Last month I attended my first conference as a graduate student — I went to Extreme Solar Systems II (joined by my fellow Astrobites authors Courtney, Ellie, Lauren, and Sukrit). I learned a lot about what to do (and what not to do!) from my experiences during the conference.
Water absorption in the atmosphere can be a big problem for Near-IR observations. This paper shows how to measure and correct for atmospheric water vapor using GPS satellites.
The Magnetism in Massive Stars (MiMeS) project is a statistical survey to answer the big questions related to magnetism in hot, massive stars. So far they have observed 166 stars, 14 of which host strong, ordered magnetic fields.
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is one of the most commonly used techniques for simulating astrophysical fluids. This particular paper focuses on a regime of gas dynamics that is often neglected in astronomy: subsonic turbulence. Just as the air in the upper atmosphere exhibits random motions that can buffet an airplane cabin, the gas in interstellar space also exhibits random, turbulent motions.
Messier 87 (M87) is a giant elliptical galaxy that is best known for its spectacular, 5000-ly-long jet. In this paper, the authors develop models of M87 based on general relativistic numerical simulations and make predictions for the future direct observations of the black hole event horizon that may be possible.