COSMOS Remix

There is a mini-series called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey which begins Sunday (9/8c on Fox, 10/9c on National Geographic).  If you're not familiar, this is redoing an incredibly successful 1980 mini-series by Carl Sagan.  The science, and the graphics have changed a lot since then.  This appears to be a big, expensive, flashy, production (Seth McFarlane is the executive producer).  Every question on the final will be from the mini-series.  That's not really true, but I really want you to watch it.

Lots of New Planets

The NASA Kepler mission just tripled the number of confirmed Kepler planets with an announcement this morning.  715 new planets!!

Michelson's Famous Experiment in the San Gabriel Mountains

KCET has a nice article about Michelson's clever experiment to measure the speed of light.  The experiments happened nearly 90 years ago by sending a beam of light from Mt. Wilson to Mt. Baldy and reflecting it back.  More info here.

Type Ia Supernova in M82

M82, a very close by "starburst" galaxy, just had a Type Ia supernova go off a few days ago.  This is the closest Type Ia in a long time.

http://www.universetoday.com/108386/bright-new-supernova-blows-up-in-nearby-m82-the-cigar-galaxy/

Your Blogs

Here is a list of your fellow student's blogs:

Gerardo Alvarez
Javier Fajardo
Melina Fuentes
Te-En Lee
Vincent Luong
Salvador Martinez
Jacob McNevin
Hieu Nguyen
Oscar Osario
Ziqi Pi
Ethan Roeder
John Stephens

Interactive Scale of the Universe

Here's a nice interactive graphic attempting to help you visualize the massive range of scales of the universe.  As you zoom in and out, the scale is on the bottom, right (as an exponential).  There are a few inaccuracies (the galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field were NOT 12.7 billion light years away 12.7 billion years ago).  But the graphics are really nice.  Zoom out!  Our class deals with everything > 10^7 meters across. 

Prof.'s Research in the News

Here is the press release from the Space Telescope Science Institute (the place that runs the Hubble Space Telescope).