by Pamela | Apr 12, 2008 | Astronomy, Stars
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...
by Pamela | Apr 11, 2008 | Astronomy, Observing
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...
by Pamela | Apr 11, 2008 | Astronomy, 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...
by Pamela | Apr 11, 2008 | Astronomy, Observing, Stars
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...
by Pamela | Apr 11, 2008 | Astronomy, Stars
After 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...
by Pamela | Apr 5, 2008 | Astronomy, Space Carnival
This week’s carnival of space can be found in the Next Big Future blog.
