The Hubble Space Telescope: From Cosmological Conflict to Alien Atmospheres

Write up : 7th March 2021

This is a really interesting talk and overview of what the HST has undertaken since launch in 1990.

Some highlights

• Gravitational lensing, found galaxies magnified 50x and detection of galaxies 10x fainter.
• Precision cosmology & Hubble Constant calculations via several methods
• Exoplanet Atmospheres
• Exoplanets e.g 57 Pegasi
• Exoplanets found from transiting host star
• Planetary Atmospheres plus detection of organic molecules
• Earth size Exoplanets (Trappist 1b and 1c)

The talk also makes reference to academic papers, which can be easily searched for, so for example

With the last point in the list above, this paper was De Wit, et al 2016 Nature 537,69 – if you search for this you find arxiv 1006.01103 which is publication in the above journal 2016Natur 537

The 537 refers to the volume, and 69 is the first page of the article, in this case the article is on pages 69 to 72.

So using the references from the talk you can do further reading.

Well worth watching

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Hubble Space Telescope: From Cosmological Conflict to Alien Atmospheres Tue 2nd March 2021

Link

#space,#telescope,#astronomy,#lecture,#public,#online, #talk,#science

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Mars Rover follow up

Everything has gone as planned. On Thursday 18th Feb 2021. The NASA Perseverance Rover, will touched down on Mars safely and sent its first signal and images back to Earth.

REFERENCES

• NASA
  • Mission Page
• Space.com
• NASA Podcast
• Press kit pdf
• SciTech Daily
• Qoto discourse discussion
• Countdown to Mars by Open Space Vids

TAGS

#NASA,#Perseverance,#Rover,#Discussion, #Science,#Mars,#Mission

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February STSCI lecture review

This months lecture Milky Way vs Andromeda: When galaxies collide. was really interesting, and covered material about how galaxies are formed, looking for life and what may happen when in 7 billion years, the Andromeda galaxy merges with our own, home galaxy.

The lecture also talked about how galaxies were first discovered and how, only in the last 100 years have we really started to learn a lot more about them. Why the two will merge is linked to the expansion of the universe.

Earth, of course, won't exist by then. The sun, being 4 billion years old, will have expanded to a red giant. As the duration of a 'main sequence star' is about 10 billion years (cite OU Open Learn The Sun)

So the lecture also included about how we could find earth 2.0, the fact that this. may not be easy given the time it will take to reach even the nearest start.

Proxima Centauri (4.2ly) and the planet around that isn't very hospitable.

Personal comment to add to this

I would guess it also raises the question if it will take 10's of 1000s of years to reach will it be the same or have developed to be more life friendly, then on the other side of that a planet that is life friendly now, may like the Earth not be so friendly i 1000's of years time.

Looking forward to the next lecture in March.

REFERENCES

• Space Telescope Science Institute
• Lecture Link

TAGS

#YearOfTheFediverse,#galaxies,#space,#Telescope,#stsci,#Science,Physics,#Astronomy

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The Milky Way vs. Andromeda: When Galaxies Collide

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Milky Way vs. Andromeda: When Galaxies Collide Tue 2nd Feb 2021

Link

#space,#telescope,#astronomy,#lecture,#public,#online,#talk, #science

The Darkest Secrets of the Universe

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Darkest Secrets of the Universe Tue 19 Jan 2021

• Link

#space,#telescope,#astronomy,#lecture,#public,#online,#talk, #science

Hackers Against Climate Change

Another interesting climate group on the Fediverse.

“Hackers Against Climate Change” originated as a series of self-organized sessions at 35c3. Since then we have worked with other climate activist groups, supplying them with technical knowledge, as well as trying to raise awareness for the current climate crisis in the hacker community.

• Website
• Hacc on Mastodon

#climate,#science,#computers,#hacking,#climatechange, #environment

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

LaTeX and Overleaf – Changing the compiler

A question came up on IRC earlier about Overleaf, LaTeX and compiling to use the \usepackage{arabluatex} package.

I suggested that it is possible to change the compiler to use LuaTeX and made the following video to help others with this

• @[email protected]

#Overleaf,#LaTeX,#compiler,#pdfLaTeX,XeLaTeX,LuaLaTeX, #typesetting,#troubleshooting,#tech,#science,#document, #report,#writing,#author,#authoring #thesis,#creative,#creating

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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