#aas227

Last but not least, Day 4 “Outfit of the Day” at AAS227:

I call this one WEAR ALL THE SPACE. 

Hubble image t-shirt by ThanksAnyway on @teepublic. 

Double sided Pillars of Creation necklace by Lost in Space Jewelry (which perfected match my NASA Hubble lithograph swag). These images (optical on the left, infrared on the right) were released as part of the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope last April.

Silk bracelet from Slow Factory, featuring the original Hubble image of the Pillars of Creation taken back in 1995.  

Okay, I swear you won’t be bombarded by my face again for at least a week... ;) 

Apologies in advance for the bombardment of my face, but I wanted to share my “Outfits of the Day” from AAS227 while we are still in the same month! 

Day 1:

As Emily posted earlier, the first day of the conference was T-shirt Tuesday and what better t-shirt to wear to an astronomer conference, than Pauline Acalin’s Lego design celebrating women in astronomy!  

I accessorized with one of my new favorite necklaces by Carey Borden (aka C.A.B. Fayre on Etsy). This laser cut Stargazer necklace is available in blue, pink, or purple. 

Lastly, I’m addicted to my Slow Factory silk bracelets. This one features a Hubble image of globular cluster IC 4499

Day 2 OOTD up next...

Coffee, black holes, editors, and beer: the science-writing life

I was invited to give a short talk at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Kissimmee, Florida last week, along with a few other astronomy/physics people who are now working outside of academic science. Thanks to the American Institute of Physics and Kelly Holley-Bockelmann for making this session happen, and to everyone who came to see us present.

Since a lot of people couldn’t see…

Comments of the week #93: from interstellar travel to an unknown monster

"[J]ust because you have a magnetic field outside of your spacecraft doesn’t mean you need to have one inside. One of the great properties of electromagnetism is that it has two types of charges: positive and negative, and so unlike with gravitation, it’s possible to shield yourself (with the right electromagnetic configuration) from both electric and magnetic fields. As long as you create a more efficient path for the magnetic field lines to travel through the hull of your spacecraft (rather than through the inhabited interior) you won’t have any problems to the humans inside. I am well aware than not all of the problems associated with interstellar travel are easy to solve, but I’m pleased to inform you that this one is!"

Go to AAS for a week: check. Write about a ton of new science: check. Check what people have to say about it: KABOOM!

Here is our AAS227 poster in all its glory! Thanks to everyone who came to see us at the poster, everyone who let us take their photo, and everyone who strutted their startorial fabulousness with us. It will take us a while to recover & post all our photos from the conference, but we hope to ramp up to regular posting next week!

NASA's Fermi Satellite Completes Map Of The Sky; Finds Mysterious, Unknown Monster

"We’ve done a great job mapping the galactic plane, which was a tremendous achievement given that you can’t see through the interstellar dust in the optical. But you can in the infrared, and we’ve done that not only with WISE, but with the much higher-resolution (and higher-energy) Spitzer Space Telescope, which has mapped the entire Milky Way galaxy. Yet of all the sources we’ve discovered, here’s a fun find in the new Fermi data: an unknown source of gamma rays!"