Highlights from Los Angeles at the International Space Development Conference; See you next week at the AAS summer meeting in Denver; Space can bring us a new vision

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well I've spent these last 4 days, May 24 - 27, at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) 2018 held at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel near LAX in Los Angeles, CA.  In this post, I will present a summary of some of the highlights that caught my attention, but first we should mention the upcoming 232nd AAS summer meeting in Denver, June 3-7, 2018.

Hooray, finally visited the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico; Losing the Nobel Prize by Brian Keating

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Last post we talked about how after learning more about radio astronomy at our OCA Astrophysics SIG, we decided on our goal of visiting the Very Large Array (VLA) Radio Observatory in New Mexico and in this post we can provide a brief summary of our visit there.  But first we should review some of the mail and comments received from our readers.

Quantum Computing - State of Play, by Dr. Justin Dressel at the ACM chapter meeting

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well, yesterday I attended the local Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) meeting in Irvine, CA, where the presenter, Dr. Justin Dressel, Chapman University, spoke to 150 attendees  about “Quantum Computing – State of Play.”  This was an excellent presentation and since I have been trying to “study” how quantum mechanics is used to do computing for a couple of years now, I wanted to summarize some of the takeaway points from my “student” perspective. 

Sean Carroll's great intro to cosmology lectures; Great time for planetary observing; Improvements with Gaia; Looking for when the first stars turned on; Why is the solar corona so hot?

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well the weather again has been alternating between almost letting the nighttime clouds go away and trying to rain and just being overcast, so it has been mostly a time of spending the nights inside reading some of the stacks of magazines that have arrived.  So first some comments about the recent OCA general meeting and recommendation for a new series of lectures on an introduction to cosmology.

Hidden Unity; Beautiful account of Galileo's discovery; It from Bit; Measuring the Universe; Stirling Engine Demo

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

Well the observing weather is getting a little better now but earlier in the week we stayed mostly indoors and caught up on some of our incoming emails and some neat new books for reading.  So, let's go over the incoming traffic first.