No cuts whatever. Lots of spoilers. Be warned ( Read more... )

I have not dropped off the face of the earth. It is 2AM and I have pre-thesis-defense insomnia. For the second night in a row. Ugh. Dissertation is 228 pages long so far with a crapton of figures and tables, with a few days of work remaining after I get some sleep. It's hard to believe this is really happening.

If my friends haven't heard from me recently, it's because I've been a little busy. I got an opportunity to be a part-time instructor at a local community college this fall. Their astro instructor is on sabbatical this year, and they needed 3 of us to fill in part-time for him. I had applied to be a summer lecture instructor, hadn't gotten the job ( Read more... )

There's a website where people "publish" preprints of their papers (usually once they're officially accepted). The actual process from acceptance through typesetting, printing, and mailing can take up to 2 months, so this is a way to get your results out there faster. Most people upload the long "double-spaced" version of their papers, so for the ( Read more... )

I am putting together a "new" 15-gallon kindly given to me by mortaine. I am trying a new "Nature Aquarium" style being introduced by the Japanese. It's like Zen rock gardening combined with expert landscaping, all underwater.


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My comet paper has officially been accepted. Now I wait to get the proofs in the mail.

...about getting access to the circular mentioned in the referee's report to my paper about the strange comet. And within an hour they e-mailed me a copy, free of charge. I guess if you've stumbled upon important results in the field, and you're polite, it pays to be bold and people will be nice to you.

It's 5:30 AM at the telescope. The last comet I just looked at is BIZARRE. It doesn't have the most common molecule seen in comets. It has LOTS of a rarer molecule, and it has a ton of stuff that I have no idea what it is. I did a search. There are no other spectra of it from other scientists. I am sure it is a comet because it has a coma, it was ( Read more... )

Dear Dogbert ( Read more... )

Wow. Haven't posted in a while. It's 2:45 AM and I'm at the telescope, having a good science night. I'm looking at distant comets (beyond 2 AU from the sun). I pulled up a sky chart of where my latest comet is supposed to be (the comet will be the object that ISN'T on the chart, because it moves), and I saw a pair of gravitationally-interacting ( Read more... )