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The work journal of Peter Williams, updated sporadically. Some posts are for my reference only and won't make sense, not even to other astronomers.Tags
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- Qualified! about 2 hours ago from web
- (Diffusive shock acceleration of cosmic rays, Blandford-Znajek extraction of energy from black holes, relativistic synchrotron jets) 01:50:32 AM September 08, 2010 from web
- Just realized that Roger Blandford is personally responsible for about half of the key theories relating to my thesis 01:49:03 AM September 08, 2010 from web
- See, this is the sort of reason I get all worked up about intellectual property law: hot tub patent abuse! http://ur1.ca/1iz04 (via @tieguy) 02:00:09 AM September 07, 2010 from web
- Ah, right, THAT'S why it was so easy to park on campus this morning. 04:25:21 PM September 06, 2010 from web
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Reference: PostScript to PNG Conversion
I’ve usually used the ImageMagick program “convert” to get a bitmap out of PostScript files, but it can be hard to drive and the useful documentation is hidden among hundreds of commandline options to apply weird visual effects. The latex2html … Continue reading
Study Break
Posted without explicit comment.
Study Break
Here’s a neat image that I made of the Cygnus OB-2 region, centered on Cygus X-3, from a bunch of ATA data:
Qual: Study Plan
Here’s a quick post on my study plan for the next month. Here’s my breakdown of the topics I need to spend time on: “Astronomy 201″ radiative transfer topics (esp. synchrotron, free-free, etc.) Allot about three days. Radio (astro)physics, thinking … Continue reading
Qual: Graduation Timeline
What’s the plan between now and graduation? Here’s the simple view: Fall 2010: Cygnus X-3 paper Spring 2011: work on AGCTS fast-bright transient search; some kind of publication on my software efforts Fall 2011: have AGCTS FBTS submitted; job applications; … Continue reading
Qual Reference: Transient Rate Measurements
There are many measurements of radio transient rates out there in the literature. Unfortunately, there are many different ways to quantify transient rates and they tend to be very hard to intercompare. In lieu of trying to standardize everything, I’ll … Continue reading
Qual: Previous Work
(Deadline blown, quasi-intentionally; some work on the Cyg X-3 lightcurve project has become higher-priority as we’ve realized that the summer is coming to an end …) What have I been doing for the past four years, anyway? The usual approach … Continue reading
Don Backer, 1943 – 2010
On Sunday I received some terrible news: that Don Backer, a professor in the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department, had collapsed outside his home and died, probably due to a heart attack. Compared to many of the old hands in the … Continue reading
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Qual Reference: Radio Transient Surveys
I’ve already tabulated a bunch of surveys in the scientific merit post, but here I’ll add some extra information on a few of the key ones. I’ve attempted to compute quantities as uniformly as possible, but this can be pretty … Continue reading
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Qual: Feasibility Conclusions
Based on the legwork I’ve done, what arguments can we make about the feasibility of my thesis and how should I modify my plans to make them more realistic? Emphasize gamma rays in Cyg X-3 work Even though I keep … Continue reading
Qual: Feasibility Legwork
(Second deadline: also blown, but no slippage relative to the previous one.) Can I reasonably expect to accomplish what I’m setting out to accomplish? This post will present some of the quantitative legwork needed to answer that question. Cyg X-3 … Continue reading
Figure of the Day: The Nature of Computing Power Increases
Far too few people in the community seem to be ready to act upon what this figure is telling us: Taken from Barsdell et. al on arxiv.
Qual: Scientific Merit
(First deadline: blown. I ended up taking on a few more topics in this post than I originally envisioned.) For my thesis, I’m observing the dynamic radio sky. The centerpiece project is a search for radio transients towards the Galactic … Continue reading
Public Talk, July 14
I’m giving another rendition of my radio astronomy talk, to the Sonoma County Astronomical Society, on Wednesday, July 14th, at 7:30 PM. The talk will take place at the Proctor Terrace School in Santa Rosa. The abstract is once again … Continue reading
Qual Planning: Timeline
[P]lans are useless, but planning is indispensible. — Dwight Eisenhower My qualifying exam is coming up, and I’ve started thinking about how I’m going to prepare for it. This post will develop a rough timeline for my preparations up until … Continue reading
Too Many Scientists, Revisited
I thought I’d flag that the article about the oversupply of US PhDs that appeared in Scientific American in April and that I discussed has resurfaced in expanded form (same author, Beryl Lieff Benderly) in the Miller-McCune online magazine. The … Continue reading
“Read past end of mask file” Notes
More boring reference material! This time, certain ATA datasets are rejected by MIRIAD with a “Read past end of mask file” error. These datasets are almost entirely good, and fixable, so it’s a shame to discard them. Example. See /ataarchive/2010/03/11/gcs/d1cb41d2/s000 … Continue reading
Scintillation Notes
I gave myself a crash course on interstellar scintillation (ISS) today. (Sounds fancier than “twinkling”.) For posterity, here are some quick notes of the key results I found. First of all, scintillation is twinkling. For my work, it’s in the … Continue reading
“Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?”
Hot on the heels of Nature’s Astro2010 Decadal Review mini-panel not discussing career issues, I was pointed to an article in Scientific American that does just that: “Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?” by Beryl Lieff Benderly. The article’s … Continue reading
Decadal Review Tea-Leaf-Reading
I was a little surprised to find out from Casey Law that Nature recently ran a news piece about the astronomy Decadal Review process — and they didn’t just report on it, they actually got a group of prominent astronomers … Continue reading