Snapshots of the Kepler Science Conference
The First Kepler Science Conference is occurring this week at NASA Ames. Check out this summary of the conference to learn about the exciting results from the Kepler mission.
The News and Super Earth Kepler-22b
Yesterday, NASA confirmed another new exoplanet from the Kepler mission, Kepler-22b. From some of the headlines, you’d think it was time to pack your bags. The discovery of Kepler-22b is undeniably exciting, but there’s a lot we don’t know about this planet.
Of cosmic telescopes and high-z galaxies
Lensing occurs when the mass of a foreground object distorts and magnifies the light from a background galaxy or quasar, sometimes even creating multiple images. It probably isn’t a stretch to say that the neatest thing about lensing is that you can typically see two to four images of the same galaxy. But something else that’s cool is that these distant background objects are magnified, making it possible to study them in detail when otherwise they might not be seen at all: in this way, gravitational lenses act as natural cosmic telescopes.
Astrology Beliefs among Undergraduates
In an effort to quantify the common misconceptions about the relationship between astronomy and astrology, the authors of this study surveyed nearly 10,000 undergraduates at the University of Arizona over a 20-year period. Here’s what they found.
Simulating the Milky Way’s stellar halo
The Milky Way’s stellar halo – a roughly spherical distribution of stars surrounding our spiral galaxy – is a valuable tool for probing the early evolution of our galaxy. The stellar halo contains some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, whose properties reflect that of the environment in which they formed. This paper focuses on using cosmological simulations of galaxy formation to match the observed structure and kinematics (how the stars move) of stars in Milky Way’s halo.
Links: Astro Perception Survey, Applying to Grad School
A new survey investigates social perceptions of astronomy and our sister site Chembites has an article about the grad school application process.