Archive of Writings
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BAA/AAVSO Day 2: GRB Observations by Amatuers
Every once in a while, statistically detected once a day or so, a GIANT star explodes as a hypernova (an over grown supernova) and channels its energy straight at us. This energy is mostly contained in an insanely powerful beam of gamma rays. That said, they also give...
BAA/AAVSO Day 2: Women & Men
Earlier 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)....
BAA/AAVSO Day 2: Observing the Sun with Small Scopes
The 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,...
BAA / AAVSO Day 2: Novae & Supernovae for all
The 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...
UK Travelogue
[Note: This post was written over three days] My second morning in Oxford can perhaps best be described as a series of directions: around the circle, through the campus, over the hill, past the castle, down the hill, dash at the bridge. I’m currently sitting...
AAVSO/BAA Day 1: Lost in Translation
After the talk on spectral work by amateurs I fled across campus to the Pathology building and a room of Naked Scientists. More exactly, one of our wonderful fans e-introduced Chris Smith and I and said we should meet, and she was right. Chris Smith is the originator...
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...
AAVSO/BAA: Reaching Out Effectively
As well as blogging this meeting as best I can, I'm also here try very hard to suck as many people into communicating astronomy as I can. To that end, I gave a talk on a project to create a Speaker's Bureau, a Writer's Bureau and an archive of publicly available...
AAVSO/BAA Day 1: Remote Observing
So, 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...
AAVSO/BAA Day 1: Binary Adventures
Variable 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...