It's interesting to wonder sometimes, precisely how much research out there in the world has been done but not told to anyone. As is becoming apparent the more I speak to people, not everyone publishes everything they intend to. People talk about that chapter of their thesis which they could get at least two papers out of if they could find the time. Datasets languish in the unseen corners of raid arrays, unanalysed and gathering dust.

Now don't get me wrong here, I know exactly what it's like to be on a strict time budget. Sometimes you have things that just need to be done now. The things that won't wait. They're an integral part of this bizarre world we call academia. And everyone who's ever written anything formal knows how much effort it takes. It's a big big drain on your time and takes a lot of commitment and dedication to see through to the end. More so, the more co-authors you're trying to work with. Even more so when you work with people who live in different cities. Or countries. I really don't envy the scientists who work on the large scale projects which churn out papers containing 50 or more co-authors. All the same... I can't help but be curious.

Every time I type a search into Google Scholar or NASA ADS, the thought is usually somewhere on the back of my mind that there may be more on this subject that has just never been published. Perhaps something tucked away as a footnote to someone's thesis. How could they know that this tiny tidbit of information might be crucial to someone else's research interests?

Perhaps sometimes we all get so caught up in the rush to gather more data that we forget to finish working on the last batch. I think it's reasonable to say that the university lifestyle attracts its fair share of people who like starting new projects but aren't so good at finishing them. Or just people who would be great at finishing them if they had just a little more time in which to do so.

Speaking as someone who's currently sitting on two datasets and a host of calculations in need of analysis which have been temporarily shelved so that I can write a new telescope time proposal, this gives me some dissonance. I think perhaps once this is done, I should resolve to spend the rest of this year tying off loose ends. I should publish more. Publications are good.

I just wanted to share this image, because I think it's absolutely gorgeous. This is a sunset as seen from orbit.



I love how you can see the different parts of Earth's atmosphere as the sunlight shines through it. The weather systems in the troposphere, the thin cloud layers in the stratosphere, the blue glow from the curious mesosphere and the slow fade to black of the thermosphere.

Incidentally, I say curious because the mesosphere's the part of the atmosphere we understand the least of. It's too high for aircraft to fly in, but too low for satellites. Strange things happen in the mesosphere like noctilucent clouds (clouds of water ice so high in the atmosphere that they stay illuminated by the sun long after sunset), and lightning phenomena like red sprites and blue jets. Also, around 40 tonnes worth of meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere every day, and the mesosphere is where the majority of then burn up. Some are seen from the ground as shooting stars, but many are so small that we don't even notice them.

But I digress. Sunset from the International Space Station is clearly a very pretty sight. And with the speed at which it orbits up there, they get to see sunsets like this up to 16 times a day! I feel somewhat jealous...

Hmmm... I feel I should really apologise for the lack of any posts that have happened recently. Between observing trips, conferences, deadlines and some much needed rest to spend time with a certain special someone, I guess I've been a bit lax with any blogging shenanigans of late. I should remedy this. And what better remedy than a big pretty infrared image of some dust!

Just look at that. Isn't it beautiful? A friend showed this to me the other day (she has it set as her desktop wallpaper). This is a composite image taken by the Planck satellite. Planck was put into orbit last year to study the cosmic microwave background. In doing so, however, Plank operates at precisely the right frequencies to pick up emission from cold dust. This, then, is an image of the huge swirling vortices of cold dust that engulf the Milky Way. Or some of it, at least.

The pink band across the bottom shows the Milky Way's disk. The patches higher up show interstellar clouds. The brighter spots are dense molecular clouds, where star formation may be taking place. The darker regions show diffuse clouds such as interstellar cirrus. The interesting thing as well, is how high above the plane of the galaxy this dust reaches. The Milky Way obviously has a huge amount of dust in its halo. You have to wonder how much of this is taken into account by the galaxy modellers.*

It's also interesting for someone like me who studies interstellar space. I've written about the diffuse interstellar bands before. A few hundred spectroscopic absorption lines which tell us, essentially, that space is full of stuff.** We don't know precisely what that stuff is, but it's literally in every direction we look. Just like this dust. Actually, the diffuse bands show a fairly close link to dust. More dust tends to mean stronger absorptions.

In particular, there's a good match between the density of dust and one absorption line just outside the range of visible colours at around 862 nanometres. Imagine the deepest red colour you've ever seen. 862nm is a colour a little bit redder than that. Whatever the interstellar stuff is, it has something to do with dust. And images like this one from Planck really do make it quite apparent how much of that interstellar stuff there might be out there!


*Actually, some friends of mine have taken to ignoring me when I use phrases like "So what about dust, then?" in sciency conversations.

**And yes, that's the technical term for it.


Image credit: ESA, Planck HFI Consortium, IRAS
Image Source: APOD

As much as I like to herald the good things humanity has done, I can't help but feel distressed at the bad things. Things such as this. The bp oil spill is one of the worst ecological disasters in recent history, and from the news, it's set to continue for a while as they attempt to fix it.

Now ok, as you'll see from the image below, the Deepwater Horizon spill isn't the biggest spill in history. Actually, it's mercifully small. The problem here is the location. The Gulf of Mexico is home to a plethora of flora and fauna. Some, like the cold seeps, are unique and of special scientific interest. In particular, certain communities of chemosynthetic life live in the north part of the Gulf of Mexico, and for all we know, there are no others exactly like them on the face of our planet. Interestingly though, some of these lifeforms actually metabolise hydrocarbons! Maybe they might even help to clean things up. Don't think I'm being a stoic scientist here either. Lots of people life on the coast and make their living catching fish or farming shrimp. Fish and shrimp which are now dead. It's all very well that bp are telling people they'll pay dividends, but really, these people have had their livelihoods ruined here.

There is also another problem to do with the location of this spill. The Gulf of Mexico is the driving force in the Gulf Stream. One of the world's most powerful ocean currents, the Gulf Stream is responsible for circulating much of the water in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as for keeping Britain warm.* Unfortunately, this means that oil from this spill is likely to be diluted and circulated around the entire Atlantic. The North American coast, Europe and even the Arctic may possibly see traces of spilled oil wash up on shore. Contaminants will probably end up in the Atlantic food chain. I fear we may be seeing repercussions of this disaster for years to come.



*I know that a significant fraction of my acquaintances will start whining at this statement, that "Britain isn't warm." In response to anyone who feels that way, I'd recommend you go on holiday to Siberia, which is at the same latitude!

Images
Photograph (Top) - Boston Globe - The Big Picture
Inforgraphic (Bottom) - Gavin Potenza

The cool thing about science is that it isn't the normal everyday things that you learn new things from. It's the things that seem a little unusual. Unusual like a tiny star which goes by the name of 2M044144, a mere 450 light years away in the Taurus molecular cloud. Well... I say "star". Really, 2M044144 is barely a star at all. It's a brown dwarf. A stellar runt, too small to burn hydrogen. The interesting thing is that this tiny star has a planet in tow. Not just any planet, but a giant planet!

In fact, with an estimated mass of between 5 and 10 jupiter masses, this is a sizeable planet. Much larger and it would be capable of being a brown dwarf itself. It's also estimated as being only around 1 million years old, which is about the same age estimated for the star itself. In short, there was no way that this planet (which is in a close orbit at only around 24 AU away) could have formed the way a "regular" planet does. It simply hasn't had the time.

Remarkably, that means that this planet must have condensed directly from the same cloud of gas and dust that the star did. Had it accumulated more mass, the whole system would have been a binary star. Astronomers found fairly recently that stars can form the way planets do. Apparently, planets can form the way stars do too!

Which makes you wonder how many interstellar planets might be drifting around in interstellar space, having formed directly. Born the way stars are, but forever dark and silent. Perhaps there may be many more planets in our galaxy than we realise.



The paper about the 2M044144 system is available from the Astrophysical Journal.


Source: Cosmic Power
Images: NASA / ESA / K. Todorov and K. Luman (Penn State University)

I've been busy with stuff recently... I have a couple of posters I'm trying to get organised in time for a conference next week. In Toulouse. Apparently, I'm a jet setter now. But I couldn't let today go by without saying -- Happy Geek Pride Day! Yep, that's right. A day when all of us geeks can cherish the things that most people pour scorn upon us for. Rise up, my nerdy cohorts, for your time is now!

So apparently, I am a geek. Though sometimes I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I don't draw the same kind of strict boundaries between work and !work that other people draw... But that's a rant for another time. In any case, for your nerdish enjoyment, I present the Geek Manifesto!

The Geek Manifesto

Rights:

1. The right to be even geekier.
   
2. The right to not leave your house.
   
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
   
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
   
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
   
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
   
7. The right to be out of style.
   
8. The right to be overweight and near-sighted.
   
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
   
10. The right to make an attempt at being as geeky as Matt Young, and the right to fail. (Topher Stumph came quite close, but he too, failed).
    
11. The right to develop serious crushes on Randall Munroe, Shane Carruth & Bo Burnam, as opposed to say… James Franco. (See 10).
    
12. The right to carry a Thesaurus with you at all times, as opposed to an iPhone. (See 10)
    
13. The right to execute shameless self advertisement via the Wikipedia Geek Pride Day page. (See 10).
    
14. The right to falsely assume the surnames Finkleton, Waldman, Stratzer and Krukemeyer.
    
15. The right to quote Firefly, xkcd, or both, whenever at all possible.
    
16. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities:

1. Be a geek, no matter what.
   
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
   
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
   
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
   
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a "museum of geekiness."
   
6. Don't be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
   
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
   
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
   
9. Don’t waste your time on anything not related to geekdom.
   
10. Befriend any person or persons bearing any physical similarities to comic book or sci-fi figures.
    
11. Try to take over the world!

(Source)

In fairness, one should be careful not to confuse a geek with a nerd. There is a subtle difference between the two, as is exemplified by this convenient venn diagram:

...I just proved my point didn't I? Crap. Oh well, at least I can be proud of it today!

The internet is quite a marvellous thing really. I mean, supposing an asteroid 530-1200m in diamater and travelling at 29 kilometres every second were to pass a mere 28 600 000 km from our planet, you'd want to know about it, right? Yeah, so would I. And conveniently, you can.

Low Flying Rocks is one of the most brilliant uses of twitter I've ever seen. Whenever anything large and rocky passes within 0.2 AU of our planet, an update is automatically posted, like the one above. Though it may be enough to make you paranoid that updates are posted to this twitter feed frequently. Sometimes several times daily. The one above is one of the largest objects I've seen in quite a while, though mercifully twenty eight million kilometres isn't actually all that close. Every once in a while though, you do find one that passes closer to Earth than the Moon.*

Don't panic. Really, don't. The thing is, you see, while all of this might appear to be somewhat apocalyptic, the real reminder here is that random chunks of space rock passing close to Earth aren't particularly unusual. In fact, most of those asteroids have likely been in orbit around the Sun as long as Earth has. Some of them, perhaps longer. While it's always possible that our planet may be struck by a rogue asteroid, the chances are fairly slim. Space, after all, is rather big.

That's not to say, however, that we should simply close our eyes to space rocks. It's certainly a good idea to keep an eye on them. As some have said in the past, if nearly as much money and effort was spent on actually looking for "killer asteroids" as has been on films about them, we'd have a much better idea of how safe we are. This, for example, is Toutatis. 4179 Toutatis to be precise. While it might appear innocent enough, minding its own business in its orbit around the Sun, it's one of many nearby space rocks earmarked as a potentially dangerous object!

Still... "Potentially dangerous" isn't a lot to worry about. These asteroids are as potentially dangerous to the Earth as cars are potentially dangerous to people crossing the street. Just because their paths cross, doesn't mean that there's going to be a collision. For now, it's probably best to trust asteroid surveys like pan-STARRS to spot anything genuinely dangerous in time for us to do something about it. I think it's safe to say that there won't be any death from the skies anytime soon...

In the meantime, if your mind's a little more at ease now, why not have a glance at Low Flying Rocks on twitter? Don't be scared. They're only asteroids.

*The Moon, incidentally, orbits an average 384 403 kilometres away from Earth.

"...in my dream i figured out how i could make such a list [of ingredients] for the universe: by becoming a science ninja!! one of the more bizarre premises of quantum theory is that the act of watching something changes the reality of the situation: the observer affects the observed reality. but what if the observer is a ninja?!?!" -- Astropixie: Science Ninja

(100% pure awesome!)

O-type stars are rare. In fact they're very rare. Less than one in every hundred thousand stars formed will be an O-star. The reason they're so rare is that they're incredibly massive. Stars with such immense mass will burn through all of their fuel rapidly, so fast that they can only live for a few million years. An O-star which formed when the dinosaurs became extinct would be long dead by now.

Naos here, is an O-star. With an estimated age of about 4 million years, it's quite old for its type. In fact, it's one of the few O-stars in the galaxy which are visible to the naked eye. Being an extreme blue supergiant with 59 solar masses and a surface temperature of over 42000 kelvins, Naos is actually one of the brightest stars in the Milky Way. It's almost 800 000 times as bright as the Sun, although most of that light is ultraviolet. So much so that in the visible, it's only around 21000 times as bright visually.

Nonetheless, an O-star is a powerful object. If Naos was as close to us as Sirius, it would have an apparent magnitude of -9. That's bright enough to cast shadows on Earth's surface, and easily bright enough to read a book by at midnight! The full moon, for comparison, has a magnitude around -12. Even where Naos is, at around 1090 light years away, when it starts to die in somewhere between a few thousand to a million years, it'll become one of the brightest stars in the sky for a time. Eventually it will explode as a supernova much brighter than the full moon.



It's interesting what you discover sometimes when you're looking for standard stars to calibrate your data with...

Image: "Angry Star" by Brad Moore, Southern Astro
Actually, I've used this image before, but I really like it so I'm using it again. Brad has some excellent photographs. I'd recommend anyone with some free time to go and browse through them!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Radcliffe Telescope, and it's what I've been eagerly awaiting the use of for quite some time now. Unfortunately, while I'd love to be recording some spectra of the various stars on our target list right now, the weather is refusing to cooperate. With the mountaintop covered in fog, observing is currently off the menu. Sadly. So while I'm waiting for things to clear up, I might as well write a little about the 'scope...

Radcliffe is a lovely blend of early 20th century engineering and late 20th century electronics. Five metric tonnes worth of wrought iron telescope, equatorially mounted with another five metric tonnes worth of counterweight. With a 1.9 metre mirror, Radcliffe is essentially an oversized Newtonian telescope, not unlike the one I've had since I was a little kid. It's simply been scaled up. While it works as a cassegrain now, it even still has a Newtonian mounting on it. As you may be starting to guess, Radcliffe is an old telescope.

It wasn't even originally at this site. Named after an English physician, John Radcliffe, it was originally the telescope of the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria where it was operated between 1948 and 1972. In 1972, it was moved to its current site at the South African Astronomical Observatory here in Sutherland. Until the mirrors were installed in SALT in 2004, Radcliffe remained the largest telescope in Africa. Indeed, for quite a few years after its construction it was actually the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere, and joint fourth largest telescope in the world. Those days, however, are past and 2 metre class telescopes like Radcliffe are now considered "small telescopes" by professional astronomers. Compared to the shiny new 10 metre class telescopes now dotted around the world, Radcliffe is quite a downbeat piece of equipment with its fully manual operation and its old fashioned mechanisms. And frankly, therein lies its charm.

The most beautiful thing about using an old school telescope like this one is how hands on everything is. A series of buttons on a metal panel move the telescope, the mirror cover has to be opened using a metal crank with a wooden handle, and the sensors need to be cooled by manually refilling the liquid nitrogen tank periodically. It even has a finderscope attached to it, though this hasn't been used for some time. The finder alone is still significantly bigger than many amateur telescopes, mind you. The reason this gorgeous piece of engineering is so hands on is, simply, because it's old. Newer telescopes don't allow you quite so much freedom. I've been told that some telescopes don't really allow you to do anything yourself, being more a matter of clicking the odd button on occasion, or simply telling a telescope operator what to do. Purely for the thrill of being able to manually operate the telescope, it's been a lot of fun working with it so far, as I have no doubt it will continue to be. Provided the weather stops thwarting us!