Africa’s astronomical debut has come at an opportune time, as a multitude of facilities and projects have taken root across the continent in the service of astronomical questing.
Astronomy encompasses the fields of Planetary Science (including Earth as a planet), Heliophysics, Astrophysics, Astrochemistry, Astrobiology, Cosmology, and Cosmogony – the study of cosmic origins. Astronomy, in turn, is informed by the core sciences of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. It both depends upon and helps to advance technological innovation...
Each year, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) hosts two big meetings in January and June that span all of astronomy and its subfields of cosmology, helioastronomy, and planetary science. The COVID-19 pandemic took its toll, beginning in June 2020, when the meeting format pivoted to online presentations. The January 2022 meeting was canceled outright, but by June 2022, the society pivoted again, offering a hybrid mix of in-person and online formats. These two meetings underscored the unquenchable thirst for astronomical questing among our veteran and rising scientists. Here are a few highlights from these meetings.
Fast Radio Bursts are flashes of radio emission lasting for several milliseconds. The time of arrival of signals depends on the radio frequency, called the dispersion measure (DM), which depends on the environment through which the signals travel, specifically the number of free electrons in their path. Very few FRBs have matches with sources observed at other wavelengths (Wikipedia - Fast Radio Burst).
This edition combines fun and science as only Dr. Waller can do, as we take a colorful look at what's going on in supposedly empty space between the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
This January, the American Astronomical Society held its big annual meeting completely online. The Covid-19 pandemic ruled out the society’s planned gathering in Scottsdale, AZ but the AAS pivoted by opening-up digital access to thousands of astronomers across the United States and around the world. More than 3,000 registrants were listed in the online portal, thus demonstrating that the vital communication of astronomical research, education, and public outreach could carry on in this alternative format.
More than fifty years ago, Apollo 15 photographed something unusual on the far side of the Moon. In a panoramic photograph taken from lunar orbit, two bright, sharply defined objects stood out from the otherwise subdued landscape on the floor of a crater called Paracelsus C.
Today we can take a much closer look.
By now, you have probably read or heard that our polluting ways have reached a critical point, where Earth is rapidly approaching total failure as a planet. Perhaps you have wondered how we humans could have managed to do so much damage in so little time.
In this essay, I argue in support of teaching the Earth & space sciences together, so that students can attain a more holistic understanding of their planetary environment, how it came to be, and where it is headed. Such teaching (and teachers) should receive the same priority as in the teaching of physics, chemistry, and biology.
If you have never heard of the Herschels, then you are missing out on the most important astronomers of the 18 th and 19 th Century. William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus,
together with his able and dedicated sister Caroline and his erudite son John revealed the Milky Way and its diverse contents as never before.
