October 5th - Slooh your way to the stars

What's in an acronym? Paige Godfrey, Slooh's research director, gave us an overview of the services offered by this online observatory. As of today, Slooh provides access to six telescopes. The majority, 5, are located in the Canary Islands. These include their largest instrument with an aperture of 0.5 meters (20 inch). Another telescope in Chile gives access to the many interesting objects located in the southern sky, and a solar scope equipped with a narrow band H-alpha filter allows observations of the solar chromosphere. By locating their observatories under some of the darkest skies, they facilitate access to high quality observations to individuals who would live in areas that suffer from light pollution (all cities).

Individuals can access the data obtained by the cameras attached to Slooh's telescopes. Paige showed some examples of work done by members of their community, from processed images, mosaics and gifs, to discoveries of new comets. Since the processing of astronomical data can have a rather steep learning curve, they're developing materials to make it easy for anyone to get started.

Paige explained how these resources allow schools to incorporate observational astronomy into their curriculum, and they're launching a specific program, AstroLab, with the support of the National Science Foundation.

As an illustrative example of how Astronomy can help answer some of the most fundamental questions we've asked ourselves through history, Paige introduced the use of Drake's equation, a way to quantify the number of communicating civilizations in a given volume, and applied it to the set of stars visible in a typical image taken with one of Slooh's telescopes. Turns out vulcanians may be out there for real!

-- Jose Zorrilla (graduate student)

February 21: Neutral Particle Power

Every second trillions of neutrinos cross our bodies without ever noticing. Graduate student Jia Liu guided the audience through the mysteries of these tiny particles that have puzzled scientists for decades. Neutrinos were suggested by the famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli to account for the missing energy, when a neutron splits into a proton and an electron (a process known as beta decay).

Neutrinos are abundant in nature and are produced through various processes. They are produced in the core of the stars when light nuclei merge to form heavier elements, in nuclear plants when the opposite process (heavier nuclei are divided into lighter) takes place to provide energy, in supernovae explosions and even when energetic particles from outer space interact with the atmosphere.

Neutrinos come in three varieties, have low mass and interact very weakly with matter, making their detection challenging. Next, Jia showed some of the cutting-edge operating detectors like IceCube in the South pole, ANTARES under the Mediterranean sea and Super-K in Japan, that trace neutrinos from astrophysical sources.

Finally, Jia discussed some intriguing potential (fiction-like) uses of neutrinos in the future, as proposed in serious scientific journals. Some of them included the destruction on nuclear weapons, the communication with extraterrestrial civilizations and equity trading.

After the lecture, the audience had the chance to view 3D movies of the universe on the 13th floor, to participate in roof tours and hear more about neutrino flavors from graduate student Andrew Weis. Later, as the sky cleared out and observing was possible, the few who stayed had the chance to look at Jupiter, the Orion Nebula as well as the new Supernova 2014J in nearby galaxy M82, which is the closest type-Ia supernova discovered in the past 42 years.

We hope to see you in our next event, which will entail an exciting collaboration with the neuroscience outreach group!

--Maria Charisi (graduate student)

April 19: Extragalactic FM

On Friday, April 19th, Ph.D. candidate Destry Saul shared with us the wonders of the Universe as seen  in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. He introduced the audience to some of his favorite radio images taken with his favorite radio telescopes. Radio telescopes can either be single dish (like Arecibo or Parkes) or arrays (like the VLA or the VLBA). Objects that emit in the radio include galaxies, supernova remnants, and pulsars. Destry's favorite objects include the closest and most powerful radio source, Cygnus A, and the brightest radio supernova remnant, Casseopeia A.

Unfortunately, the skies were quite cloudy, so observing was replaced by tours of our rooftop observatory given by graduate students Adrian Price-Whelan and Steph Douglas. Audience members were also treated to a guided viewing of our 3D Wall by undergraduate Gladys Velez-Caicedo, and a discussion of the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum, X-ray astronomy, by graduate student Yuan Li.

We hope to see you at our next event on May 3rd.

--Summer Ash (Director of Outreach)

April 5: Eyes in the Sky

On a beautifully clear (almost) spring night, PhD student Ximena Fernandez gave a talk entitled "Eyes in the Sky" to a packed room of over 200 people. Ximena's talk focused on how the combination of space telescopes that operate at a variety of wavelengths have been invaluable in revealing the secrets of our Universe. Starting with our galactic center, she showed how only through the use of infrared and X-ray data have we begun to understand the nature of our galaxy's supermassive black hole. Moving to nearby galaxies, GALEX images revealed the largest known spiral galaxy, which has extended spiral arms thanks to an ongoing interaction with another galaxy. At the end, Ximena presented the newly released Hubble Extreme Deep Field, the single longest exposure in all of astronomy. The image contains over 5 billion galaxies, including the oldest known galaxy to date. The talk ended with a video that zoomed through the image to show the distribution of the galaxies in the picture. You can watch the video here!

After seeing so many wonderful images, the good weather gave everyone the opportunity to see amazing objects with their own eyes.  Most popular were the Orion Nebula and Jupiter.  Some chose to remain in the lecture hall where there was a presentation on the Cosmic Microwave Background and the new results just released by the Planck Telescope.  Finally, there was also the possibility of experiencing our 3D wall. Everyone had a great time and we're looking forward to our next event.

--Lauren Corlies (graduate student)

April 27: How is a Hubble Image Made?

The beautiful pictures of our universe provided by the Hubble Space Telescope are some of the most inspiring in Astronomy. This past Friday, PhD student Christine Simpson explained to attendees how these images are made. Explaining the basics of the telescope, CCDs and the color-assignment process, everyone could walk away with a deeper appreciation of these images.

In response to requests from several audience members, Christine has provided the following links related to her talk: Hubble’s Hidden Treasures contest and contest submissions to date; a nice explanation of the meaning of color in Hubble images; and an article from Sky & Telescope that describes Hubble image processing.

After the talk, some stayed to hear about Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. The cold weather also provided clear skies for observations on our roof. Columbia students helped visitors observe Saturn, the Moon, and the Mizar-Alcor star system in the Big Dipper's handle. Visitors were also able to experience our 3D wall. Our next lecture of the semester is May 11th. We hope to see you there!

 --Lauren

February 27: Harlem Sidewalk Astronomy

Five members of our department ventured out on a beautiful, clear evening into neighboring Harlem last night. We brought with us two small telescopes and loads of NASA bookmarks and posters to give out to interested participants. Setting up on the Federal Plaza at 125th street and Adam Clayton Powell (just down from the Apollo Theater), we pointed our telescopes towards some of the highlights of the sky this season: Jupiter, Mars, and the first-quarter Moon. Many curious passersby stopped to see what we were doing there and to take a glimpse of the heavens. Some individuals just wanted a chance to see the sky, while others wanted to discuss something astronomical they read in the news or heard from a friend.


In the end, the clouds came up to block our celestial viewing, and the wind shook our telescopes and made it unpleasant to stand around. We returned home, satisfied to have reached out to around 120 people over the course of the night. Great work, Bryan, Jennifer, Jose, and Marcus!

--Cameron

July 22: Gattaca

A couple of weeks ago we wrapped our summer science film series with the movie "Gattaca." Once again we had another good turn out for some sci-fi movie fun! Plus, we all had a chance to take a break from the oppressive heat of that week!

The movie centered on two main themes, genetic engineering and space travel, which mirrored both the debate in the late 90's on cloning and genetic engineering of humans and the launch of the Cassini-Huygens mission in October of 1997 (which was the release date of the movie!). After the movie, we talked about the scientific background behind genetic engineering and about the fact and fiction behind traveling to Saturn's moon Titan. Highlights of the talk included acknowledging the groundbreaking work done at Columbia, in the Fly Room, where fruit flies were used to understand genetic heredity. We also talked about the genetic engineering used today in making human insulin in bacteria. In regards to space travel, we dispelled the notion of going to Titan and back in one year and had a good discussion about future prospects in space propulsion - pointing to solar sails, ion rockets, and rail guns - a fitting discussion in light of the canceled shuttle program. I also pointed out that this movie is full of science which also includes nods to electric cars, solar energy, and genetic identification.

Two of our graduate students, Jana Grcevic and Christine Simpson, led the telescope viewing from the Low library plaza and Brandon Horn, also a grad student, helped out with movie setup. Thanks to everyone who came to watch, stayed to talk science, and gazed upon the heaven afterwards.