Monthly Archives: June 2008

Alpha Centauri

Posted on June 27, 2008 by Invader Xan

Surely any astronomer has spent at least some time wondering about Alpha Centauri. Being a tantalisingly close 4.37 light years from us, it really is our next door neighbour. The third brightest star in the sky (excluding the Sun), visible … Continue reading →

Posted in Imported from Livejournal | Tagged alpha centauri, astrophysics, celestial mechanics, stars | 1 Comment

Yellow Hypergiants

Posted on June 25, 2008 by Invader Xan

Yellow hypergiant stars are pretty amazing. They’re one of the rarest types of star in the known universe, with only a handful being known in the entire Milky Way. Classified in spectral class K up to late A, these celestial … Continue reading →

Posted in Imported from Livejournal | Tagged stars | 4 Comments

Sun Kwok

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Invader Xan

We have a visitor! Tomorrow afternoon, our group sees a visit from Hong Kong University’s Professor Sun Kwok. One of the world’s leading authorities on the late stages of stellar evolution, his Interacting Stellar Winds model is the standard theory … Continue reading →

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PRINT *,’Meh’

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Invader Xan

fmt: end of file apparent state: unit 1 named fort.1 last format: (A5) lately reading sequential formatted external IO Aborted

Posted in Imported from Livejournal | Tagged computing | Comments Off

Celestial Classification

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Invader Xan

Ok, so long story short, I think the IAU are just getting ridiculous with this planet classification thing. It got tiresome some time ago. Now it’s beginning to irritate me. What’s so bad about Pluto being a dwarf planet anyway? … Continue reading →

Posted in Imported from Livejournal | Tagged planets, stars | 2 Comments

The Martian Desert

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Invader Xan

Mars is creepy, isn’t it? The whole planet is essentially a dry butterscotch coloured desert of dunes, boulders and craters. Ice caps of water and carbon dioxide fade with the seasons, huge volcanoes loom in the southern hemisphere large enough … Continue reading →

Posted in Imported from Livejournal | Tagged mars, planets | 3 Comments

The Catacombs

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Invader Xan

Suspicions confirmed. Underneath the science library on campus is a huge great room filled with all sorts of journals, theses and dissertations from years gone by. I had to venture into this place looking for an old copy of J. … Continue reading →

Posted in Imported from Livejournal | 7 Comments

IRAF!

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Invader Xan

My laptop officially has a working copy of IRAF! Ok, so it isn’t pretty, or particularly easy to use, but it’s pretty much essential for looking at stellar spectra. So now I can do data reduction and analysis from the … Continue reading →