Just a reminder that we have two events this weekend: our usual Saturday public night at 830pm, plus our Mars Science Laboratory landing party on Sunday at 10pm. Both events are free, with free parking nearby at the Alumni/Thompson lot.
All posts by Pauline Barmby
Summer conference round-up
In an earlier post I mentioned the conferences that I was attending this summer: 3 of them in the space of about 7 weeks, which is a little crazy. I’m now back from the last of them so it’s time to update you on what happened. One thing I learned, that I should have known earlier, is that four and a half hours is not a long-enough red-eye flight on which to get a reasonable amount of sleep!
At CASCA 2012 I went to quite a few talks, although unfortuately I missed a number of talks given by Western grad students. Many talks were excellent: in particular I found the Qilak Award (for contributions to education and public outreach) lecture by John Percy to be so full of good advice that I tweeted most of it. I also picked up some interesting gossip, such as the fact that the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope was closed for over two months after its dome shutter failed, and talked to some colleagues about a number of things, including science. And we went to the Rothney Observatory just outside of Calgary, from which we completely failed to see any of the Venus transit. (It’s not the conference organizers’ fault that it was cloudy.)
The Great Andromeda Galaxy meeting was much more science-focused for me. Most of the talks were longer and there were plenty of reports from various big projects. This was also a “centennial meeting” celebrating the life and career of the late Martin Schwarzschild, so there were some historical talks as well. Someone pointed out on Twitter that it was interesting to watch the change between the Apple standard background image of M31 (which, interstingly, is missing one of M31’s satellite galaxies) and whichever picture of the galaxy was contained in the talk. The most popular one seemed to be the GALEX ultraviolet image. The meeting ended with a talk by David Spergel where he both summarized the meeting and told us a little about the “gift” of two unused space telescopes to NASA. He couldn’t give full details since some of us in the room were foreigners. Really. Ask me about ITAR if you don’t believe this.
The Gemini Science and Users’ meeting just finished last Friday. This one featured a number of invited talks on a number of topics from exoplanets to high-redshift galaxies. I think these were uniformly excellent, which pleased me since I was in charge of the committee picking the speakers! This meeting also featured updates on a number of the Gemini instruments, including the upcoming FLAMINGOS-2 (which has had some problems but is nearly ready to go), Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager, Gemini Planet Imager. Also in the works is a fiber-optic pipeline between the Gemini telescope and the CFHT, so that the ESPaDOnS spectrograph can be fed with light from the larger Gemini-North telescope. The question of what instruments to build next also came up for discussion, and I think it’s fair to say there was some controversy about this, with some people arguing strongly for a very wide wavelength-coverage spectrograph, GIROS, and others wanting a fuller discussion of the options. Gemini also has a new incoming director (who, in this small world of astronomy, happens to be a sometime collaborator of mine) and the consensus is that he’s got quite the opportunity and challenge ahead of him.
Seven Minutes of Terror (at the Cronyn Observatory?)
Early in the morning of August 6 (EDT), the Mars Science Laboratory will attempt a spacecraft landing like nothing that’s ever done before. The video linked below tells you the whole story: it’s pretty crazy!
We’ll have a live feed running at the Cronyn Observatory for the event, so please join your fellow space enthusiasts (and insomniacs) to see whether they can pull this off.
Planet-forming disk disappears?
Most events in astronomy don’t happen on human timescales. But this star seems to have had its disk disappear in the last couple of years! For more: http://gemini.edu/node/11836
Strong evidence for the Higgs boson
Big scary asteroid
Asteroid 2012 LZ1 was discovered only two weeks ago, made its closest approach 10 days ago, and is really, really dark. That means it’s bigger than a simple estimate would suggest — about 1km in size. Bad news if its hits Earth, but it’s not due back for about 41 more years.
SpaceRef has the story.
Who is a scientist?
A couple of days ago, the twitterverse was abuzz with discussion of a video which is supposed to promote girls’ interest in science by implying that science is not incompatible with wearing high heels and lipstick. Astrophysicist blogger Peter Coles calls it “patronising drivel“. For more, have a look at #itsagirlthing and #realwomeninscience.
The women-in-science business is, of course, important, and it’s what I was originally going to write about. But it’s also been done to death and I don’t have much new to add. So instead I want to discuss “who is a scientist” in a more general way.
Let’s assume that whether a person can be a scientist does not depend on whether they have a Y chromosome, or wear lipstick, or have messy white hair. Are there other characteristics that mean a person is well-suited to be a scientist? This is something that I think about every so often, since I have to evaulate potential graduate students; it also comes up when I talk to school-age kids about being a scientist.
Of course the inter-tubes can tell us the answer: here is one list of “character traits and attitudes of a scientist”. Another extensive list is here (this is a chapter in a larger book which looks like it might be interesting summer reading), and Mike Brotherton — SF writer and astronomy prof — has a more concise list here. (Check out his fiction too!)
Brotherton’s list of “raw brain power”, “stick-to-it-iveness”, “communications skills”, “curiosity”, “attention to detail” covers most of what I think is important. Let’s look at some of the items in more detail to see what they don’t say.
Smarts: as he says, I think you need some base level of smartness to be a successful scientist. You have to be able to follow a logical argument relatively quickly, to think through the implications of things, and you need a decent working memory to be able to keep track of what you’re doing. But from my experience and contrary to popular belief, most scientists are not geniuses. I sometimes wonder if the “portraits of famous scientists” you find in textbooks can discourage people from going into science because they think they’re not brilliant enough.
Communications skills: while scientists know that you need these to be a succesful scientist, we obviously need to, er, communicate this better. We haven’t been able to break the stereotype that a scientist works alone in the lab and communicates only through scribbled equations, or that there are “math people” and “language people” with only the former suited to be scientists. Some of this is rooted in pop-psychology “left brain versus right brain” ideas — my limited understanding is that the real brain is a lot more complicated, and that you really need both halves to be good at anything, including science.
Curiosity: this is the big motivator for most scientists. Why else would you be in this job, if it wasn’t for the interest in finding out how the world works? You’re probably not going to get rich or famous, but most of us don’t think that’s a bad thing. When astrophysicist Sidney van den Bergh was recently inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, which we got to watch from the recent CASCA meeting, he mentioned in his speech that one of the joys of our field is that you get to work with people who aren’t in it for the money. And while a few scientists are famous, most are not. Again, I wonder about the textbook thing here: is it clear enough to potential scientists that you don’t have to be a superstar — or want to be one — to be a scientist?
Aside from these traits and the others Brotherton discusses, is there a “scientist personality”? I don’t think so. In my colleagues in astrophysics, I know people who are extremely gentle and mild-mannered, and people who are extremely brash and assertive; people who are the life of the party and people who are most comfortable in a small group. Scientists are people, just like anybody else; we are merely fortunate enough to be able to work at something we love. I hope we can get beyond worrying about appearances and promote the message that if you are a human being, then you too are a potential scientist.
Early results from the ALMA telescope
Experience a #Saturn Moment at #Cronyn Observatory #ldnont
Dr. Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomy blogger) writes how his first experience of viewing Saturn through a small telescope blew his mind and turned him into a scientist. Even for a professional astronomer, Saturn in a small telescope is spectacular. We saw Saturn and four of its moons last Saturday at Cronyn Observatory. I went back to look at it several times between 9:20 and 11:15pm. As the sky got darker, more moons became visible. Come see it with your own eyes one Saturday this summer!
Scientific conferences
In a previous post, I promised a discussion about observing proposals, but Tyler beat me to it. So instead I want to shed some light on another aspect of the scientific life: the conference. I was thinking back on this, and amusingly, the first scientific conference I ever went to was the 1993 meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA), which was held right here at Western. I certainly never suspected then that I would end up back here as a prof.
There are different types of scientific conferences with different purposes. Scientific societies tend to have regularly-scheduled (N times per year, where 1/3<N<2) meetings. These provide opportunities for everyone in the field to get together: besides talks about science, they also often feature award presentations, trade shows, job interviews and meetings needed to run the society. We hosted the 2011 CASCA meeting here in London and have all mostly recovered from the experience. This type of meeting is often characterized as being more about networking than about science, though it can provide a good introduction to the field for new trainees.
Another type of meeting is the smaller meeting focused on a particular topic. These meetings often have limited attendance and (at least in astronomy) are more likely to be on university campuses than at big conference centres. In this kind of meeting, the science talks and posters are the main focus. Networking also happens, of course, and can be more productive because all of the attendees have common interests.
I am going to 3 meetings this summer, which is more than usual. Meeting number 1 is the CASCA meeting in Calgary which will feature an outing for the June 5 transit of Venus. Meeting number 2 is The Great Andromeda Galaxy, a specialized workshop on my favorite galaxy. And meeting #3 is the 2012 Gemini Science meeting, for which I somehow ended up being chair of the Science Organizing committee. I also wanted to go to a meeting called “Astronomy’s Discoveries and Physics Education”but it’s at the same time as meeting #2 above. Can’t be everywhere.
When I tell my non-scientist friends that I am going to a conference, they often ask “Are you going with anyone else from Western?” and “Will you have time to do any sight-seeing?” I try to explain that the purpose of going to a conference is not exactly to have a holiday with your friends. It really is all about meeting new colleagues (or old ones that you don’t see regularly) and talking science. Conferences can be intense and exhausting, particularly for introverts who find all the social interaction to be a bit much. But, in the best cases, conferences leave one energized and ready to go back home to work on all kinds of new ideas.
OK, I lied: sometimes conferences are related to holidays. My spouse is attending the 2012 annual meeting of the ISMRM and I am going along to Melbourne, Australia. Expect reports from the southern hemisphere next month.