Great Balls of Low Entropy Gas Fire!

Why? Well why not? If you were a bored bit of gas living out your days in the suburbs of such a great galactic metropolis, wouldn’t you too want to take a plunge, and go live in the center of things for a while?

Show Notes:

• Link to preprint of Astrophysical Journal Article
• ESA Press Release
• Funny Bad Astronomer Blog entry on this article

SA Extra: Interview With Keith Cowing

• NASAWatch
• SpaceRef.com
• Mars On Earth - the Haughton Mars Project
• Keith’s Bio

SA Extra: Chit Chat #10

• Astrophysics With Presolar Stardust - another explanation for the SN dust discussion
• Press release describing the “other” SN dust story.
• AMAZING FACTS ABOUT AUSTRALIA’S SOUTHERN SKIES - Doug’s new book- can be purchased here in the USA. (what does this mean for new zealand skies??)
• Travel Company Sells Walk In Space
• Starfest 2006
• Stellarium

from Doug: “Regarding the M81 question, it would be worth mentioning that none of
foreground stars that adorn all in-Milky Way based images of external
galaxies would be visible to the observer sitting in intergalactic space!”

The blazar: 2 oz vodka, 4 oz OJ, 1 oz grenadine…

Ring around the Planet (Show #59)

Show Notes

• Transcript
• NASA’s announcement that Cassini reached 2 years
• CICLOPS July 5 announcements about the Double-Banded E and a Persistent Arc
• NASA press release on Enceladus Rolling Over

And now for some pictures…
Saturn’s double banded E-Ring (credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Persistent Arc at the edge of Saturn’s G-ring. (credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

And in finally ….

Dancing Moons

SA Extra: Interview With Dr. Lee Anne Willson

• Staff page at Iowa State University
• Personal web page
• Her virtual origami gallery

Finders Keepers (Show #58)

Castdate: 060711
Title: Finder’s Keeper’s
Written By: Aaron
Disembodied Voices: Pamela, Travis, Rebecca
Engineered By: Travis
Rating: [OF] Office Friendly

• Transcript
• ESA Press Release
• XMM Newton Home
• Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica (IASF) of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica
• Earlier XMM Newton X-Ray Image of RCW 103 April, 2003
• Bad Astronomy Discussion Thread
• The Azzurri

And then there was dust … (Show #57)

Images Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/B.E.K. Sugerman (STScI)

Show notes:

• Transcript
• Spitzer Space Telescope Press release

From the Spitzer website: “The dust factory, also known as supernova SN 2003gd, is shown at the center of the two small insets from Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). A white arrow points to its exact location. The yellow-green dot shown in the July 2004 inset (top) shows that the source’s temperature is warmer than the surrounding material. This is because newly formed dust within the supernova is just starting to cool. By January 2005, the dust had cooled and completely faded from IRAC’s view. However, it was still detected in January 2005 by another instrument aboard Spitzer called the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS). The MIPS image is not shown here.

The images are false-color, infrared composites, in which 3.6-micron light is blue, 4.5-micron light is green, and 8-micron light is red.”