observatories has found the  the most distant clusters.

And then there was Hubble. Director Bolden was part of the Hubble in its first days, and as he brought up this most recent mission he teared up. He is telling us stories of his own work, and telling us of their struggles getting Hubble out of the cargo bay. These are stories I’ve never heard. The arm struggled with its weight and they had to read numbers off this that and the other things as they exceeding limits in unexpected ways. And it got worse. As Hubble was deployed, one of the Solar Panels got stuck and didn’t deploy. To protect the Hubble, hanging as it was on the robotic arm, they stopped stabilizing the shuttle (that would have put torque on the whole system as it got yanked around). Left to their own dynamics, the Shuttle and Hubble tumbled together as they orbited around the planet, with the whole team working to find a solution (It was found – there was a piece of software designed to make sure the solar panels didn’t get torqued too much. They disabled it and the Solar Panel deployed right away. It worked. It all worked. And he was part of that magical moment when Hubble floated away to take on the universe.

Transitioning  form his emotionally spoken story – his voice cracking more than once – back to policy, he declared the importance of partnering internationally, treating our partners as equals and with respect, and of building strong international collaborations.

He carries with him the message that during the White House Star Party, a cold clear night in D.C., President Obama and his wife and daughters spent nearly 45 minutes going from telescope to telescope. They were engaged, absorbing with interest the views through telescopes while hearing about the discoveries of high school astronomers – discovers of rare neutron stars, supernovae, and more, each student having their own science discovery behind their name . The Obama’s have their own interest in astronomy, and they value the importance of space and space education.

The White House Star Party is an example of one of the things we do right: Engaging people intellectually and passionately in astronomy observing and content.

He challenges us to go forth and communicate our work: Educating and sharing our results to increase understanding and passion for astronomy.

There is more coming: More launches of more missions.

And the Decadal Survey reports are forth coming and will be used to shape our future, making sure that NASA addresses with its missions the most compelling science of our time. And to succeed in these missions we need to create an educated work force ready to dream these missions, build these missions, and generate the science from these missions’ data.

To make this future real we need to both educate and do science while always always inspiring.

Closing his talk, Bolden gave us these words: “The future of manned space flight will not be paid for out of the hide of science. … Let’s embrace our future together.” He states that together we and are international partners will work on great things and do science while we educate a future generation. This is a partnership, and we will inspire together.

And now we are into questions… (Paraphrasing as close to quotes as I can)

Q: Will you be teaching anything?
A: I won’t enter the teaching profession on a formal basis, but I’m privledged to travel and communicate to people and through that get communicate in my own small way

Q: Will be have a manned space flieght before 2020
A: Yes. This will not be the president who precedes over the end of manned space flight. … We have incredible partners in terms of technology. [HUGE PARAPHRASE] The Japanese have the incredible HTV. We’re asking if they can work to make it capable of returning things to earth

Quote: I recently had a surgery with robots in my body – It was incredible! But I wouldn’t want to turn those robots loose!

If you had told me we would not be on the surface of the Moon today, I would have told you were smoking dope. We became risk adverse have Challenger. We have got to become willing to take risks.

Quotish: If you’d told me when I was training to be an astronaught that we would not be on the surface of the Moon today, I would have told you , you were smoking dope. Let me say that again: If you’d told me we wouldn’t be back on the moon today I would have told you that you were smoking some bad dope. I thought I was going up on the Shuttle and coming back to train to go to the moon.

We became risk adverse after the Space Shuttle Challenger. That has got to stop. We’re going to drop satellites into the ocean periodically. Human mistakes are going to happen. We don’t want to plan for this. We want to work to avoid this. But we can’t be afraid. We need to take risks to move forward.

…

We’re open to comment and to criticism. We’re not going to do things the way we used to do.

…

Audience Comment: I’m concerned about the emphasis on international collaboration. That seems to imply large missions. What about small missions?

A: (Summary of long response) International Collaboration doesn’t imply large missions. It implies opening doors for other countries by helping them doing things they can’t do on their own. Consider scientists in Nigeria who are working with researchers at the University of Alabama on small research missions. It is our duty to share what we can do.

My Words: I don’t think everyone can educate face to face, but I think all of us have something to give, and that as a community, if we create a culture of collaboration, of partner globally, and of working to find ways to decimate our results and value the communicators as highly as we value our top researchers we can create a new generation of people who understand science and understand how to love science.

I’ll be writing more on this later. Right now, all I know is I’ve seen a great speaker speak from the heart about my dreams and how we can work together to make them real. I’m in love, but, as Phil put it, this really was only a first date.

I want to believe.

Invited Talks

Press briefings are scheduled for following dates and times. You are invited to attend all events on the Astronomy Cast UStream Press Conference Channel. Please feel free to embed this channel on your own webpage!

• Mon., Jan. 4
  • 10:00 a.m. Battling Black Holes
  • 1:00 p.m. Kepler Early Science
  • 2:30 p.m. Exploding Stars

• Tues. Jan. 5
  • 9:00 a.m. Stellar Mysteries
  • 10:30 a.m. Galaxies Near & (Very) Far *See it in Second Life
  • 2:30 p.m. Pulsars *See it in Second Life

• Wed. Jan. 6
  • 10:00 a.m. Cosmology’s Dark Side
  • 1:00 a.m. Exoplanet Exotica *See it in Second Life
  • 2:30 p.m. TBA

• Thurs. Jan. 7
  • 9:00 a.m. Galaxies Stirred, Not Shaken
  • 10:30 a.m. Spicing up the Solar System

And…

Want to meet us in person? There will be a meet up Wednesday night at 7pm. Location TBA.

*ALL PRESS/AAS MEMBERS WHO WISH TO ATTEND THE EXPERIMENTAL SECOND LIFE SESSIONS, PLEASE EMAIL YOUR REAL LIFE NAME AND SECOND LIFE AVATAR NAME TO ADRIENNE (astronomy2009insl@aas.org) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND NO LATER THAN 1 HR BEFORE THE SESSION START. Our press sessions will be CLOSED to the general public and you will need to be on our “entry list” in order to teleport to the ‘Astronomy 2009′ island and attend.

Invited Talks are scheduled for following dates and times (pending confirmation with all speakers!). You are invited to attend all events on the Astronomy Cast Public Events UStream Channel. Please feel free to embed this channel on your own webpage!

• Mon., Jan. 4
  • 8:00 a.m. Van Biesbroeck Prize and Welcoming Address
  • 8:30 p.m. Kepler Planet Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results
  • 11:40 p.m. Russell Lectureship: RR Lyrae Atmospheres: Wrinkles Old and New
  • 3:40 p.m. Pierce Prize: Finding Utility in the Diverse Origins of Gamma-Ray Bursts
  • 4:30 p.m. LeRoy Doggett Prize: History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate Join us in Second Life [SLURL]
  • 6:30 p.m.  Gemant Prize: Science as Performance Join us in Second Life [SLURL]

• Tues. Jan. 5
  • 12:30 p.m. Policy Talk: Charles Bolden
  • 3:40 p.m. Warner Prize: The Demographics of Exoplanets
  • 4:30 p.m. Galaxy Clusters and Black Holes: Cooling Versus Heating

• Wed. Jan. 6
  • 8:30 a.m. Invited Talk: John Grunsfeld, Shuttle Atlantis Join us in Second Life [SLURL]
  • 11:40 a.m. Heinemann Prize: The High-redshift Galaxy Jigsaw Puzzle
  • 3:40 p.m. Cannon Award: A Holistic View of Catastrophic Cosmic Explosions
  • 4:30 p.m. Rossi Prize: Strong Gravity and the Masses of Stellar Black Holes

• Thurs. Jan. 7
  • 11:40 a.m. Formation of Massive Black Hole Seeds in the First Galaxies
  • 3:40 a.m. Reionization to Near Earth Objects: Scientific Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope

The Astronomy 2009 Island in Second Life(R)

I have the internets and I’m not afraid to use them! Today we premiered our new wireless rig – 2 wireless 3G verizon cards and 2 netgear 3G -> wireless routers, and while we have kinks left to work out, I feel okay saying we are going to stream our little hearts out at this meeting in hopes that you can consume the best of what this meeting has to offer. Specifically, my team – the self-named SIUE Collective (they decided I’m their Borg Queen – Eek!) – will be UStreaming (pending confirmation with all speakers!) along the side the Second Life casting of the wonderful Adrienne Gauthier of the University of Arizona.

The full plan can be found over on Astrosphere, but here are my “I can only see one thing a day” recommended high-lights:

• Mon., Jan. 4
  • 8:30 p.m. Kepler Planet Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results
  • 6:30 p.m.  Gemant Prize: Science as Performance Join us in Second Life [SLURL]

• Tues. Jan. 5
  • 12:30 p.m. Policy Talk: Charles Bolden

• Wed. Jan. 6
  • 8:30 a.m. Invited Talk: John Grunsfeld, Shuttle Atlantis Join us in Second Life [SLURL]

All your bandwidth are belong to us.

But we promise to treat it nicely…

Monday, June 8,
12 Noon: BLACK HOLES & PULSARS press conference

Tuesday, June 9
9:00 AM: GALAXY DISCOVERIES press conference
10:30 AM: INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ASTRONOMY UPDATE press conference (Featuring me )
12:40 PM: STARS & STAR CLUSTERS press conference
6:30pm PLANETARY CLASSIFICATION SPECIAL SESSION (special URL)

WEDNESDAY June 10
9am GALACTIC CENTER press conference
10am NEW MEDIA SPECIAL SESSION (me again)
11:30am EXOPLANET NEWS press conference
12:30 WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER PREVIEW press conference

THURSDAY June 11
10am IYA CITIZEN SCIENCE SPECIAL SESSION (and me again…)

Join us?

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

This week is the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California. I’m here along with many of my friends and colleagues from across Astronomy Cast, 365 Days of Astronomy, IYA, and Galaxy Zoo. Since we’re all new media, Fraser and I were able to twist arms to get help live casting the conference to the world (which happens to include you). Joining me in person are: Fraser Cain (our second time meeting in person!), Ian O’Niell, Michael Koppelmann, Chris Lintott, Georgia Bracey, Scott Miller, and Jordan Raddick. Nancy Atkinson is also helping us from afar. Together, we’re going to get you as much content as we can. (Want to meet us? Join us at Rock Bottom Brewery 6-9pm on Wednesday Jan 7)

I’m currently in a pre-meeting symposium for recipients of the National Science Foundation’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellows 2009 Symposium. The two-day symposium is a mix of presentations by recipients, panels discussions by folks the NSF thinks have something to share (I’ll be on a panel on non-traditional public outreach), and general resources on how to get their next job, their next grant, and to teach their next class.

(I have to admit I’m learning stuff)

And one of the things that is particularly cool is they are being taught through example that it’s okay that sometimes research that just doesn’t give you the results you want or expect.

Case in point: Rachel de Naray presented her research comparing actual observations of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies to theoretical models of galaxies with a specific type of dark matter halo called a Navarro -Frenk -White (NFW) potential. These models have a specific distribution of dark matter, make a specific set of assumptions, and you can read about it here on wiki. The question is: Does this model mimic reality.

de Naray is working to answer that question. One of the best ways to approach this problem is to find a system where dark matter dominates so that the errors introduced by trying to sort luminous matter (of which you will never be abe to detect all of it) from dark matter is only a minor player. (Think of it as trying to weigh water that has on few leaves swirling in it, versus trying to weigh water that is black from leaves floating in it). Nature offers a convenient solution: Low Surface Brightness galaxies do have some stars and gas an dust, but in general are under dominated by dark matter. The stars /  gas / dust act like leaves swirling in the water, and allow us to measure how things orbit in the systems’ gravitational fields, but they are such a small part of the total mass we know how to deal with them.

One of the nice things about galaxies is stars / gas / dust (the stuff we can see) orbits at velocities that are directly related to the size of the orbit and the amount of stuff (luminous and dark) inside the orbiting object’s orbit. This means that the orbital motions of the stuff we can see tell us about the distribution of the stuff we can’t see.

So… De Naray made observations. She made models using the NFW potetial. She compared them hoping for a match, and… They didn’t match. But she initially made the simulation easy by assuming perfect data acquisition, circular orbits, axial symmetry (the distribution of the dark matter is a sphere), and she ignored the finer details of how dust / gas collisions effect things. The fact that the match wasn’t perfect was sad, but there was lots of room to try and make things better. As a good scientist, she systematically removed each of these simplifications from her simulations, seeking help from a collaborator with great galaxy models, and … Still no match. In fact, she purposely “built” an artificial galaxy with her pre-assumed distributions of luminous stuff and a NFW potential and double checked that she could recover it’s distribution, with the software, and when you artificially created the galaxy her results were dead on – the software works – but it appears simulation just doesn’t match reality.

Now here is where I’m going to through out some editorial comments. First, I loved listening to her systematically go through and say, I made these assumptions and I made these simplifications, and then I removed each of the simplifications to check my assumptions, and well, something is wrong – this model doesn’t match well. She did good work and communicated well. It was a pleasure. That said, NFW models are one of the most commonly used dark matter distributions, and I honestly wonder how long it will be before enough people say, “Hey – doesn’t fit reality so well” before people start chasing new dark matter distributions. It is going to be interesting to watch over the coming years.

And now onto the summary:

Over the course of the week new media plans fell into roughly two different categories: the way we reported and the way we taught others how to do what we do. If you want to see everything we reported, pop over to Astronomy Cast LIVE and troll through the text, pictures and video. It is a really cool cornucopia of content.

As for what we shared …

Emily Lakdawalla on Images
Sadly, we didn’t record Emily’s UStream, so if you missed it live, you’re just going to have to wait until next time. BUT, if you are interested in learning how to combine images from science missions, here are some links you can use.

For Tutorials (just one on color imaging right now):
http://planetary.org/explore/topics/imaging/

Forum for discussion and interaction with others on amateur imaging:
http://unmannedspaceflight.com

Phoenix:
Home page: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu
Raw images page: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/imageCategories_lander.php
About the main camera: http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/
About the robotic arm camera: http://sisyphus.lpl.arizona.edu/public/rac.html

Cassini:
Home page: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
Raw images page: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/index.cfm
About the camera: http://planetary.org/explore/topics/cassini_huygens/instrument_iss.html

Mars Exploration Rovers:
Home page: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
Raw images page: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/
About the cameras: http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_instrument/index.html
Also: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft_rover_eyes.html
Auto-downloader and virtual reality panorama builder:
http://midnightmarsbrowser.blogspot.com

Citizen Science by Jordan Raddick with Chris Lintott
I can do Jordan (and Chris) no justice by trying to summarize him (them), but what I can tell you is Galaxy Zoo II (or 2, I don’t know which they selected) is coming any day now. Everyone get ready to click your way through the universe!

While you wait, here are a couple other Citizen Science online projects you can check out:

Mars Terrain Classification with Clickworkers! http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top
Stardust@ Home http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

Social Networking by Phil Plait

In case you hadn’t heard, IYA has a group in Facebook called “I’ll be celebrating the International Year of Astronomy in 2009″ GO JOIN IT! We also have a “person.” Can you be her friend?

We also have a “person” on MySpace, and if you tell us where all you hang out online, we’ll embed IYA there too

Second Life with Adrienne Gauthier

If you meet up with her avatar (or mine) online, she can give you a great notecard of real life science going on in Second Life. I am “Pamela Gondwana” and she is “Ourania Fizgig.” She also made cool IYA T-shirts (I’ve got one! See Picture) that can be copied and shared (which means, catch one of us, and we’ll give you one). If you haven’t been there yet, check out the NOAA Island and the Rocket Park.

These are just some highlights, but they are the highlights that have places for you to go play today. Tomorrow (proverbially), we’ll be bringing you even more as we develop the Portal to the Universe for IYA and new citizen science projects.

The first thing I learned is Google actually has folks assigned to nurture non-profits to help them plug in. http://www.google.com/educators/geo . They have help, tutorials, ideas and more pre-prepared to help us build our content into virtual worlds. Their latest and greatet includes: weather, sunlight skins, 3D Buildinsg/SketchUp, a Swoop feature that lets you fly and zoom, and a “My Maps” feature to share content among friends.

Part of what this makes powerful is it allows people to explore independently and it has almost limitless applications and places to explore. Educational research (out of my head not out of the talk) shows that if you sit with a kid and work through every possible way of triggering a jack-in-the-box, the child when handed the toy will pretty much set it down and wander off. Show them only a couple of many ways, and they will sit down and try all the unseen permutations they can figure out. This means that you can hand a person the tools to access the “oh wow” factors of Google Earth and Google Sky, and students will continue to play and explore and learn to find all the ways the “oh wow” Jack jumps out of the Google box.

Google wants to be a part of IYA. (And I’ll be hunting them down later.) They encourage all of us to go to the Geo Education online community and participate. I’m ready, I’m primed, and I want to learn.

After a brief talk, our presenter showed a series of examples (.kml files), including animations, content from missions, and other “Google Skins” created in the kml markup language for people to explore. These can be found in the Google Earth “Gallery” window.

I have come to realize that I desperately need to find a Google Sky and Google Earth expert for the IYA New Media Task Group.

(Side note: There is a Johannes Kepler actor here who has a southern bit of twang! I find this very amusing.)

I can now proudly state that 400 Years of the Telescope Partnership will be sponsoring the International Year of Astronomy’s Island.

I have been lucky enough in my career to have had a handful of sponsors for various projects, and every one of my sponsors has been an organization that I have respected and enjoyed my interactions with in the past (SAO, Audible, OPTCorp…). Not everyone is so lucky. For the past several months I have worked with the folks of 400 Years of the Telescope through my development of the IYA-US website, and I have come to respect them through their newsletter, amazing images, and website as I have worked with their friendly staff. To get funding from them in particular makes this moment sweeter.

We still have a long way to go to raise the funding we need for IYA, but this is a huge and exciting moment for us. We’re ready to run – Adrienne Gauthier has detailed amazing IYA plans – and this funding marks the firing of the start gun.

Thank you for getting us started. Kris and the 400 Years of the Telescope Partnership – You’ve helped make our IYA wishes come true.

Today will be a rinse and repeat.

Press Conferences here.
TV Show hosted by Ustream

New Media Round Table
Broadcast powered by Ustream.TV

Today I’m hoping to be able to write more and bring it to you here and at Astronomy Cast Live.

Tonight, we’ll be meeting up with anyone who is interested at Kitchen K, starting at 7pm. We hope to see you there!

So when Steve made the announcement I WOOTed. But… If you read one of the many press releases, you’ll see that in reality, LIGO simply failed to detect a gravitational wave, and placed a limit on the gravitational waves (This is like saying a star is fainter than 6th magnitude because you can’t see it. This means it might also be too faint for the Hubble Space Telescope to see). Steve didn’t totally mis-speak. He was just sucked into the moment. We’ve all had that moment, and I think all of us have a little fire for LIGO somewhere in our heart.

It’s kind of sad. I had hope. Then I didn’t. Sorry if I got any of your hopes up on Twitter.

Come. Chat. Drink. Astronomise.

Be there and/or be square

Today’s press conferences spanned a wide gamut, talking about everything from dwarf galaxies to disk formation to, I kid you not, hot chocolate. The highlight for me was the press conference on new supernovae results. As often happens at these things, three very different results on the same broad class of objects were presented together.

In brief:

• Dr. Stephen P. Reynolds (North Carolina State University) presented results obtained using the Chandra showing that Kepler’s Supernova Remnant (see image above, credit NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair) resulted from a Type Ia supernovae (the type of supernova created by an exploding white dwarf). In this case of forensic astronomy, they learned that it is possible for exploding white dwarfs to be surrounded by the type of circumstellar material normally associated with higher mass stars going through a period of mass loss via stellar winds. This implies that perhaps larger mass stars are able to loss enough mass to become white dwarfs. If these stars occur in binary star systems, they can gravitationally steal mass from a companion star until they become so fat they explode as supernovae. It has been unclear for a long time what limits there are on which stars can become white dwarfs. We can say with certainty the sun will become one because it is so small there are no other options. This is true of everything up to a couple solar masses. Above this limit however, it is possible for a star to become a neutron star or perhaps even, for the largest stars, a black hole or a supernova that leaves behind nothing at all. ‘Possible’ and ‘certain’, however, are words with different meaning. Now it appears that some larger than previously expected stars are becoming white dwarfs. This has the neat implication that type 1a supernovae may have been able to occur earlier in the universe than was previously expected, allowing Iron, which is created in the explosion, to get distributed around the universe earlier than expected. This means planets may have been able to also form earlier than expected. And, that means, life may also have been able to start forming earlier than previously expected. I’ll explain why that is cool in a later blog entry.
• Dr. Nathan Smith (University of California Berkeley) reported on the discovery of 3 luminous blue variables (LBV) that have surrounding ring structures similar to those seen around the famous Supernova 1987 A. In pre-supernova images of this star it was discovered that SN1987a’s progenitor star was a LBV. This result was a bit shocking because LBVs were supposed to go through a red supergiant phase before going SN, and no one was quite sure how to explain this discrepancy between theory and data (and some really Rube Goldberg theories I won’t go into were made up to fit the situation). The three LBVs that Smith and the research team he works with discovered all resemble SN 1987a’s progenitor (see image at right of HD168625. credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Nathan Smith/UC Berkeley), and they believe that perhaps stellar evolution has a never before suspected branch, and that in certain situations LBVs just go supernova. This adds a new branch to the possible paths of stellar evolution, and this result also has neat implications for the future of the nearby LBV Eta Carina. While it was previously believed this star would have to go through one more evolutionary stage before it exploded (becoming a Wolf-Rayet Star), it is now believed Eta Carina may just explode. Boom. While not harmful to life on Earth, this explosion could destroy all the satellites around our planet. While I’d love it if Eta Carina exploded in my lifetime, I have to admit the economic implications are a bit scary. (And it will be hard to study if all the on-orbit observatories bite the dust.)
• Dr. Nicolas Flagey (Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France) discussed how the beloved “Pillars of Creation” in the Eagle Nebula may actually not exist anymore. The Eagle Nebula is located roughly 7000 light years away. They have found evidence that in the year 6000BC a supernova exploded, sending shockwaves through the nebula. They estimate the shockwave encountered the Pillars of Creation in 4000 BC, causing them to crumble apart, with the densest material forming stars while the less dense material was dispersed by the shock. Because of the travel time of light, that original supernova may have been observed in 1000 AD, and in roughly 3000 AD future astronomers will be around to find out if this papers results are correct, as they do or do not observe the falling of the pillars. Today we see the supernovae shockwave as red in the image at right (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/N. Flagey (IAS/SSC) & A. Noriega-Crespo (SSC/Caltech))

I’m sure that Phil Plait, an expert on SN1987a, will be blogging about the results later, so keep an eye on Bad Astronomy.

In a completely separate press conference, Dr. Michael Ireland (CalTech) announced that it has been discovered that the giant star Mira, a favorite variable for amateur astronomers, is contributing to the formation of a disk around its companion star. As material streams off of Mira, lost to its stellar wind, its companion gravitationally pulls it into a disk. This may be a new way to create a new planetary disk in an old system.

And here is where I admit that I missed the earliest press conference of the morning because I had a breakfast meeting with Dr. Sarah Maddison of Swinburne Astronomy Online. She is a great lady and we did a great little interview, but it means I missed a bit of news. Luckily, one of the other reports, Govert Schilling, was there to cover it. Check out his story at Science Now.

There is so much more I want to write, but there are also people to interview, and I can’t do both at once, so this is it for now.

So, why should any one care? Well, quasars are giant black holes in the process of feeding on gas and dust (and maybe even stars and planets) that just happen to get too close). By giant black holes, I mean black holes that are hundreds of thousands to tens of billions of times larger than the Sun. And, by feeding, I mean they are chowing on solar system masses worth of gas and dust with each bite, and sometimes spraying jets off high-energy particles while giving off light in ways that make these things the brightest shining actors in the entire universe. One quasar is just cool, and getting three cool things together all at once is, well, something that naturally attracts the observational astronomy paparazzi (or atleast grad students seeking projets).

More scientifically, we have a lot of theories on how galaxies form and grow from the start of time to today. These theories indicate that galaxy mergers and quasar activity were both more prevalent in the past, with the epoch of quasars peaking around a redshift of z = 2, when the universe was just 2 billion years old. While we’re still working to understand the physics of quasars, it seems that quasar activity is related to galaxy-galaxy interactions, and galaxy interactions should occur in large numbers at similar times. Thus, theoretically, if you are going to find interacting systems of QSOs, it makes sense that you find them somewhere near z = 2. This triple system was found at z = 2.076, matching that theory.

This system, QQQ 1432-0106, was initially identified as a potential double quasar gravitational lens. This means, it was identified as a system where a single distant quasar had its light bent by an intervening massive object such that it appeared as two objects rather than one. This is a common effect, with quasars being found split into as many as 5 different apparent objects (You can read more aboutthis effect here. Additional observations of these two objects, however, turned up a third object, and gravitational lensing models cannot replicate these observed pattern of three objects and their luminosities. The luminosity ratios of the quasars are 1: 25 : 200. This, in non-straight forward ways, reflects differences in mass, with the brightest system being approximately billions of solar masses and the second brightest being hundreds of millions of solar masses.

Spectroscopic observations of these systems give additional evidence that these are three physically related objects instead of a gravitational lensed single object. While all three systems have similar emission lines and appear at the exact same redshift, there are minor differences in the spectra that indicate slightly different distributions of material are present in the three systems.

Our current understanding describes this as a system consisting of three physically related interacting quasars that will eventually merge together. A possibly disturbed galaxy is visible around the brightest of these three quasars. The supermassive black holes in their cores – the angry monsters that power the quasar light – will interact in ways that may result in one or more of the supermassive black holes. This theory-based result has interesting implications. It is possible that there are free-roaming supermassive black holes wandering the universe, periodically consuming intra-galactic dust and gas. It also raises questions on how today’s galaxies end up with central supermassive black holes that have sizes directly related to the characteristics of the parent galaxies. This time, theory leaves us in a place without a lot of observational evidence to support us. To verify our concepts, astronomers need to identify galaxies lacking supermassive black holes, galaxies with supermassive black holes of unusual size (too small, rather than too large like ROUS*), or catch a system in the process of ejecting central black holes during merger. (for neat animations, see This Site.)

So, at the end of the day, some theories have added evidence, and some theories leave us asking questions, but no matter what, the quasars are spectactular and the science in this bit of observing is solid. This is a case of good science, done right, going through the scientific process to correct false starts and firmly establish this as the first gravitational interacting three quasar system. Kudos to George Djorgovski (CalTech) and his team for a job well done.

*Rodents of Unusual Size, from the Princess Bride

This is a place where the big teams present their big results. In fact, the COSMOS team presented dark matter and baryonic matter maps of the large-scale structure of the universe as a function of time. It was a truly tremendous result that Phil Plait wrote an excellent blog entry about at Bad Astronomy. I also caught a short interview with one of the team members, Richard Massey, which I’ll be incorporating into an Astronomy Cast episode in the next week or so. (As new results come out, I’ll be posting about them here.)

And everyone is here. This is the place where everyone presents a poster presentation or a 5-minute oral presentation on their latest results (I’ll have my name on two presentations, one on Dorrit Hoffleit, and one on online education). This is a place every student comes to try to schmooze their way into the next stage in their career, whether it be a summer internship, graduate school, or their very first post doc. In fact, this is the place any one in search of a job comes to try and schmooze their way into the next step of their career (including me!).

With such a large chunk of the astronomical community in one place, it’s possible to inadvertently run into people whose names usually only exist in things you read. Last night I hung out with Carolyn Collins Peterson, Phil, and other science education folks. Carolyn blogged a bit about it over at the Space Writer Blog. Earlier today I saw Alan Boyle of the Cosmic Log and became a momentary fan chick, thanking him for doing so much to promote and help those of us little guys and gals doing independent blogs and podcasts. It seems every time I turn around there is a new neat person to listen to, learn from, and of course foist business cards on to and out of.

And there are moments of weirdness. This Conference is at The Washington State Convention and Trade Center, and side by side with our astronomer conference is the The Seattle Wedding Show. This means that at one point a bunch of us were going up the escalator in search of NASA schwag while a bunch of “bride to be”s were coming down the opposite elevator with wedding schwag. It also means that at one point during a press conference on the Andromeda Galaxy’s extended halo, “Here Comes the Bride” could clearly be heard in the background.

And sometimes people watching (all “brides to be” aside) is just fun. There are at least 4 people (including me) with unnaturally red hair lurking the conference. And there are the normal freaks and geeks of the community, with their crazy hats, or crazy hair, or just crazy craziness. Anyone who thinks we are a straight-laced community doesn’t know the right people. NASA’s Jeffery Hayes was throwing around the world, occasionally hurling the Earth at unsuspecting souls (he claims women catch flying terra firma 80% of the time to men’s 20% of the time). People generally flew around grabbing up satellite paper models, posters, the occasional project emblazoned jump drives, and gobs of pens like kids in a candy shop where everything is free. Sure, to look at us, it’s a group of grey haired old men with a few women and flocks of undergraduates mixed in for flavoring, but all the flavoring is really spicy.

So, it’s a circus, and I am one of the side show freaks, but I’m in good company. Maybe tomorrow I’ll catch a cool release from a data contortionist or have a chance to see the bearded satellite.

Its always good to be surprised.

In the first press conference of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle Washington, astronomer James Graham of the University of California Berkeley described fluff found around the star AU Microscopii. This tiny red dwarf star is a baby at just 12 million years of age, and it is surrounded by a dust disk. The material in this disk may eventually grow into planets, but today it is simply forming snowballs.

Within the disk, parent bodies (snow balls) form via much the same physics that determines how dust bunnies form under your bed and lint balls form in the trash that you toss dryer lint into in your laundry room. When the parent bodies collide, dust particles break off. They examined the density of this material using scattered light. When light hits a surface it breaks off in a way that is directly related to the density of the material. Using polarized filters similar to the polarizers in ski goggles, they measured the materials refractive index and determined that the dust is roughly 97% empty space and 3% ice – a composition similar to snow powder.

It’s pretty neat to think that in some places pocket lint (admittedly made of frozen gases and dust) is the stuff behind the formation of planets.

I’m going to try to grab Dr. Graham to get a picture of his lint latter.

My strongest memory from the last meeting was visiting the Icon Bar and Grill with a friend and Phil Plait’s old manager and, as a bi-gender group, checking out the cool decorations in both the male and female restrooms. Seriously – they are totally worth a special trip. I hope to visit there again and get pictures this time.

The AAS meeting is one of my favorite of the year. It is crowded, noisy, has too many people, and is always exhausting. I usually work myself into a caffeinated frenzy trying to keep up with both my science presentations and journalistic (or at least podcaster) coverage of the daily events. None of these things scream, “This is a fun experience.” But, in the midst of the frenetic activity are all the friends I only see at meetings, and in the press room I get to work side-by-side with some of the smartest writers I know, trying to figure out how to bring to the public the best and most interesting 1000+ astronomers have to offer.