SA Extra: Interview With Dr. Greg Laughlin

By Aaron on December 22, 2005 at 11:31 pm | In Slacker Astronomy Archival Podcasts | No Comments

Lagrange point diagram from Systemic:

A Slacker Christmas Story

By Pamela on December 22, 2005 at 11:02 pm | In Slacker Astronomy Archival Podcasts | No Comments

Words by Pamela Gay
Piano accompaniment by Travis Searle
Production by Travis Searle
images from NASA

T’was the day before Christmas, and all through the dome
Not a GUI was stirring, not even gnome.

The CCDs were stored in their cases with care,
In hopes that a super nova soon would be there;

The astronomers nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of dark-matter danced in their heads;

And I in my headphones, and my Mac in its place
Had just settled in to a podcast writing pace,

When out on the crest there arose such a clatter
I sprang to the desk to see what was the matter.

Away to the webcam (I tripped in my dash)
I tore open the Windows and threw up the Flash

The sun on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the luster of summer to objects below

When, what to my wandering cam should appear,
But a theorist prof, and eight grads dressed like reindeer

With fear for the telescopes, so precious their time
I knew in a moment it must be Dr Belstein

More rapid than eagles his equations they came,
And he twittered, and shouted, to grad students by name;

Now, Daniel! Now, Donald! Now Ronald and Randy
On, Christin! on Kirsten on Rachel and Mandy

To the white board you go, No Greek letter too small!
Now solve away, solve away, solve away all!

As the comets that before the Sun’s gravity fly,
When they meet with an obstacle light up the sky,

So up to the markers the students they flew
With many reference books, and Dr. Belstein too

And then, in a twinkling, I saw in the math
Equations mapping the vectors of Santa’s path

As I drew near my screen, and was scrolling around
In the entry Dr. Belstein came with a bound

He was dressed all in Tweed from his head to his cuffs
And his clothes were all chalky from lecturing on space stuff

A bundle of finders he had clutched in his gloves
And he looked a bit crazed like a boy first in love

His eyes – how the twinkled! His intelligence how vast!
His pencils were nubs, his calculations so fast!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the fuzz on his head was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pencil he held tight in his teeth,
And the shavings from sharpening it formed a small wreath

He had a broad face; a little pot belly,
That shook when he shouted like bowlful of jelly

He was tenured and sage, a right proper old prof
I trembled when I saw him, my nerves went all soft

A blink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had all things to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to the scope
And pressed all the buttons; then gave one final poke

And laying his fingers on the telescope’s pier
He awaited images on the screen to appear

His screen went all white, and his team gave a whistle
The sunlight brought instrument death like a missile!

But I heard him exclaim, ere he fled out of sight,
“Next Christmas I’ll observe Santa only at night!”

We’d like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyful Solstice, Best Kwanza Wishes, and may the Pasta be with you.

Please share the love and laughter and pass this story on to others!

Titanic news on Titan (Show #37)

By Aaron on December 18, 2005 at 7:20 pm | In Slacker Astronomy Archival Podcasts | No Comments

Show Notes
all images from ESA / Huygens


River Channels on Titan.

Sugar Daddies

By Slacker on December 11, 2005 at 7:00 pm | In Blog Posts | No Comments

You may have noticed that Slacker Astronomy has a new sponsor: Oceanside Photo and Telescope. Allow us to explain…

Slacker Astronomy costs about $130/month in bandwidth and server charges. Thus far your gracious donations have been able to cover those charges. Which means that Aaron’s wife, Pamela’s dogs and Travis’ gambling debts don’t have to suffer.

However, we would like to take SA to new audiences. Also, our bandwidth requirements are growing rapidly (thanks to your word of mouth) so we need to start socking away for when your donations can’t cover our bills. So we sold our soul to the devil, but in this case a benevolent devil. (I guess that means it isn’t a devil after all, but since when has Slacker Astronomy been good at vocbulary, vocobculayr, vocablary, vocabulary?)

Our agreement with Oceanside was easy. Pamela and Aaron both have prior experience as customers of theirs and we both can honestly say that their service is top notch. Aaron in particular, had some serious trouble with a GOTO mount about 3 years ago and remembers how incredibly helpful the OPT staff was. They went well beyond the call of duty to help him troubleshoot it, when the problem was not theirs but the manufacturer’s. Because of service like this that, it is our pleasure to welcome them as a sponsor.

We can honestly say that you’ll get good service from them when you need to purchase some equipment and gear. We know from first-hand experience.

In return for their sponsorship, OPT is covering the bill for Pamela to travel to the annual meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in January. She has been invited to give a talk to them about podcasting. Kudos to OPT and to Pamela!

Rest assured, this is not our only attempt to keep the lights on. We also recently submitted a 36-page grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to fund SA for 3 years (and fund many improvements such as more frequent shows, a better web site, more recording equipment, etc.). If any of you have contacts at NSF, give them a shout on our behalf! :)

Also, if you know of anyone else interested in sponsoring us, or other grant programs we can apply to, please don’t be a stranger. We accept tips to info@slackerastronomy.org.

Thanks!

Stellar Skeletons (Show #36)

By Aaron on December 8, 2005 at 12:53 am | In Slacker Astronomy Archival Podcasts | No Comments

Show Notes:

For those of you wanting to find the Crab Nebulae with your own telescope, the finder below (click on it to get a hi res finding chart) shows 1) The constellation Taurus (lower left) photographed by the avid astrophotographer Akira Fujii. 2) A two-colour image (right) shows the surroundings of the Crab Nebula. It was composed from Digitized Sky Survey 2 images, and 3) The new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image (upper left) of the entire Crab Nebula in super high resolution.
Credit: Akira Fujii, Davide De Martin (http://www.skyfactory.org) and NASA, ESA & Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University) Quoted from the HST site

Also discuseed was Supernova 1970g, in M101. While SN 1970g is not optically visible in a backyard scope, M101 is.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/GFSC/S.Immler & K.Kuntz; Optical: NOAO/AURA/NSF/G.Jacoby, B.Bohannan & M.Hanna

SA Extra: Interview With David Levy

By Aaron on December 7, 2005 at 10:15 pm | In Slacker Astronomy Archival Podcasts | No Comments

David Levy is the rock star of amateur astronomers (even though he has 4 honorary doctorates!). He is best known as a co-discoverer of the Showmaker-Levy 9 (SL9) comet that crashed into Jupiter in 1994. He is a major writer of astronomy books and articles as well as a popular speaker. In his spare time he’s discovered 21 comets, so far. He’s also one darn nice Man.

(Sorry for the clicks from 01:06 - 01:30!!)

Castdate: 051207
Disembodied Voices: David Levy & Aaron
Rating: [FF] Family Friendly

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