Matt is going to .astronomy and I cannot even pretend I am not a little jealous. So much coolness coming from that every time. We need to see about bringing it to the Lorentz Center in two years perhaps. It would be an excellent excuse to go back to the Netherlands.
I think both Matt and me feel a little out of place for .astronomy. But hey. Let's see what he learns. Maybe we can hash out an idea about .astronom 10. We would need a theme. Astronomy for Everyone. Astronomy Science Toolbox. A new scisoft would be blessing I feel. Shame Norm does not support that anymore. It almost feels like some people think it will be that STSCI anaconda installation but that is just python. I would need everything else too! Source Extractor!
I will have to live vicareously through Twitter.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
Using Small Telescopes for Education.
I'm sitting in the "Robotic Telescopes in Education" workshop here in Leiden. It's just before the ALMA deadline, I'm beat from Mister M's 4th birthday party and there were some shenanigans I am apparently supposed to put up with in Academia that had my headspace a bit off. But here we go!
The use of educational telescopes in outreach, classrooms and college education is something I got to thinking about since a recent visit to Moore's Observatory in Louisville.
Las Cumbras is an amazing resource. Easy to schedule, essentially a single telescopes, spread around the globe. Edward Gomez gave us a rundown of the project and immediately, some ideas start spreading in my brain (occasionally bumping up against me stewing because of that unrelated issue).
Matt Kenworthy's projects are those that can benefit scientifically. Given the fact I'm an extra-Galactic astronomer, I cannot realistically think of much that dovetails with what I've been doing so far.
But that is not the use we should be thinking here. How can one use this online resource in classrooms? Pick something bright, pick something that can be observed to change.
And if it also does something for science, then we'd be really talking!
We'll hear from Pedro Russo next about integrating local facilities into classroom activities. Some sort of project where (highschool) students can use local and LCOGT telescopes to do something that in aggregate benefits astronomy. That is my end goal here.
The use of educational telescopes in outreach, classrooms and college education is something I got to thinking about since a recent visit to Moore's Observatory in Louisville.
Las Cumbras is an amazing resource. Easy to schedule, essentially a single telescopes, spread around the globe. Edward Gomez gave us a rundown of the project and immediately, some ideas start spreading in my brain (occasionally bumping up against me stewing because of that unrelated issue).
Matt Kenworthy's projects are those that can benefit scientifically. Given the fact I'm an extra-Galactic astronomer, I cannot realistically think of much that dovetails with what I've been doing so far.
But that is not the use we should be thinking here. How can one use this online resource in classrooms? Pick something bright, pick something that can be observed to change.
And if it also does something for science, then we'd be really talking!
We'll hear from Pedro Russo next about integrating local facilities into classroom activities. Some sort of project where (highschool) students can use local and LCOGT telescopes to do something that in aggregate benefits astronomy. That is my end goal here.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
IAUS321 - the outskirts of galaxies
It has been a week and I have collated some thoughts on the IAU symposium 321 on the outskirts of galaxies. There had been some buzz already at PHISCC but I had somewhat underestimated how big or information-filled it was going to be. I had a full brain by Tuesday. And SO many people to chat to. It felt like one run-on sentence. Drink from the fire hose & lean into it....
The organization was impressive. They had a twitter presence. An excellent website and an outstanding program and site. Toledo is a lovely city. I had been there before for an ESA science workshop a few years back. So I knew where the yummy marzipan could be found.
First view of Toledo.
This is on my way from the hotel to the venue. Not a Game of Thrones set...actual battlements.
I tried to get to grips of the high-view takeaways and to live-tweet as much as possible (to the great annoyance of a FB friend). Things I took away as more general impressions were:
Streams - they are indeed everywhere.
both from resolved stellar observations (like the GHOSTS HST survey I'm involved in) and integrated light, often using small telescopes or the DRAGONFLY telephoto-lens array.
Streams and models -- We keep seeing streams around nearby galaxies with small telescopes. However, these were not the streams we were looking for...the streams predited by simulations are much fainter.
Models on the left, observations on the right. How to compare these?
The issue remains how to quantitatively compare the two and how to obtain proper statistics (well the ongoing surveys will take care of that...).
The DRAGONFLY array is steadily adding deep imaging and results on stellar haloes. They find very small stellar halo fractions for anything smaller than the Milky Way. It remains to be seen if this is really true. I suspect some more results on nearby galaxies (like M101) are needed. We have a GHOSTS program on this galaxy. Let's see how integrated light and HST star counts compare.
The most convincing result was on NGC 2841 how there is stars throughout the HI gas disk. interesting...
Castle! Everywhere you looked!
Wednesday was busy with the result of my Bachelors students' results. They counted M-dwarfs in the Milky Way and we all published this result in MNRAS. And my phone died...so I was incommunicado... It went pretty well.
Thursday was my talk. I think it went well... I offered to be everyone's Dust Weatherman. And showed my results on dust in the outskirts of galaxies. Yes there is some! Galactic cirrus is not all that's bothering us in the outskirts!
That evening was the conference dinner. Spain's cuisine is...meat-based. There was a vegetable...an aspergus...one...deep-fried.
The next morning was the return Home. at Way-too-early-in-the-morning. It had been fun. I had caught up with a bunch of friends and collegues, ate a lot of Spanish deer and pork (nom). And some ideas for future HST projects. Brain full but fizzing.
The organization was impressive. They had a twitter presence. An excellent website and an outstanding program and site. Toledo is a lovely city. I had been there before for an ESA science workshop a few years back. So I knew where the yummy marzipan could be found.
First view of Toledo.
This is on my way from the hotel to the venue. Not a Game of Thrones set...actual battlements.
I tried to get to grips of the high-view takeaways and to live-tweet as much as possible (to the great annoyance of a FB friend). Things I took away as more general impressions were:
Streams - they are indeed everywhere.
both from resolved stellar observations (like the GHOSTS HST survey I'm involved in) and integrated light, often using small telescopes or the DRAGONFLY telephoto-lens array.
Streams and models -- We keep seeing streams around nearby galaxies with small telescopes. However, these were not the streams we were looking for...the streams predited by simulations are much fainter.
Models on the left, observations on the right. How to compare these?
The issue remains how to quantitatively compare the two and how to obtain proper statistics (well the ongoing surveys will take care of that...).
The DRAGONFLY array is steadily adding deep imaging and results on stellar haloes. They find very small stellar halo fractions for anything smaller than the Milky Way. It remains to be seen if this is really true. I suspect some more results on nearby galaxies (like M101) are needed. We have a GHOSTS program on this galaxy. Let's see how integrated light and HST star counts compare.
The most convincing result was on NGC 2841 how there is stars throughout the HI gas disk. interesting...
Castle! Everywhere you looked!
Wednesday was busy with the result of my Bachelors students' results. They counted M-dwarfs in the Milky Way and we all published this result in MNRAS. And my phone died...so I was incommunicado... It went pretty well.
Thursday was my talk. I think it went well... I offered to be everyone's Dust Weatherman. And showed my results on dust in the outskirts of galaxies. Yes there is some! Galactic cirrus is not all that's bothering us in the outskirts!
That evening was the conference dinner. Spain's cuisine is...meat-based. There was a vegetable...an aspergus...one...deep-fried.
The next morning was the return Home. at Way-too-early-in-the-morning. It had been fun. I had caught up with a bunch of friends and collegues, ate a lot of Spanish deer and pork (nom). And some ideas for future HST projects. Brain full but fizzing.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Bachelor Students result on the Milky Way are out!
Last year, I had two talented Bachelor students. The project I had in mind was to just MCMC on the M-dwarfs found in the BoRG survey. It was a nice way to reuse HST data taken already to find high-redshift galaxies. Honestly I thought they might improve the fit I had made earlier using my M-dwarf catalog somewhat.
Well! they took to the project and rapidly a) determined that there had been a bug in my original catalog, b) corrected it, and c) did an expert series of MCMC runs (using the emcee implementation).
The results were much better than I had expected. Not only did they manage to fit the disk of our Milky Way using the numbers of M-dwarfs found, they concluded they needed to use a Halo model as well. It worked beautifully: they inferred 60 billion M-dwarfs in the Milky Way, 7% in the MW halo, all with very nice errors, courtesy of the MCMC modelling.
The press release was yesterday (MNRAS press release) and (Dutch Press Release). Now we see how often it will be picked up by Dutch and foreign media...
exciting!
Well! they took to the project and rapidly a) determined that there had been a bug in my original catalog, b) corrected it, and c) did an expert series of MCMC runs (using the emcee implementation).
The results were much better than I had expected. Not only did they manage to fit the disk of our Milky Way using the numbers of M-dwarfs found, they concluded they needed to use a Halo model as well. It worked beautifully: they inferred 60 billion M-dwarfs in the Milky Way, 7% in the MW halo, all with very nice errors, courtesy of the MCMC modelling.
The press release was yesterday (MNRAS press release) and (Dutch Press Release). Now we see how often it will be picked up by Dutch and foreign media...
exciting!
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
LADUMA outreach day
I spent all of last week in Cape Town at the PHISCC 2016 meeting. And then the LADUMA team meeting. Things are shaping up nicely. Source finding in HI cubes is maturing, the data-rates don't look scary anymore (they're still the same, we're just not wimpering) and we did another LADUMA outreach morning. This was a huge hit back in 2014 when PHISCC was last in Cape Town and the first time I was going to participate.
Sarah managed to get hold of a list of schools to contact. And set up the logistics (yay Sarah). We heavily depend on the South Africans for most of the logistics (they have cars...)
I did notice an inherent issue that is impossible to correct for. All the poorer schools will have a poorer response to an offer for a bunch of scientists to come by and talk opportunities. I'm sure Sarah noticed. Actually I think she pointed it out. There is more turnover in staff, fewer people manning the phones etc so we often end up going to schools that are...for a lack of a better word...posh.
These private schools are amazing and quite a number of bright kids will turn out to be scientists later in life. It was a great experience talking to the classes. And yet...how do we get to more schools?!?!
We need to figure that out. Without sending every LADUMA team member on a days long trek or something. Something clever to let all the kids in South Africa know their country is up to someth amazing science & engineering and they all can be part of it. Some thought required. I'll start by seeing about translating those UNAWE radio astronomy booklets in Xhosa and Afrikaans.
Sarah managed to get hold of a list of schools to contact. And set up the logistics (yay Sarah). We heavily depend on the South Africans for most of the logistics (they have cars...)
I did notice an inherent issue that is impossible to correct for. All the poorer schools will have a poorer response to an offer for a bunch of scientists to come by and talk opportunities. I'm sure Sarah noticed. Actually I think she pointed it out. There is more turnover in staff, fewer people manning the phones etc so we often end up going to schools that are...for a lack of a better word...posh.
These private schools are amazing and quite a number of bright kids will turn out to be scientists later in life. It was a great experience talking to the classes. And yet...how do we get to more schools?!?!
We need to figure that out. Without sending every LADUMA team member on a days long trek or something. Something clever to let all the kids in South Africa know their country is up to someth amazing science & engineering and they all can be part of it. Some thought required. I'll start by seeing about translating those UNAWE radio astronomy booklets in Xhosa and Afrikaans.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
PHISCC
This week I am at PHISCC at SAAO in Cape Town. All the HI people on the planet (it seems) get together and present their work in preparation for (ultimately) the SKA and its pathfinders. I am here mostly because of the latter. After 6 years to the day, I handed over the proposal of what would become the LADUMA survey to Sarah Blyth, who just came back from maternity leave. Then I went on paternity leave because Charlotte arrived shortly after.
It's been 6 years. Both Charlotte & Sam have grown! As has the LADUMA survey. Andrew Baker joined the PI trifecta (much easier to deal with things since we can all take parts of the responsibilities) and we have a team lined up. It's coming together!
There is a LOT going on. HI source detection is maturing fast! Stacking software is growing up too. MeerKAT is now several dishes! Real radio telescope dishes. Meetings such as these are always very energizing (and slightly intimidating). I think I did ok with my talk on LADUMA. We still have no data (but that should be changing soon!).
The next PHISCC will be in China, India or Perth. hmm
It's been 6 years. Both Charlotte & Sam have grown! As has the LADUMA survey. Andrew Baker joined the PI trifecta (much easier to deal with things since we can all take parts of the responsibilities) and we have a team lined up. It's coming together!
There is a LOT going on. HI source detection is maturing fast! Stacking software is growing up too. MeerKAT is now several dishes! Real radio telescope dishes. Meetings such as these are always very energizing (and slightly intimidating). I think I did ok with my talk on LADUMA. We still have no data (but that should be changing soon!).
The next PHISCC will be in China, India or Perth. hmm
Monday, January 25, 2016
Well that is going to speed things up
Ever since I discovered how to make a progress bar in my python scripts, most of them seem to have them now.
It shows how far along it is but also the estimated time till completion. Brilliant. It also made me slightly more worried about how long something takes.
For example, a (older) script I wrote to fit SED models to suspected brown dwarfs. It works well but it's a little heavy on for loops. I wanted to apply it to LOTS of sources. So I ask Matt if he knows any tricks to speed things up. Matt shows me a trick using arrays.
Script goes from weeks-till-completion to mere seconds. wow. Usually I am not too fussed if a script runs for a little while (2 min? fine, I'll check twitter or something) but cutting down from weeks of runtime. nice.
Go Matt.
Now I'm going to stare at a progress bar run across the screen.
It shows how far along it is but also the estimated time till completion. Brilliant. It also made me slightly more worried about how long something takes.
For example, a (older) script I wrote to fit SED models to suspected brown dwarfs. It works well but it's a little heavy on for loops. I wanted to apply it to LOTS of sources. So I ask Matt if he knows any tricks to speed things up. Matt shows me a trick using arrays.
Script goes from weeks-till-completion to mere seconds. wow. Usually I am not too fussed if a script runs for a little while (2 min? fine, I'll check twitter or something) but cutting down from weeks of runtime. nice.
Go Matt.
Now I'm going to stare at a progress bar run across the screen.
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