Ok, show of hands. Who here can say that the first thing that enters their mind upon hearing the sentence “Oh be a fine girl; kiss me” is the classification of stars based on spectral lines?
What? Only me?
ArchivePage 2 of 5
How about how I have more friends at my roommates’ churches than I do at the church I’ve been attending for 2 1/2 years? Weird.
You may know this already, but I am an astronomer. Well, more accurately, I am a graduate student studying astronomy. Anyway, I am now officially published. I’m proud to say that that paper appeared in the April 1st edition of the Astrophysical Journal. My first paper, on April Fool’s day — an auspicious beginning.
Here’s how bad I am at posting on my blog: we have submitted another paper to the Journal since then.
Both these papers concern quadruple quasars. They’re not actual groupings of quasars in the sky; each is a single quasar whose light is bent by the gravitational field of a foreground galaxy in its line of sight. This lensing effect causes the four images. These two papers report that the ratios of the brightnesses of the four images are different at optical wavelengths than in X-rays, which signifies that there’s something complicated going on. We draw some conclusions about dark matter and the structure of quasars. It’s fun stuff. You should check out the papers; if nothing else, they have some pretty cool pictures.
No, I didn’t go anywhere, but I sure did quit posting for a while. Maybe now there’s enough backlog of events to give me material to post on for a while. No promises though. I hope I haven’t completely driven away all my fans by my long silence. (That’s what RSS feeds are for, folks!)
You might have noticed the new picture up on top. I took that a while ago from a construction site in the North End. Here’s the full image.
I kind of like the contrast between the desolate foreground and the bustling city lights. Of course, when I take cool pictures, it is totally not on purpose. :)
In other news, I upgraded the software, so things look a little nicer, etc. Peace out!
Too bad I’m not Texan. If I was, I sure would vote Kinky Friedman for Governor 2006.
“Thankee!”
“You’re welcome, Kinky.”