Comments on: i wear my sunglasses at night

By: The Milky Way from Outside

The Milky Way from Outside — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:19:41 +0000

[...] forget the conditions under which great images get made. A few years back, in one of the earliest posts on his systemic site, Greg Laughlin (UC-Santa Cruz) showed the image you see below, a famous shot [...]

By: Centauri Dreams » Blog Archive » Star Formation in the Hinterlands

Centauri Dreams » Blog Archive » Star Formation in the Hinterlands — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:52:32 +0000

[...] So what would you see if you were actually viewing M83 from the viewport of an intergalactic spaceship? Greg Laughlin wrote up this question a few years back with regard to the Sombrero Galaxy, M104, noting that if you could somehow place yourself 300,000 light years from it, your human eyes would see a galaxy so dim that it would appear only as a faint, glowing patch. For that matter, try to see M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, subtending an angle larger than the full Moon in the sky, and you’ll see precisely nothing there. Laughlin describes this key fact: The storms from earlier this week have blown through. The sky sparkles with brilliant clarity. Yet when I step outside and look up, I canâ€™t see the Andromeda Galaxy at all. Itâ€™s too faint. In a 1:10,000,000,000,000 scale model of M31, the stars are like fine grains of sand separated by miles. Our Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Sombrero Galaxy are all essentially just empty space. To zeroth, to first, to second approximation, a galaxy is nothing at all. [...]

By: systemic - Armchair Planet Hunting

systemic - Armchair Planet Hunting — Thu, 31 May 2007 04:59:25 +0000

[...] There are several ways that you can use and participate in systemic. Our project home page is a weblog (updated fairly frequently) that gives an insider’s perspective on the latest developments and discoveries in the fast-moving fields of extrasolar planets and solar-system exploration. We write for a target audience of non-astronomers who are interested in astronomy. To get a flavor for the blog, keep reading the posts below, or have a look at a few of our past articles, such as our take on last Summer’s big “is Pluto a planet debate”, our exploration of what planets and galaxies really look like, or our series [1, 2, 3, 4] on the feasibility of detecting habitable terrestrial planets in the Alpha Centauri System. [...]

By: systemic - Lonely Planet Guide to the Hyades

systemic - Lonely Planet Guide to the Hyades — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 07:23:00 +0000

[...] For more information, this series: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, 6, and 7. of oklo posts that compare and contrast the gravitational instability and core accretion theories for giant planet formation. [...]

By: Centauri Dreams » Blog Archive » Unveiling the Large Magellanic Cloud

Centauri Dreams » Blog Archive » Unveiling the Large Magellanic Cloud — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:37:20 +0000

[...] Centauri Dreams‘ note: Speaking of celestial views, as we have recently in these pages, I used to marvel at what an optical view of our Milky Way must be like from the LMC (although further study shows it might not be as spectacular as I had once imagined). Galaxies are, in fact, rather hard to see, as planet-hunter Greg Laughlin (UC-Santa Cruz) once pointed out: Indeed, the great Andromeda Galaxy, M31, subtends an angle larger than the full Moon in the sky, and it is literally almost directly overhead right now (9:36 PM, Dec 3, latitude 36.97 deg N). The storms from earlier this week have blown through. The sky sparkles with brilliant clarity. Yet when I step outside and look up, I canâ€™t see the Andromeda Galaxy at all. Itâ€™s too faint. In a 1:10,000,000,000,000 scale model of M31, the stars are like fine grains of sand separated by miles. Our Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Sombrero Galaxy are all essentially just empty space. To zeroth, to first, to second approximation, a galaxy is nothing at all. [...]

By: systemic - Shallow Water

systemic - Shallow Water — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:58:14 +0000

[...] I like the Winn-Holman hypothesis because it’s potentially testable. If the planet is in Cassini state 2, then the pattern of illumination on the surface, and hence the time-dependant global infrared signature, will be very different than if it is locked into the standard upright configuration. In the standard scenario, a hot Jupiter has a fixed substellar point on its equator that does not wander significantly as the planet executes its orbit. One hemisphere of the planet is in perpetual day, while the other hemisphere experiences an endless night. Hydrodynamic calculations by James Cho and his collaborators (link), and by Adam Showman and his students (link), suggest that hot Jupiters should have a single strong equatorial jet that advects heat from the hot dayside to the cool night side. The oklo splash image has been adapted from Cho’s calculations, and shows this jet in action (see this post for more discussion). [...]

By: systemic - G.I. No

systemic - G.I. No — Tue, 02 May 2006 02:31:08 +0000

[...] To be fair, there are also some thorny problems associated with core-accretion. In the next few posts of the giant planet formation series [1, 2, 3, 4 and 5] that we’ve been running, I’ll describe these in more detail. [...]

By: systemic - Oligarchic Growth

systemic - Oligarchic Growth — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 07:34:55 +0000

[...] [A continuation of posts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on the formation of Jovian planets.] [...]

By: systemic - Agglomeration

systemic - Agglomeration — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 06:25:42 +0000

[...] [A continuation of posts 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the formation of Jovian planets.] [...]