The Top 12 of 2012
What were astronomers reading and talking about in their research last year? Check out figures from the top 12 most-cited astronomy papers from 2012 (so far) and find out what researchers were up to and why!
Exploding diamonds in the sky
Pakmor et al. propose a new mechanism to make Type 1a supernova explosions from a pair of white dwarfs.
The strength of weak lensing
The Canada-France Hawaii Telescope weak gravitational lensing survey (CFHTLens), recently released new results to help constrain our cosmological models. While still in its early stages, weak lensing will ultimately be a powerful tool to discover the nature of the mysterious dark energy.
WMAP’s Closing Comments: ΛCDM Stands Strong
The final results from the WMAP satellite show agreement with the standard model of cosmology to unprecedented precision.
Gravitational Lensing in the Canary Islands
I recently attended a two-week crash course in the “Astrophysical Applications of Gravitational Lensing”. In this post, I overview a few of the ways astronomers employ lensing to study the Universe, from extrasolar planets to distant quasars and large-scale structure.
Probing Dark Energy With WFIRST and Euclid
Two upcoming space telescope missions, WFIRST and Euclid, will be able to shed light on the nature of the mysterious dark energy.