Dava Sobel, author of The Glass Universe, presents as part of Distinguished Lecture series at Chapman University, April 3

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well just in case you are not on the "Our Cosmos" meetup site, I've posted the reference and some of the details for this upcoming lecture, which you might want to consider, by Dava Sobel at Chapman University on April 3, 2017 at 7:00PM.  If you follow some of Dana's books you will be familiar with "Longitude" (The story of time keeping and finding longitude at sea), "Galileo's Daughter" (Historical memoir from Galileo's daughter), and "The Glass Universe" (How the ladies of Harvard Observatory took the measure of the stars) and other popular descriptions of scientific topics.  She always tells a pretty good and informative story of these historic scientific discoverers and events.

You can check the details at the Chapman University website for their Distinguished Lecture in Arts series or just signup for getting similar early notices of many other similar events by going to the Meetup site https://www.meetup.com/Our-Cosmos/


See you there
Until next time

If you are interested in things astronomical or in astrophysics and cosmology

Check out this blog at www.palmiaobservatory.com

OCA Blackstar clouded out again; Irvine Valley College Astrophysics; Lawrence Krauss signs new book; Quality with Deming; More analysis of LISA solar spectrum

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

A review of this week's edition (25 March 2017) of New Scientist magazine had an interesting article, "Normal Matter ruled early galaxies."  Recall from your own study or earlier posts describing how initial observations of rotational velocities of galaxies seemed to be going faster than could be explained by just the amount of normal visible matter estimated to be in the galaxies. Vera Rubin who just passed away, made many of these observations, which later resulted in proposing some form of dark matter to explain the high velocities.  As we know, dark matter is now well accepted as the explanation, even while the search for the elusive dark matter particle continues without finding any evidence.  So, it was interesting to read

Summary from the IEEE Techignite conference in San Francisco; The Woz and Booch; Are you ready to attempt the Messier Marathon? Great new "big history" book; First, not great, attempt at doing indoors LISA solar spectrum using ISIS

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well part of this week has been spent offsite at the IEEE TechIgnite 2017 conference in San Francisco, so not much nighttime sky observing got done and besides the weather has not been the best.  So, I want to provide a few comments about the conference, then recommend a couple of books to keep you busy while staying dry inside and then end up with some of the first light analysis for the indoor solar spectrum acquired last week with the LISA spectrograph.

Maybe able to see a black hole? Two Fantastic astronomical videos; Symmetry, gauge invariance and learning physics and getting exercise at the same time; First light with LISA Spectrograph

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well, we're back from the PCGM in Santa Barbara and finally decided to begin learning how to set up the spectrograph and take spectra of stellar objects.  I first started this task over a year ago and finally overcame all my reluctance and procrastination and finally started to do the work, but before getting into that let's look at an exciting announcement and other email news.  First up, is

Missed USS Zumwalt tour; Summary of some topics from 33rd PCGM at UCSB; Twin Prime Conjecture; Some fuzzy images of M1 in city lights; Upcoming OCA Astrophysics SIG and Blackstar canyon; Upcoming IEEE TechIgnite conference in San Francisco

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well, this has been a busy week with some night sky observing getting done, but most of the weekend was spent at the 33rd Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting (PCGM) at University of California in Santa Barbara.  Now as luck would have it, I really wanted to take a tour of the USS Zumwalt (DDG1000) in San Diego.  When I was "officially" working, I spent many years working on electric propulsion systems and really wanted to

First light with the new telescope and connector binding problems; Nobel laureate Art McDonald lectures; Images of 47 Tuc; Exploring primordial black holes as dark matter; The Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well this week has found a few cloud free nights to try out the new 80mm refractor and look at the first light through that device, but first we should cover the recent lectures by Nobel Laureate, Art McDonald, and take a look at the mail.