Paul Sutton

astronomy

Active galaxies Review

So following on from the post on December 1st this is a quick review of the active galaxies lecture from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

This lecture, presented by Dr Mitchell Revalski, is really interesting, looking at how supermassive black holes, despite their small size compared to the galaxy they reside in.

Energy from these can push away surrounding gas, and heat this up which reduces star formation as gas needs to cool to form stars.

so scales are pretty huge:

First lets look at what a light year is

Citation : spaceplace.nasa.gov

For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it!

1 pc = 1 parsec = 3.26 light years

Supermassive black hole < 1pc

Bulge = 1 = 3 kpc (kilo parsec)

disk 30 kpc

circumgalactic area 50kpc

So even though these black holes are very small, they have a big influence on what surrounds them.

We know this is happening thanks to the research that led to the 2020 Nobel prize.

Well worth watching and the link is above.

Next lecture 19th Jan – The Darkest Secrets of the Universe Speaker: Raja Guhathakurta (UC Santa Cruz)

#astronomy,#science,#space,#telescope,#scsci,#talk, #solarsystem,#galaxy,#blackhole,#supermassive,#stars, #gravity,#light,#matter,#atoms,#emissions,#aabsorption, #spectrum,#gamma,#xray,#visible,#invisible,#parsec, #lightyear,#distance,#galactic,#bulge,#spacetelescope, #groundtelescope,#astronomers,#education,#public

Astrobiology course 5

So moving on in from the previous post the next lecture in the Astrobiology course is on Space Missions in the Search for Life

#astrobiology,#course,#amity,#university,#theopenuniversity,#space,#science,#astronomy,#biology,#biochemistry,#missions,#nasa,#esa,#lecture,#talk,#presentation,

Active Galaxies

Shaping Galaxies with Supermassive Black Hole Winds

Tuesday 1st December

So following on from Septembers lecture, the Space telescope science institute present their next lecture.

With details here

You can find more upcoming (monthly) lectures below.

http://www.stsci.edu/public-lectures

#video,#astronomy,#space,#science,#stsci

The Dawn of Gravitational Wave Astronomy

So on to another high end physics lecture

This is from the Institute of Physics

#physics,#astronomy,#lecture,#gravitational,#waves

Astronify Review

Just watched the latest Space Telescope Science Institute lecture, mentioned in a blog post from 10/11/2020

The full lecture title was

Hearing The Light: How Sonification Deepens our Understanding of the Cosmos and Makes Astronomy More Accessible

This talk was really interesting, it covered how data from astronomy can be presented in an audible way, rather than as a graph on a screen or paper for example.

Why would this be important ?

Well, for most people, visual data can be seen by the eyes, if you are blind or partially sited, this this data is in accessible to you.

One of the examples given is the light curve from a star transit, this may look as follows

------             --------
      |            |
      |            |
      |            |                     
      --------------

So this, would illustrate, how the light from a star, drops when a planet passes in front of the host star.

If we were to express this audibly then the curve would start off as one tone then drop to a lower tone and go back up to the original higher tone.

This makes astronomy more accessible. It is also another way to represent data from Kepler and TESS telescopes.

The lecture explains this far better, but from the Q/A session we learn that this can be found in every day life.

The lecture emphasises that sonification is not about recording existing sound we could hear. So a microphone under water to record sound from sea life is NOT Sonification, however I think they suggested that turning non audible sound to audible sound IS an example, Other given examples, included star flares, which again can be represented. Once you know what to listen for, it helps us confirm the data further.

The team has a website at https://astronify.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ but I would recommend watching the video first.

#astronomy,#stsci,#data,#audio,#sonification,#presentation,#Astronify

Astronify

Hearing The Light: How Sonification Deepens our Understanding of the Cosmos and Makes Astronomy More Accessible

Tuesday 10th November

Location: Online Attendance Only Time: 8:00 PM – 9:30 PM

So following on from Septembers lecture, the Space telescope science institute present their next lecture.

You can find more upcoming (monthly) lectures below.

http://www.stsci.edu/public-lectures

Link to last months video lecture and a review of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope lecture

#video,#astronomy,#space,#science,#stsci

Enigmatic fast radio burst pinned on magnetised dead star

This is an interesting development, astronomers have found something they have been spending years searching for. Not sure where these stars appear on the The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54815687

The paper for this can be found on Physics World. Reported on IOPScience on 4th November 2020.

Currently discussing on a OU Science forum.

#bbc,#news,#science,#fsb,#space,#astronomy,#physics,#astrophysics.

Meteorites Talk

Just been watching a really interesting talk by Dr Tim Gregory – Meteorites from 8th October 2020 – YouTube.

This was really interesting and accessible people with both a science and non science background,

Briefly touched on how the solar system was formed, protoplanetary disks looked at the two different types of asteroids, how they are formed, what makes them up internally, and finished off with a quick look at some of the organic molecules that have been found and how these could have found their way to earth.

Well worth a look, the video can be found on Youtube.

Thank you to the OU Science Club for pointing me to this talk.

#science,#astronomy,#chemistry,#space,#asteroids,#meteorites,#cosmochemistry,#geology,#rocks,#solarsystem,#planet,#formation

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

6th October

So following on from Septembers lecture, the Space telescope science institute present their next lecture.

With details here

You can find more upcoming (monthly) lectures below.

http://www.stsci.edu/public-lectures

#video,#astronomy,#space,#science,#stsci

Searching and classifying exoplanets

Searching and Characterizing Exoplanets with CHEOPS, ARIEL, and PLATO

Video here

#video,#astronomy,#space,#science