by Pamela | Jul 28, 2007 | Personal
This morning I got up at 3am, contemplated how much more I like going to bed at 3am, and then loaded myself into a car to go to the airport. Several hours of travel and one nap later, I am mostly coherent in Greensboro, NC where I am attending the summer meeting of...
by Pamela | Jul 27, 2007 | Personal
Astronomers usually try to educate the public that black holes do not go around actively eating the hearts out of galaxies. Usually. On July 24, astronomers announced that in the early days of the universe large numbers of young supermassive black holes actually spent...
by Pamela | Jul 26, 2007 | Personal
Many great explorers quests’ were brought to a standstill by weather – Odysseus hung out on an island, Magellan paused in Patagonia, and Amundsen shivered near Antartica’s coast. Following in the footsteps of these great and weather respecting men...
by Pamela | Jul 26, 2007 | Personal
As a graduate student at the University of Texas, I got to accompany the undergraduates on star parties (nominally as the ‘responsible’ adult, but really as a colleague in madness). We’d load up our cars with every telescope we could find, about a...
by Pamela | Jul 25, 2007 | Observing, Teaching
We’ve all had those magical moments of looking up and suddenly seeing something breathtaking in the sky. Perhaps it was just a moon low in the sky with a planet near and bright. Perhaps it was the Milky Way pouring itself into the horizon over a country road....
