FP TrendingJul 12, 2021 09:37:08 IST

A special week is ahead for sky gazers and astronomy enthusiasts as two of Earths immediate neighbours - Venus and Mars will be coming close to one another in the coming days. This celestial event is being termed as planetary conjunction because it will be easily visible to the naked eye.

Being observable only from Earth, a planetary conjunction occurs when two planets come closest to each other on a specific day even though they remain far away from one another.

Venus, Mars and moon planetary conjunction. Image credit: Abigail Banerji/Tech2

Informing people about the event on social media, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) shared a post revealing details. Mars and Venus are passing close to each other in the sky and will be only 0.5 degrees (as wide as the size of the Moon) on 13 July, a tweet from the official handle reads.

Further in the post, the IIA informed that the moon will also be close to Venus and Mars on 12 July. The institute had asked sky gazers to go out and witness the event every evening from today, 8 July.

This amazing sight will be only visible in the western sky or horizon under clear sky conditions after sunset.

As the meeting of these celestial objects is a big occurrence in the sky, astronomy enthusiasts can commence observing the sky from Thursday (8 July) and continue till Tuesday (13 July). People who continue watching it after the event will also be able to see the departure of these planets. Any ordinary binoculars will show Venus and Mars at their closest.

Meanwhile, the Pune-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and the IIA, located in Bengaluru have invited photograph entries of the event. Candidates who are interested can send their photos or sketches to outreach@iiap.res.in. The best among them will be published by the institutes online.

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Venus, Mars and crescent moon to align in 'planetary conjunction' during 12-13 July - Firstpost

Scientists have suspected that some ULXs might be hidden from view for this reason. SS 433 provided a unique chance to test this idea because, like a top, it wobbles on its axis a process astronomers call precession.

Most of the time, both of SS 433s cones point well away from Earth. But because of the way SS 433 precesses, one cone periodically tilts slightly toward Earth, so scientists can see a little bit of the X-ray light coming out of the top of the cone. In the new study, the scientists looked at how the X-rays seen by NuSTAR change as SS 433 moves. They show that if the cone continued to tilt toward Earth so that scientists could peer straight down it, they would see enough X-ray light to officially call SS 433 a ULX.

Black holes that feed at extreme rates have shaped the history of our universe. Supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, can profoundly affect their host galaxy when they feed. Early in the universes history, some of these massive black holes may have fed as fast as SS 433, releasing huge amounts of radiation that reshaped local environments. Outflows (like the cones in SS 433) redistributed matter that could eventually form stars and other objects.

But because these quickly consuming behemoths reside in incredibly distant galaxies (the one at the heart of the Milky Way isnt currently eating much), they remain difficult to study. With SS 433, scientists have found a miniature example of this process, much closer to home and much easier to study, and NuSTAR has provided new insights into the activity occurring there.

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Stars and Galaxies . Seeing Some Cosmic X-Ray Emitters Might Be a Matter of Perspective - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The worlds largest telescope the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is under construction in Chile. When it captures its first light, sometime in 2027 or 2028, Irish adaptive optics technology will be there to ensure it sees further and with greater clarity than any telescope in human history.

The opportunity for Irish astronomers to take part in the ELT project arose when the government decided to join the European Southern Observatory (ESO) the top intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe in 2018. Membership cost 14.66 million, with an annual fee of 3.5 million.

A team of researchers at NUI Galway, led by Dr Nicholas Devaney, with expertise in adaptive optics are involved in the ELT project as part of a consortium also involving the Grenoble Institute for Planetary Sciences and Astrophysics and the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Italy.

The consortium will design and manage the construction of an instrument on the ELT, called multi-conjugate adaptive optics relay (MAORY), which corrects image distortion due to atmosphere blurring. The NUIG team were invited to join the MAORY project based on their scientific reputation.

The Galway team is responsible for the device we call the test unit that is needed to pass all the performance on this domain here in Europe and then also when we arrive on the mountains in Chile, says Paolo Ciliegi, an astronomer at INAF; the overall principal investigator of MAORY.

They put on the table their expertise in adaptive optics and also the construction of this test unit, Ciliegi adds.

The construction of the ELT at an altitude of some 10,000 feet on top of a mountain called Cerro Amazones has halted due to the Covid situation in Chile. The site is in the Atacama Desert, a high plateau covering an area slightly bigger than Ireland, and made up mostly of stones, salt and sand.

The altitude puts it above the cloud line, so there is very little precipitation, which can distort telescope images of space. That dryness this is the driest desert on the planet outside the poles make it an ideal location for astronomers to view the heavens. Yet the ELT must still peer up and out through about 480km of atmosphere, with the distortion that this brings.

When you feel the bumpiness in an airplane thats the atmospheric turbulence, says Devaney. The turbulent atmosphere, he says, is made up of bubbles of air with differing temperatures. The speed of light through air varies slightly with the temperature of the air through which it travels.

The net effect of this is to reduce the sharpness of images from space that a ground telescope can gather. That introduces distortions in the light which leads to a blurry image instead of a sharper image, he adds.

Adaptive optics technology works hard to overcome such atmospheric distortion. This task is akin to gathering light that has been bent and scattered in water and rebuilding it into its underformed original form. This is the job that the MAORY instrument will be performing for the ELT.

A limitation of adaptive optics technology up to now has been that it relies on a natural constellation of bright stars to sharpen distorted images from an optical telescope viewing a big area of sky, but such constellations are not always available. In order to get over this issue scientists use guide stars.

The ELT is going to generate six artificial laser-generated guide stars which will act like a natural constellation of six bright stars to facilitate adaptive optics to work wherever the ELT is pointing towards in the sky. It has proved a huge challenge over decades to get the lasers up to sufficient power to produce bright enough guide stars to facilitate adaptive optics.

After much research scientists decided to use a sodium wavelength for producing guide stars. This is because there is a natural layer of charged sodium ions in the Earths atmosphere at an altitude of 90km, which can be excited and energized by a laser so that it looks just like a natural star.

This is perfect for astronomers, says Devaney. Its like the ions were put out there specifically for that purpose. It means that it is possible to make constellations of artificial guide stars using the six lasers on the ELT.

An optical telescope works by gathering light through mirrors. The bigger its mirrors the more light the telescope can gather and the farther it can see. The main mirror of the ELT will be an enormous 39 metres ( 127.9ft), in diameter. Thats roughly equivalent to 21 men, six feet tall, lying head to toe.

The designers knew that technically it wasnt possible to construct the main mirror as one piece. They also knew that it would be difficult to carry large mirror segments to a mountain top. A decision was therefore made to separately make 798 hexagonal-shaped segments; each 1.5 metres wide weighing 250kg, which, when aligned carefully together, would make up the main ELT mirror.

The mirror segments had to be aligned with nano-metre precision, and that alignment has to be maintained as the telescope moves and tracks objects. There are some 9,000 tiny sensors arranged around each segment so that any kind of motion in one segment with respect to another is accounted for.

There are also actuators that bend the mirrors into optimum shape. The biggest optical telescopes today have three mirrors. The ELT will have five.

In return for Devaneys team working on the adaptive optics on the ELT his astronomer colleagues at NUIG are to be offered ELT observation time. One of those scientists hoping to use the ELT to advance his work is physicist Dr Matt Redman, director of the centre of astronomy at NUIG.

Redman is interested in planetary nebulae. These are badly named celestial objects as they have nothing to do with planets. They looked like planets when viewed by the first telescopes so thats how they got the name. They might better be described as the glowing shell of gas ejected from a dying star.

These nebulae are observed in a variety of shapes including butterfly-shaped, elliptical, spherical, ring-shaped, bi-polar, cylindrical and round.

The big mystery is that the Sun is round, spherical and will turn into one of these objects, and these objects are not round and spherical, says Redman. The most likely idea is a companion star, or even a companion planet, disturbing the material as the dying star throws it off, he explains.

I am hoping the MAORY will be able to get right into the centre of these objects and we might even see that shaping mechanism happening, he adds.

There are some who question the economic and scientific logic of building expensive telescopes on the top of Chilean mountains in order to see through atmospheric distortion when it is possible to put a space telescope, like the Hubble telescope, into orbit up where atmospheric distortion is not a factor.

The justification lies in the cost of getting telescopes into orbit against building them on Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope, which had a primary mirror 2.4metres wide, cost 2.5 billion (today equivalent) to get into orbit and operational. The ELT will cost some 1.3 billion; about half the price.

This point of view holds that although they do different things, ground-based telescopes like ELT give more scientific bang for your buck than space telescopes. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in November, will cost 8.2 billion.

The ELT sees farther, clearer. You are able to collect a lot more, like with a 39-metre mirror, says Devaney. You are able to see further away and see things that are much fainter, such as really faint galaxies. The ELT will be able to see things that are fainter than was possible with the Hubble.

The huge jump in astronomical capability that the ELT will provide is likely to trigger a round of unexpected scientific findings that will change our understanding of the Universe and how it was formed in its earliest days.

Weve seen it before. For example, in 1998 data from the Hubble led scientists to conclude the universe was expanding at an ever accelerating rate. Each time there is a big step forward like this it leads to a huge mushrooming of astronomical activities and discoveries, says Devaney.

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Worlds largest telescope will see better with Irish technology - The Irish Times

The space sector of the worlds economy is growing, the UK is no exception and, indeed, it is UK Government policy that it should grow. Currently, the UK has 5.1% of worldwide economic activity related to space, and the Government has set the goal to grow that to 10% by 2030.

The UK is already involved in the production of nearly half of all small satellites and a quarter of all telecommunications satellites. A 2020 report states that the space sector itself is worth an annual 14.8 billion to the UK economy, with productivity at three times the national average. This does not include the larger contribution from companies that access space data or assets in their daily work.

That is part of the attraction. Though the hardware is launched into space, the money stays on Earth, paying for a wide variety of skilled jobs. Engineers of many types, physicists, mathematicians, programmers, material scientists, telecommunications experts, geographers, earth scientists, oceanographers, data analysts, the list goes on. Once up there, the hardware creates new markets with new users, products and services. There is also the endless positive PR of the scientific exploration of the Moon and planets, via UK involvement in the European Space Agency (ESA) and projects run by the UK Space Agency.

As well as providing support via central facilities at places such as the Harwell Space Cluster, and trade bodies such as UK Space, the UK must do more. One thing it needs is a supply of trained graduates for the space job market. This doesnt just mean astronauts or jobs with ESA, as most jobs are in the UK in industry and applications.

Traditionally, graduates entering these positions have come from the big city red-bricks supporting the aerospace industry, such as Southampton, Birmingham and Strathclyde. Often, however, these courses are more aero than space. There are also other niche providers with courses like Astronomy, Space Science and Astrophyics degrees, which provide broader, physics based qualifications with space specialisms.

If the sector is to grow, more of the mainstream engineering departments must add space to their aero courses, and more niche providers must add space as well, or at the very least, utilise space products and data sets in their courses.

By adding space related or generated activities to their courses, universities will be keeping their degrees up to date, and also sensitise students to the many work opportunities which will only grow over the next decade.

One important step is the growth of undergraduate degrees with a year in industry. Traditionally often the preserve of engineering and business degrees, these are now widely available in many universities and should be offered on every science or engineering degree programme at the very least. Companies themselves offer internships, either during the undergraduate degree or as one-year courses after graduation in the case of ESA.

Finding a job in the space sector may sound daunting, but there is always help. For example, UKSEDS (the organisation of UK space students) runs a careers web page. UK Space also helps students find internships, and there is a service by the UK Space Agency helping students and companies find short term placements.

The next workforce generation wants meaningful employment which improves the world. But how do you monitor the climate? From space. How do you find the carbon and methane emitters? From space. How do you build a new, connected world? From space. From a graduates perspective, the space sector means well-paid jobs in an industry that is making a difference.

Editor's Recommended Articles

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Taught skills needed for the space sector the space sector - Open Access Government

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been offline for nearly a month.

The telescope's payload computer a 1980s machine that controls and monitors all of the spacecraft's science instruments suddenly stopped working on June 13. Engineers have been troubleshooting the problem since then, but with little success.

However, a recent NASA announcement suggests a glimmer of hope: The agency tweeted on Thursday that it had successfully tested a procedure that would switch parts of the telescope's hardware to their back-up components.

This could pave the way for the payload computer to come back online, leading to the restart of Hubble's scientific observations.

NASA reported the procedure could happen as early as next week, following additional preparations and reviews. The telescope and the scientific instruments on board remain in working condition.

But the switch will be "risky," according to NASA astrophysics division director Paul Hertz.

"You can't actually put your hands on and change hardware or take a voltage, so that does make it very challenging," he told New Scientist.

Hubble is the world's most powerful space telescope; it orbits 353 miles above the Earth.

On June 30, NASA announced it had figured out that the source of the payload computer problem was in Hubble's Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit (SI C&DH for short), where the computer resides.

"A few hardware pieces on the SI C&DH could be the culprit(s)," NASA said.

Backup pieces of hardware are pre-installed on the telescope. So it's just a matter of switching over to that redundant hardware. But before attempting the tricky switch from Earth, engineers have to practice in a simulator, the agency added.

NASA has rebooted Hubble using this type of operation in the past. In 2008, after a computer crash took the telescope offline for two weeks, engineers successfully switched over to redundant hardware. A year later, astronauts repaired two broken instruments while in-orbit Hubble's fifth and final reservicing operation. (NASA does not currently have a way to launch astronauts to the space telescope.)

Getting the observatory back online is critical to NASA.

"Hubble is one of NASA's most important astrophysics missions. It's been operating for over 31 years, and NASA is hopeful it will last for many more years," an agency spokesperson told Insider in June.

Hubble, which launched into orbit in 1990, has captured images of the births and deaths of stars, discovered new moons around Pluto, and tracked two interstellar objects as they zipped through our solar system. Hubble's observations have also allowed astronomers to calculate the age and expansion of the universe and to peer at galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang.

Read more from the original source:

NASA will attempt a 'risky' maneuver to fix its broken Hubble Space Telescope as early as next week - Business Insider

astronomical-telescope-Market

Latest research on Global Astronomical Telescope Market report covers forecast and analysis on a worldwide, regional and country level. The study provides historical information of 2016-2021 together with a forecast from 2021 to 2027 supported by both volume and revenue (USD million). The entire study covers the key drivers and restraints for the Astronomical Telescope market. this report included a special section on the Impact of COVID19. Also, Astronomical Telescope Market (By major Key Players, By Types, By Applications, and Leading Regions) Segments outlook, Business assessment, Competition scenario and Trends .The report also gives 360-degree overview of the competitive landscape of the industries.

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Astronomical Telescope Market Consumption Analysis, Business Overview and Upcoming Trends|Celestron, Meade, Vixen Optics, TAKAHASHI, ASTRO-PHYSICS,...

Artistic composition of a supermassive black hole regulating the evolution of its environment. Credit: Gabriel Prez Daz, SMM (IAC) and Dylan Nelson (Illustris-TNG)

At the heart of almost every sufficiently massive galaxy there is a black hole whose gravitational field, although very intense, affects only a small region around the center of the galaxy. Even though these objects are thousands of millions of times smaller than their host galaxies our current view is that the Universe can be understood only if the evolution of galaxies is regulated by the activity of these black holes, because without them the observed properties of the galaxies cannot be explained.

Theoretical predictions suggest that as these black holes grow they generate sufficient energy to heat up and drive out the gas within galaxies to great distances. Observing and describing the mechanism by which this energy interacts with galaxies and modifies their evolution is therefore a basic question in present day Astrophysics.

With this aim in mind, a study led byIgnacio Martn Navarro, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofsica de Canarias (IAC), has gone a step further and has tried to see whether the matter and energy emitted from around these black holes can alter the evolution, not only of the host galaxy, but also of the satellite galaxies around it, at even greater distances. To do this, the team has used theSloan Digital Sky Survey, which allowed them to analyze the properties of the galaxies in thousands of groups and clusters. The conclusions of this study, started during Ignacios stay at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, were published on June 9, 2021, in Naturemagazine.

Surprisingly we found that the satellite galaxies formed more or fewer stars depending on their orientation with respect to the central galaxy, explains Annalisa Pillepich, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA, Germany) and co-author of the article. To try to explain this geometrical effect on the properties of the satellite galaxies the researchers used a cosmological simulation of the Universe called Illustris-TNG whose code contains a specific way of handling the interaction between central black holes and their host galaxies. Just as with the observations, the Illustris-TNG simulation shows a clear modulation of the star formation rate in satellite galaxies depending on their position with respect to the central galaxy, she adds.

This result is doubly important because it gives observational support for the idea that central black holes play an important role in regulating the evolution of galaxies, which is a basic feature of our current understanding of the Universe. Nevertheless, this hypothesis is continually questioned, given the difficulty of measuring the possible effect of the black holes in real galaxies, rather than considering only theoretical implications.

These results suggest, then, that there is a particular coupling between the black holes and their galaxies, by which they can expel matter to great distances from the galactic centers, and can even affect the evolution of other nearby galaxies. So not only can we observe the effects of central black holes on the evolution of galaxies, but our analysis opens the way to understand the details of the interaction, explains Ignacio Martn Navarro, who is the first author of the article.

This work has been possible due to collaboration between two communities: the observers and the theorists which, in the field of extragalactic Astrophysics, are finding that cosmological simulations are a useful tool to understand how the Universe behaves, he concludes.

Reference: Anisotropic satellite galaxy quenching modulated by black hole activity by Ignacio Martn-Navarro, Annalisa Pillepich, Dylan Nelson, Vicente Rodriguez-Gomez, Martina Donnari, Lars Hernquist and Volker Springel, 9 June 2021, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03545-9

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Astrophysicists Surprised by Unexpected Effect of Black Holes Beyond Their Own Galaxies - SciTechDaily

Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation and the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy

Department of Physics

Grade 7:-33,797 per annumFixed Term-Full TimeContract Duration:5 monthContracted Hours per Week:35Closing Date:21-Jun-2021, 6:59:00 AM

The Department of Physics has an opportunity for an early-career researcher to work on the forthcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) and related science. This opportunity is in the area of experimental work on the simulations for and testing of the calibration system of the cameras for the small-sized telescopes (SSTs) of the array plus scientific projects using gamma-ray data, preferably in the areas of fundamental physics and/or dark matter research.

The Department of Physics is committed to building and maintaining a diverse and inclusive environment. It is pledged to the Athena SWAN charter, where we hold a silver award, and has the status of IoP Juno Champion. We embrace equality and particularly welcome applications from women, black and minority ethnic candidates, and members of other groups that are under-represented in physics. Durham University provides a range of benefits including pension, flexible and/or part time working hours, shared parental leave policy and childcare provision.

Responsibilities:

This post is fixed term for 5monthsfrom the start date.

The post-holder is employed to work on research/a research project which will be led by another colleague. Whilst this means that the post-holder will not be carrying out independent research in his/her own right, the expectation is that they will contribute to the advancement of the project, through the development of their own research ideas/adaptation and development of research protocols.

Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post byJune 15th2021.

Essential:

How to Apply

For informal enquiries please contact the astronomy secretaries at astro.secretary@durham.ac.uk. All enquiries will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Candidates should state in their application which areas they wish to be considered for.

We prefer to receive applications online via the Durham University Vacancies Site.https://www.dur.ac.uk/jobs/. As part of the application process, you should provide details of 3 (preferably academic/research) referees and the details of your current line manager so that we may seek an employment reference.

DBS Requirement:Not Applicable.

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Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Physics job with DURHAM UNIVERSITY | 257296 - Times Higher Education (THE)

By Leah Crane

Colossal filaments that collect together clusters of galaxies seem to be rotating

AIP/A. Khalatyan/J Fohlmeister

Some of the largest structures in the universe appear to be rotating. The filaments of galaxies forming the cosmic web that stretches between galaxy clusters seem to be spinning, which could help us figure out why galaxies themselves and everything else in space rotate.

How rotation is generated in space is a long-standing problem in astrophysics. Not only are the galaxies spinning, but also the stars within the galaxies, and the Earth is spinning, and the Earth around the sun and the moon around the Earth. Pretty much the whole universe is spinning, says Noam Libeskind at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany. We dont really know why, and one way to try to answer that is to figure out where the spinning stops.

Previous research has suggested that clusters of galaxies may be the end of the road for spinning, but Libeskind and his colleagues have found that isnt the case. They used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to examine the colossal filaments of galaxies that make up the cosmic web, which stretch across hundreds of millions of light years, and found that they are rotating.

We cannot measure rotation directly on such large scales, so the researchers looked for patterns in the galaxies moving towards or away from Earth. When most of the galaxies on one side of a filament were moving away from us and most on the other were coming towards us, that indicated that the whole filament was rotating. Some of these gigantic strands of galaxies were spinning at nearly 100 kilometres per second.

As the galaxies orbited the centres of their filaments, they also fell towards the galaxy clusters that mark the ends of each strand. These galaxies are moving on these corkscrew-like, helical orbits, says Libeskind. The filaments that ended at more massive clumps of galaxies seemed to rotate faster, but it isnt yet clear why. More work will be required to answer that question, as well as the question of how the filaments rotation affects the spins of the galaxies themselves.

Journal reference: Nature Astronomy, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01380-6

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Enormous strands of galaxies in the cosmic web appear to be spinning - New Scientist News

This article was originally published atThe Conversation.The publication contributed the article to Space.com'sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Lisa Kewley, Director, ARC Centre for Excellence in All-Sky Astrophysics in 3D, Australian National University

It will take until at least 2080 before women make up just one-third of Australia's professional astronomers unless there is a significant boost to how we nurture female researchers' careers.

Over the past decade, astronomy has been rightly recognized as leading the push towards gender equity in the sciences. But my new modeling,published in Nature Astronomy, shows it is not working fast enough.

Related: 20 trailblazing women in astronomy and astrophysics

TheAustralian Academy of Science's decadal planfor astronomy in Australia proposes women should comprise one-third of the senior workforce by 2025.

It's a worthy, if modest, target. However, with new data from the academy's Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) program, I have modeled the effects of current hiring rates and practices and arrived at a depressing, if perhaps not surprising, conclusion. Without a change to the current mechanisms, it will take at least 60 years to reach that 30% level.

However, the modeling also suggests that the introduction of ambitious, affirmative hiring programs aimed at recruiting and retaining talented women astronomers could see the target reached in just over a decade and then growing to 50% in a quarter of a century.

Before looking at how that might be done, it's worth examining how the gender imbalance in physics arose in the first place. To put it bluntly: how did we get to a situation in which 40% of astronomy PhDs are awarded to women, yet they occupyfewer than 20% of senior positions?

On a broad level, the answer is simple: my analysis shows women depart astronomy at two to three times the rate of men. In Australia, from postdoc status to assistant professor level, 62% of women leave the field, compared with just 17% of men. Between assistant professor and full professor level, 47% of women leave; the male departure rate is about half that. Women's departure rates aresimilar in US astronomy.

Read more:'Death by a thousand cuts': women of color in science face a subtly hostile work environment

The next question is: why?

Many women leave out of sheer disillusionment. Women in physics and astronomy say their careers progress more slowly than those of male colleagues, and that the culture is not welcoming.

They receive fewer career resources and opportunities. Randomized double-blind trials and broad research studies in astronomy and across the sciences show implicit bias in astronomy, which means more men arepublished,cited,invited to speak at conferences, and giventelescopetime.

It's hard to build a solid research-based body of work when one's access to tools and recognition is disproportionately limited.

There is another factor that sometimes contributes to the loss of women astronomers: loyalty. In situations where a woman's male partner is offered a new job in another town or city, the woman more frequentlygives up her work to facilitate the move.

Encouraging universities or research institutes to help partners find suitable work nearby is thus one of the strategies I (and others) have suggested to help recruit women astrophysicists.

But the bigger task at hand requires institutions to identify, tackle and overcome inherent bias a legacy of a conservative academic tradition that,research shows, is weighted towards men.

A key mechanism to achieve this was introduced in 2014 by the Astronomical Society of Australia. It devised a voluntary rating and assessment system known as thePleiades Awards, which rewards institutions for taking concrete actions to advance the careers of women and close the gender gap.

Initiatives include longer-term postdoctoral positions with part-time options, support for returning to astronomy research after career breaks, increasing the fraction of permanent positions relative to fixed-term contracts, offering women-only permanent positions, recruitment of women directly to professorial levels, and mentoring of women for promotion to the highest levels.

Most if not all Australian organizations that employ astronomers have signed up to the Pleiades Awards, and are showing genuine commitment to change.

Seven years on, we would expect to have seen an increase in women recruited to, and retained in, senior positions.

And we are, but the effect is far from uniform. My own organization, the ARC Centre of Excellence in All-Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), is on track for a 50:50 women-to-men ratio working at senior levels by the end of this year.

TheUniversity of Sydney School of Physicshas made nine senior appointments over the past three years, seven of them women.

But these examples are outliers. At many institutions, inequitable hiring ratios and high departure rates persist despite a large pool of women astronomers at postdoc levels and the positive encouragement of the Pleiades Awards.

Using these results and my new workforce models, I have shown current targets of 33% or 50% of women at all levels are unattainable if the status quo remains.

I propose a raft of affirmative measures to increase the presence of women at all senior levels in Australian astronomy and keep them there.

These include creating multiple women-only roles, creating prestigious senior positions for women, and hiring into multiple positions for men and women to avoid perceptions of tokenism. Improved workplace flexibility is crucial to allowing female researchers to develop their careers while balancing other responsibilities.

Read more:Isaac Newton invented calculus in self-isolation during the Great Plague. He didn't have kids to look after

Australia is far from unique when it comes to dealing with gender disparities in astronomy. Broadly similar situations persist in China, the United States and Europe. AnApril 2019 paperoutlined similar discrimination experienced by women astronomers in Europe.

Australia, however, is well placed to play a leading role in correcting the imbalance. With the right action, it wouldn't take long to make our approach to gender equity as world-leading as our research.

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

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Looking at the stars, or falling by the wayside? How astronomy is failing female scientists - Space.com

Later this month, U.S. intelligence agencies are expected to present to Congress a highly anticipated unclassified report detailing what they know about unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

According to unnamed officials reported to have been briefed on its contents, the task forcedid not find evidence that the unexplained aerial phenomena (likened to UFOs) that Navy pilots have witnessed in recent years are alien spacecrafts. But the report does not definitively say they aren't.

One of the last government-commissioned reports on UFOs was conducted right here at CU Boulder and resides in the archives at University Libraries. Edward Condon, a former professor of physics and astrophysics, was given $300,000 to produce a thousand-page report named The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,or the Condon Report, as it became known.

Heather Bowden, head of Rare and Distinctive Collections, has preserved and reviewed the Condon Reportand spoke with CU Boulder Today about what it found.

Head of Rare and Distinctive Collections Heather Bowden

Edward U. Condon (190274), a former professor of physics and astrophysics and fellow of the Joint Institute of Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), was a prominent theoretical physicist who made substantial contributions in academia, industry and government. He had a major impact in the development of scientific fields such as quantum mechanics, nuclear science and electronicsbut was most known for his report on UFOs.

The Condon Report was commissioned by the United States Air Force in the mid-1960s with the aim of producing an unbiased scientific investigation into the possibility that unidentified flying objects may be of extraterrestrial origin. The decision to conduct the study came from a March 1966 report from an ad hoc committee of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board tasked with reviewing this issue.

The collection contains documents, journals, research papers, international newsletters, film reels of suspected sightings and books gathered during Condon's commissioned study.

In the first section, Condon reported, Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to science knowledge, meaning the researchers involved in the project did not find conclusive evidence there have been sightings of UFOs that were crafted by remote galactic or intergalactic civilizations.

The 2021 government-commissioned UFO report came to a similar conclusion, according to unnamed sources cited in articles from The New York Times and CNN, but did not rule out the possibility that alien life exists.

How studying UFOs could lead to new scientific breakthroughs

This month, a Pentagon task force will release a long-awaited report digging into a topic typically relegated to science fiction movies and tabloids: unidentified flying objects. Professor Carol Cleland talks about the report and why scientists should take weird and mysterious observations seriously.

Im always most fascinated by the handwritten materials and scraps of notes that accompany published pieces like the report, because it lends a human element to something that could otherwise be considered clinical and dry.I also think the film reels would be fascinating to watch.

Students can access materials from the collection when Norlin Library reopens this fall by contacting rad@colorado.edu to schedule an appointment in the Rare and Distinctive Collections (RaD) Reading Room. Students can also check out additional UFO-related University Libraries resources online.

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CU the site of one of the last government-commissioned reports on UFOs. What does it say? - CU Boulder Today

After crossing numerous finish lines as a track and field athlete at Saint Bernard, Jack Zachem crossed the final finish line of high school last week when he graduated from the private Catholic school in Montville, bound for Villanova University.

During his five years at the private school his mother's alma mater Zachem spent hours and hours each season with his track and field team, participating in nearly every event the sport had to offer. He also spent hours at the Waterford Speedbowl, where he has helped his family race modified cars since before he could drive himself. He played basketball, served as a school ambassador, helped out at his familys businesses, volunteered at a food pantry and became an Eagle Scout.

And amidst his lengthy list of extracurriculars and athletics, he found time to excel in academics, earning the highest grades in history in this years senior class after taking summer courses on constitutional law and doing an intensive research project on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

With so many interests and activities, Zachems normally packed schedule took a sharp turn last year when he pivoted to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and bid farewell to his teammates. The change, he said, was crushing.

But when he returned to school he kept one question in mind: How can I finish this on a good note, in light of everything that happened?

Although he didnt set any records in athletics this year, he said he achieved the goal that was most important to him after going through the unprecedented stress and change of a pandemic: he had fun. He spent time with his friends, he supported his teammates and he enjoyed living in the moment throughout his final sport seasons.

He also pushed himself to finish something he wasnt sure he would have made time for in a typical year dedicating more than 200 hours to becoming an Eagle Scout.

The new graduate said he thinks the pandemic encouraged him to remain committed to his Eagle Scout project preserving an antiquecanoe that was found on his grandparents property in Griswold.

I thought to myself, I have the opportunity to do something that not a lot of people have been able to accomplish and I think it really kicked me in gear to get my project done, said Zachem, who finished his project in April.

The canoe, from 1928, was found in a shed near his grandparents house on Pachaug Pond and donated to Zachems boy scout troop. Zachems original goal was to restore it.

We were operating under the goal of making it watertight so that if you put it in a lake, it would work, Zachem said. But that goal soon changed.

After about 30 hours of meetings with experts in restoration and aquatic engineering, they realized that wasnt an option. In order to make the canoe water-worthy, they would have had to destroy some of the history of it.

Then I thought, this is a 90-year-old canoe, do we really want to destroy the historical aspect just to make it float? He decided the answer was no, and shifted his project toward preservation.

He deep-cleaned it to remove dirt and chipped wood, coated it with a preservative and restored it as best he could while maintaining its integrity. The boat is now at a Boy Scout camp in Ashford and Zachem hopes that one day, it will be put in a museum.

Looking back, he said he is impressed with the amount of time he was able to dedicate to the project. At the same time I was juggling academics and athletics and I was a Boy Scout not only doing my Eagle project but going camping in Vermont, and hiking Mount Washington in the rain, said Zachem, who described himself as an avid outdoorsman.

Hes looking forward to being just as busy in college, where hell be living on campus at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. He plans to play intramural sports and is looking forward to what he hopes is a social campus and close student body.

The day after Zachem graduated, Kim Hodges, director of admissions for the school, noted that the speaker at this years graduation ceremony highlighted how close-knit the Saint Bernards community is.

Zachem said that the schools saying, Once a saint, always a saint, resonated with him even more now that he himself is an alumnus. He said he hopes to stay connected to Saint Bernard and form a similar bond with his new school.

Although he excelled in history at Saint Bernard, hell be pursuing a different path in college.

After considering multiple competitive engineering programs at colleges and universities across the map, Zachem will be studying astrophysics and astronomy at Villanova. Though hes eager to learn aboutthose subjects, hesaid hes happy that he doesnt have to declare his major right away. In fact, thats one of the reasons he chose the university: I can take a lot of different courses and try to figure out what I really want to do.

Holly Cyr, director of school counseling and the schools summer programming, has known Zachem his entire life and worked as his counselor during his five years at Saint Bernard. She said she is excited to see where Zachems future takes him.

Cyr described the recent graduate as level-headed, mature and always pleasant, and she thinks he will excel at Villanova, as he did at Saint Bernard.

Hes very much transparent and a straight shooter, theres never any drama with Jack, she said. Hes not always the kid in the forefront, but hes the kid who always makes good choices along the way and toes the line.

Zachem, she said, is also impressively independent and steers his own ship.

Cyr, who attendedSaint Bernardwith Zachems mother in the '80s, said she encouraged Zachem to attendSaint Bernardand was thrilled that he seemed to have really found a home at the school.

I expect great, great things from Jack, Cyr said. Hes the real thing.

t.hartz@theday.com

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Saint Bernard's track and field athlete, Eagle Scout to study astrophysics at Villanova - theday.com

As an astronomer whose research focuses on the imaging of extrasolar planets many light years away, Joe Carson spends a lot of time looking at distant celestial bodies. But his research and the imaging tools he and his team have created are grounded much closer to home. In fact, Carson credits the talent and skill produced right here at the College of Charleston for the development of medical imaging instrumentation that is now being used to look at human bodies on Earth.

Thats because his startup, Pensievision which primarily employs CofC alumni and students applies technologies from NASAs space telescopes to produce high-resolution 3D images using novel medical imaging instrumentation. The work includes their invention of the worlds first portable 3D colposcope to assist in early-stage detection of pre-cancer cervical lesions.

Over the past five years, everything that Pensievision has done has been enabled by students and alumni, who are the engine of the technologys development. Because of their work, we have been able to create this innovative and important device for doctors to use in any medical setting where imaging is used, says the associate professor of astronomy. My current projects long-term goal is to prevent cervical cancer deaths in some of the most underserved communities in the world, including those lacking medical infrastructure or even electricity.

Joe Carson and his startup, Pensievision, have created the worlds first portable 3D colposcope.

And, this spring, Carson was awarded a $400,000 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to make this a reality. Through the NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, Cancer Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Technologies for Low-Resource Settings, the grant supports a 20-patient study of the 3D-imaging camera that Carson and his team created. The funding will allow Carson to travel to Kenya to meet with womens health leaders there and prepare for an intended follow-up patient study in sub-SaharanAfrica.

This grant will have far-reaching impacts and its all possible because of the CofC students and recent grads and all their hard work that has led up to this, says Carson. Theyve been creating new codes, designing and assembling devices, and applying software in novel ways.

The students and alumni even played a central role in creating the NIH grant application. And considering that the NIH review committee gave the proposal a perfect score they did a pretty great job!

A perfect score is unheard of Ive never seen one, Ive never heard of one, says Carson, explaining that usually a score of 40 indicates youve done really well, with 10 being perfect and 90 being poorest. When I saw the score of 10, I actually contacted the program administrator to see if there was an error. It just shows how innovative this technology is. Its a big jump from what we have now a huge paradigm shift. So, this shows that they see something really special and really valuable in this work.

As immense an impact that this technology might have across the world, Carson says its the impact that the work is having on the students and alumni that hes especially proud of.

It gives them experience with leadership and optical design lab testing, engineering, circuit boards and with FDA considerations, and that approval process, he says. Theyre not just learning the technology and the engineering, they get to learn about deploying these products. Theyre thinking about the consumer side of it: usability, scalability, aesthetics.

They also get to see the economics of it, Carson continues. They get to see how getting investor support is different than government support. They get to see how things all come together all the different angles, from design to diagnosis to make a difference in medical research from here to third world countries. These things are the future of medicine, so it puts them in an extremely strong position for imaging processing, artificial intelligence, data analyses and so on.

Junior astrophysics majorJenna Snead agrees that the independent research project she has done with Carson andPensievisionhas all sorts of applications including inthe astrophysics research that she plans to do after college.

While doing a medical imaging project seems way out in left field, astrophysics relies on a lot of the same imaging techniques, which will help me in any future astronomicalimaging projects, says Snead, who last semester won the School of Science and Mathematics Best of the Best Award, the Sigma Xi Best of the Best Award and the Department of Physics and Astronomy Best Poster Award for her research with Carson. Dr. Carson also often takes time to go into detail about how the concepts Im working with relate to my particular field, and to physics in general. Additionally, working with software and computer programming is indispensableto both grad school and any area of physics research, so getting familiar working with this projects code has been an amazing experience.

This summer Snead is working with circuits in an attempt to improve battery functionality and length of battery life, but her particular study of interest involves color analysis and how to best organize color channels to get the best image possible from the imaging wand.

This work is largely done on the software side. While this seems like a small project, it is important that we can get a clear image so that the future clinicians using it can diagnose as accurately as possible, she says. The coolest thing Ive learned inmy research so far is definitely how we actually process light and create images. Everything we perceive requires a different focal lengthwhich,when done manually (as we are doing with our 3D imaging),requires long lines of code. However, our brain does it automatically, every second of the day. Its just crazy when we think about how capable our brains are of processing the world around us.

Its these kindsof connections that make Carson so excited about what the College can inspire in its students and how valuable that is to the future workforce.

The College produces smart, creative, hardworking innovators. It provides a really good educational background and its graduates are bringing that education out into the world, he says. The students and graduates of the College really are the lifeline of Pensievision our number one resource.

In addition to producing a smart and skilled staff for Pensievision, the College has supported Pensievision through partnerships and grant applications, too.

Pensievision did not sprout up by itself it took a lot of support. And I cannot emphasize enough CofCs role in partnering to save lives and to create high paying jobs in the Lowcountry. Forming those partnerships has been invaluable, says Carson, adding that in recent years Pensievision has been among the top employers of students graduating from the Colleges Department of Physics and Astronomy. And as CofCs engineering program gets up and running in the next few years, I think that this partnership will continue to expand.

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Astronomy Professor Develops Innovative Medical Imaging Device - The College Today

A giant telescope carried on a balloon the size of a football stadium will soon allow researchers to gaze at distant gas planets known as hot Jupiters and a University of Toronto startup is playing a key role in the endeavour.

Growing out of research at U of T, StarSpec is contributing to the 2025 NASA project by providing the suborbital research vessel that houses and controls the missions telescope, which will be deployed some 40 kilometres above the Earths surface after the balloon is launched from a volcanic island in Antarctica.

Its hoped the NASA mission one of several StarSpec is involved with will both improve our understanding of exoplanets and put StarSpec one step closer to realizing its ultimate goal of helping small organizations, including researchers, accessspaceby providing them with cheap, highly functional gear.

There is a growing class of people who want access to space either for astronomy, Earth-observation or satellite-based Internet, but need it faster and at a lower cost than is typically afforded by what I would call the old space regime, says Javier Romualdez, StarSpecs CEO and a former PhD student at U of T.

StarSpec is making space accessible through the availability of standardized sub-orbital technologies satellites, hardware and software that can allow researchers and technology developers to get access to space or near-space without the risk, cost and long development times associated with a typical space mission.

For the upcoming NASA mission, StarSpecs balloon-borne research gondola will be equipped with high-precision telescope and image stabilization systems, enabling the U.S. space agencys Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope (EXCITE) to make spectrographic measurements of planets with a high degree of accuracy crucial for better understanding their atmospheres while shedding light on how solar systems and planets form.

StarSpec, which received assistance from U of Ts UTEST entrepreneurship program, grew out of research at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, department of physics in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. Its one of a growing number of space technology companies that has emerged from the university in recent years. Others include Kepler Communications, which builds, launches and operates low earth orbit satellites, and was founded by alumni from U of TS Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, and those working with the Creative Destruction Lab, a seed-stage accelerator based at U of Ts Rotman School of Management that launched a dedicated stream for space ventures in 2018.

Yet, while launches have become less expensive and risky in recent years thanks to the growth of launch companies like Elon Musks SpaceX, Romualdez says there remains a significant barrier to accessing space: supporting technology. Thats why StarSpec is focusing on solutions such as its research gondolas, which are essentially space-proof carriages fitted with the technologies to house, support and control scientific instruments.

Lets say you want to put a camera in space to take pictures of the Earth or build a new Google Maps. Its not like you can just take a camera, stick it into SpaceXs rocket and launch it into space, Romualdez says. Its not going to work because you dont have the communications, the power, the ability to point and control the camera and the ability to downlink the data.

Thats what were providing. Were basically filling the supply-chain gap in space technology.

StarSpecs gondolas use modularized plug-and-play systems with standardized hardware and software that can be used with existing launch vehicles, allowing for precise control of scientific instruments all without exorbitant costs and lengthy development times.

The traditional approach is to try and rebuild everything from scratch every single time an experiment has to go [to space], says John Hartley, who holds a PhD in physics from U of T and serves as StarSpecs chief financial officer. With our systems in place, the timeline can be cut in half, which also translates to being more cost-effective.

Thats a major advantage. If you can get up there sooner, you get your data and results sooner, and everybodys happy. That brings real benefits to both the academic and commercial worlds.

StarSpecs origins can be tracedto U of T's Balloon Astrophysics Group, headed by Professor Barth Netterfield, a leading expert in balloon-borne and suborbital technology who now serves as the companys technical adviser. Romualdez and Hartley both completed their PhDs in Netterfields lab, while chief technical officer Steven Li completed his masters degree in the lab before going on to pursue a PhD at Princeton University.

Romualdez says he was interested in working with Netterfield because he wanted to carry out an end-to-end project. This lab stuck out to me because they said, OK, fine, your PhD will be designing, building, testing and launching a sub-orbital telescope all in five years, Romualdez says.

In 2015, only three years after Romualdez began his doctoral work, the Balloon Astrophysics Group launched the Balloon-Borne Imaging Telescope (BIT) with the Canadian Space Agency in Timmins, Ont. The next launch took place from NASAs Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility inTexas, with two further launches confirming the balloon-borne telescope as an instrument with imaging resolution and stability performance that rivaled NASAs Hubble Space Telescope.

BIT was basically a Steadicam with the same astronomical capabilities as the Hubble Space Telescope, but we were able to develop it in three years with a graduate research budget, Romualdez says.

Now, StarSpec is looking to bring similar capabilities to NASAs EXCITE project, which will measure the atmosphere content of exoplanets. The overarching idea here is trying to answer the question: Are we alone in the universe? says Hartley. We know Earth has an atmosphere and because of that, we can live on it. And there are exoplanets out there in the millions, so what do they look like? EXCITE is a step towards answering that question.

StarSpec has also been contracted to take part in several other NASA missions, including one project with the new Pioneers program that fosters astrophysics science ventures at lower cost, using smaller hardware.

Over the next few years, the company hopes to take part in suborbital projects all over the world.

Two years from now, I believe we will have saturated and expanded as far as we can into the ballooning and suborbital space, says Romualdez.

Whats next for Starspec? The company is working to repurpose its suborbital technologies for satellites that can access low-Earth orbit the layer of space roughly between 200 and 1,600 kilometres above the Earths surface. Among its projects is an experiment at U of Ts Dunlap Institute that will utilize a space-borne telescope.

Its also developing a range of standardized, plug-and-play satellites.

Five years from now, we want to have a standardized product stream for satellites, Romualdez says, adding theres growing interest in using space to support applications such as fintech and real-time Earth observation. I see us having a major contribution on those fronts.

StarSpecs ambitious trajectory would not have been possible without the support of U of T and the UTEST program in particular, its founders say. The U of T early-stage entrepreneurship programs contributions included connecting the company to its current legal team as well as crucial intellectual property resources.

When we were starting, we had a lot of technical knowhow but realized very early on that, from a business perspective, we were in over our heads, Hartley says. UTEST was an easy and accessible platform for us to gain information on how to start and run a business; what sorts of things you need to think about; how do you position yourself in the market things that we didnt understand and needed to figure out.

Adds Romualdez: Its been only nine months since we were part of the UTEST program, and looking back, weve already come so far. UTEST was a great stepping-stone to speed us on our way.

Ultimately, StarSpec hopes to help create a world where space projects are no longer limited to governments, giant corporations or billionaires like Amazons Jeff Bezos.

Our long-term vision is that a small business, a city or a small research group at a university that has something that could really have an impact a revolutionary communications or astronomical device will be able to look in a catalogue, select a system and plan a launch, says Romualdez.

Were envisioning a world where accessing space is not this extremely niche concept [with all sorts of highly technical] barriers. Its commonplace.

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Making space commonplace: U of T startup works with NASA on low-cost exoplanet research - News@UofT

Education | Profiles | Science | UW News blog

June 15, 2021

UW astronomer Emily Levesque delivers her course Great Heroes and Discoveries of Astronomy as part of The Great Courses, a popular online learning platform.The Teaching Company

If you look on Emily Levesques website, youll notice that one punctuation mark is prominent: the exclamation point. Classifying massive stars with machine learning! reads one blog post. Gravitational waves from Thorne-Zytkow objects! reads another.

My default state is exclamation point, said Levesque, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington. When were talking about space and were talking about science, how could you not?

Now Levesque is bringing that enthusiasm to The Great Courses, an online learning platform offering classes to the general public on a range of topics, from playing guitar to decoding Egyptian hieroglyphics. Levesques course, Great Heroes and Discoveries of Astronomy, takes viewers on a tour of the biggest advancements in one of humanitys oldest sciences and the people behind them.

This course, which launched in February, came six months after Levesques popular science book on the history of observational astronomy, The Last Stargazers. The course consists of 24 lectures and covers the work of some scientists you may be familiar with, like Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan and Edwin Hubble, and others who might be new to you.

Those names include Henrietta Swann Leavitt. She was one of the Harvard computers, the team of women who processed astronomical data work made famous by the film Hidden Figures. Leavitts research on measuring the distances to stars laid the groundwork for Hubbles assertion that the universe is expanding. George Carruthers was an African American scientist who patented an ultraviolet camera and built the only telescope weve taken to the moon. Vera Rubin discovered dark matter; today an entire subfield of astrophysics is devoted to studying it. An enormous telescope in Chile is now named after her.

The course pokes at our idea of what a scientific hero is, Levesque said. Theres this stereotype that science is done by a white man alone in a room, coming up with an idea and then just spitting it out full formed into the universe.

This stereotype overlooks the collaborative nature of science, something Levesques course highlights. Breakthroughs can result from the efforts of a dozen scientists doing work that builds off each other over time, or from heroic efforts by teams of thousands. Levesque teaches a unit on the discovery of gravitational waves; the gravitational wave detector in Washington, part of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, took thousands of people to build and takes thousands to maintain.

Levesque also broadens the definition of heroism to include acts like improving access to astronomy, making it more inclusive and bringing science literacy to the public.

One lecture tells the story of Frank Kameny, an astronomer in the U.S. Army Map Service. Months after he was hired in 1957, Kameny was fired when he refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation. He filed a lawsuit against the federal government, the first alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation in a U.S. court. Although it was unsuccessful, Kameny went on to become a leader in the fight for LGBTQ rights.

Its a really important time right now to remember that science is done by people, said Levesque. I dont think understanding science and understanding the human nature behind the discoveries we make has ever been more important. The human side of scientists cant be separated from the science that they do.

The human side of scientists not only affects their work, but it also shapes narratives around science. Stories we tell about scientific heroes and discoveries are often what makes science memorable. If the stories about people are interesting, then learning about the science will follow.

Levesque remembers, as a teen, reading the book A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaiken, about the early space program. She loved learning about the astronauts and the people in mission control. She was already a space geek, but reading about the fun they were having, identifying with them and seeing the creative problem-solving behind the science enabled her to picture what it would be like to work in astronomy.

Stories have the power to inspire or when the narrative is skewed or told from a singular point of view they can send a message about who does or doesnt belong. Thats why expanding the definition of a scientific hero beyond the stereotype is so important.

Levesque says her colleagues are a broad mix of people. They are ultramarathoners. They play in bands. They have a broad range of interests but have one thing in common: a love for space. More women are entering the field, but the low number of scientists from underrepresented groups like the Black and Latino communities shows there is still a ways to go when it comes to making astronomy more inclusive.

But if a broader range of stories are told, then more people will be able to envision themselves doing the work. And that will result in better science.

Its always worth reminding people when you talk about scientific heroism that you need heaps of people to do this work, Levesque said. Unique contributions can come from having a different perspective on a problem or other areas of expertise that a scientist can draw on. You need all sorts of talents and skill sets and enthusiastic folks who want to make science a part of their lives thats the ingredient, thats the way to do science.

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UW astronomer redefines the scientific hero as part of The Great Courses - UW News

Report Objective

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The report aims to shed light on the aspects of covid-19 impact on Security Inspection Equipment market due to the unparalleled termination of various industries due to lockdown imposed in second quarter of 2020 in almost every country. Shut down of non-essential industries, lack in demand by customers, delay in production due to less available employees, etc. for containing the virus led to losses and decline of business. However, with the relaxation of lockdown and government regulations for reviving the economy, the businesses have been resumed across various parts of the world. Moreover, with the establishment of various start-ups in the mentioned industry, the business is expected to gain traction during the forecast period and also, focus on developments, better customer experience, is expected to boost the market growth.

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Manufacturers Information:

Various key manufacturers operating in the global Security Inspection Equipment market are

Segmentation

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By the product type, the market is primarily split into:

By the end-users/application, this report covers the following segments:

Regional Outlook

The Security Inspection Equipment market report aims to provide the growing regional presence of the market by well-established and start-up companies. The report signifies the country analysis too with respect to different companies operating in the Security Inspection Equipment industry. For instance, the market is mostly up in developed regions such as North America, Europe, Middle East, it can also witness growth in Asia, Africa, etc. Also, the country analysis is also performed on the basis of best revenue holders in the market, for instance, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, US, Japan, India, China, Singapore, Germany, France, Italy, UK, Africa, GCC countries, etc.

Competitive Landscape

The report mentions various industry leaders focusing on researches for maintaining their leading position in the market post pandemic. The report aims to provide their latest launches, introductions to the market, their recent mergers, collaboration with others for promoting the product recently launched, their market revenue and valuation in different regions. The report provides snapshots and briefings of key strategies of the companies, which products they offer, their dominating regional presence, their competitors, and their strategies to grow post COVID-19 due slow growth expected by experts. Furthermore, the report also mentions the key growth insights, companies market presence, years of operations, technological aspects, financial strength, geographical presence, etc. Thus, with the report, the market players and stake holders get an outlook about the developing companies for investment opportunities help build their assets. Also, new start-up companies in the Security Inspection Equipment industry are projected to boost the market for growth during the forecast period.

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Research Methodology

Before the publication of the report by Zeal Insider, the primary and secondary researches are performed for accurate perception of the market. Various industry publications, press releases, company announcements, government websites, magazines, officially published statistics, are integrated together and summarised for the report published. The researches help in presenting well verified, authenticated data regarding market statistics, facts and figures of revenue the market holds in different regions, companies latest processes, updates, etc. Well researched report is then sent to industry persons, third party experts, in house panel, editors, analysts, industry veterans, top c level executives, etc., for their expert opinion and gaining feedback to acquire a third opinion towards the aspects of the growth in the market.

Market Dynamics

The multiple sources from which the data is obtained is taken into account for the detailed market report on Security Inspection Equipment using numerous techniques, for instance, market attractiveness, analysis, value chain evaluation, etc. These tools and techniques assist in researching for market potential expediting strategists with latest growth opportunities. These techniques provide in depth analysis of each product segment in Security Inspection Equipment market. Therefore, numerous benefits of this published report may help the readers for making better decisions during the forecast period.

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Security Inspection Equipment Market Share by Manufacturer (Astrophysics, Smiths Detection, Garrett, CEIA, Rapiscan Systems) COVID-19 Impact and...

Artist's impression of geysers erupting on an icy moon.

Europes space future definitely includes some strange new worlds.

The European Space Agency's new vision for mission planning includes exoplanets, icy moons and probing the early universe. This isnt yet an announcement for a planned new mission, but what this Cosmic 2050 discussion represents is a target for thinking about where to go next in space. Mission proposals will be solicited in the coming years to figure out all the details, but these are some of the large-range themes that future spacecraft will deal with.

Icy moons: This is going to be a big topic of the 2030s already, as NASAs Europa Clipper and the European Space Agencys JUpiter ICy moons Explorer sail to the moons of Jupiter. Jupiter and the other gas giants of our solar system have many intriguing icy moons, including some that spurt water geysers into space. Perhaps these worlds might be habitable, but we need a lot more work to be sure. A future European landing mission would try to find the connection between the oceans under the ice with the conditions near the surface. And yes, searching for biosignatures is high on the list, too. The mission profile might include an in-situ unit, such as a lander or a drone, ESA stated.

Finding temperate exoplanets: It would be simplistic to say that scientists are only interested in Earth-like worlds, but certainly we want to figure out more details about how planets are formed and the range of conditions in which habitability is possible. As ESA points out, the Milky Way galaxy alone has hundreds of millions of stars and planets, so figuring out priorities is, well, the first priority. Future European missions would focus on so-called hidden regions of the galaxy, which are parts that might be a little harder to spot due to dust or other obstacles. A future planet mission could look for temperate exoplanets using heat-seeking infrared wavelengths to better understand their potential for temperate conditions. If they harbor truly habitable surface conditions, [this] would be an outstanding breakthrough, ESA stated. Naturally, such a mission would follow on from findings from other planet-hunters like Cheops, Plato and Ariel plus international ones like NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

Artist's impression of an exoplanet in front of the Milky Way.

Learning about the early universe: As spacecraft fly with more advanced machine leaning to pick up patterns, we can put this to use in figuring out more about the mysterious origins of our universe. Yes, weve come a long way with missions such as Planck and LISA that look at (or will look at) wide-scale phenomena, but instruments with more precision could help with looking at the big stuff gravitational waves that show huge collisions in space, or the cosmic microwave background that shows off the echo of the Big Bang. Where we go exactly, though, will require a bit more discussion. Additional study and interaction with the scientific community will be needed to converge on a mission addressing this theme, ESA stated.

While these themes address the most major investments of European space science, ESA also plans to study other kinds of missions through medium-class investments. Calls for missions will come up periodically looking for ideas in themes spanning astronomy, astrophysics, fundamental physics (again to figure out our universes history) and a field called astrometry, which tracks the motion of celestial objects. Well also likely see more contributions to solar system science.

ESA reminded the community that space planning cannot happen overnight. The comet-chasing Rosetta mission and Philae lander, for example, arose from a development campaign that took place between 1985 and 1995. The mission launched in 2004 and did its science operations between 2014 and 2016. So the new mission plans talked about today about now could truly inform missions of the next 30 to 40 years.

"Large missions in particular require significant technology development, which often takes a number of years," ESA stated. "Therefore, it is important to start defining the necessary technology well in advance, to ensure that ESA's science program can secure a world-class, forward-looking series of missions for future generations."

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Exoplanets And Icy Moons Among Major Themes Of European Space - Forbes

About the Foundation

Gordon and Betty Moore established the foundation to create positive outcomes for future generations. In pursuit of that vision, we foster path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements and preservation of the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Guided by this vision and the Statement of Founders' Intent, each day we strive to make a significant and positive impact on the world. We tackle large, important issues at a scale where we make significant and measurable impacts.

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The Science Program proactively chooses high-impact areas in which the foundation can make a measurable difference and selects the best grantees to advance this research frontier. The program makes approximately $100 million per year in grants for basic science Present initiatives within the Science Program include Curiosity-Driven Science, Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems, and Symbiosis in Aquatic Systems, accompanied by a lively portfolio of standalone grants that include projects in astronomy, fundamental physics at the laboratory scale, developing an accelerator on a chip, and strengthening science policy. For more information about the Science Program and its initiatives, please visit: Science Program

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The foundation seeks an accomplished scientist with broad knowledge of experimental physics to help design and implement a new initiative: The Moore Experimental Physics Investigators.

This initiative in basic science aims to advance the frontier in experimental physics by supporting brilliant scientists at a critical stage of their careers in U.S. universities. (The Initiative is aimed at tenure track faculty at U.S. universities who are more than five but less than ten years from their initial appointment). Over the next eleven years, the new initiative will select and support outstanding individual investigators, and provide them with access to an instrumentation fund, to support cutting-edge research in experimental physics and improve scientific understanding of the natural world. In addition, the foundation will host convocations and interactions among the investigators to unleash creativity through exchanging ideas and fostering collaboration that will lead to insightful experiments and new discoveries. The initiative has also been intentionally designed to include incentives for investigators to promote diversity in physics, astrophysics, and geophysics.

The initiative will launch in 2021, award the first cohort of five-year investigator grants in 2022, and award a total of seven cohorts of investigator grants for an aggregate of $190.5 million over eleven years. A review of the initiative will be conducted in the sixth year to consider whether to extend this initiative.

The Program Director, working directly with the Chief Program Officer for Science, Robert Kirshner, will be responsible for creating this new initiative.

Although the overall framework of the Moore Investigators has been approved by the foundations Board of Trustees, the Program Director will have the opportunity to shape the program by working with the Chief Program Officer to:

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The ideal candidate will have demonstrated ability to:

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The ideal candidate will also demonstrate the foundation attributes, which describe how we strive to do our work with each other and our partners:

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Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the ordinance.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes a diverse pool of candidates for this search. We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and welcome individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply.

All correspondence will remain confidential.

Martha Montag Brown & Associates, LLC has been retained for this search. Interested and qualified candidates should apply by sending a cover letter, resume and salary requirements by email to Martha@marthamontagbrown.com.

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Program Director, Moore Experimental Physics Investigator Initiative in Palo Alto , CA for Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation - Physics

An artists illustration of the Chandra spacecraft in orbit. Credit: MSFC

Quasars are perhaps the best-known kinds of active galactic nuclei (AGN), galaxies whose central supermassive black holes are luminous, sometimes brighter than the rest of the galaxy. In an AGN, material accretes onto a surrounding torus of gas and dust, heating it to thousands of degrees and prompting the ejection of jets of charged particles. In the case of quasars, our viewing angle is such that these dusty tori do not obscure the light and the bright core of a quasar dominates the galaxys emission. The most distant known quasar dates from the era only about 700 million years after the big bang, with dozens more known dating from the first few billion years.

One outstanding puzzle is how the supermassive black holes in these young quasars could have formed in the short time available since the universe existed. The very hot material and the fast-moving particles produce X-ray emission, especially from the inner region of the accretion. Although X-ray emission is difficult to detect from such distant objects, CfA astronomers Bradford Snios, Aneta Siemiginowska, Malgosia Sobolewska, Vinay Kashyap, and Dan Schwarz led a team that has obtained X-ray spectra from fifteen quasars that date from roughly a billion years after the big bang and that individually span a period of about one hundred and fifty million years.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory in Earth orbit. Astronomers have used Chandra to study the X-ray emission from fifteen quasars dating from an era only about one billion years after the big bang, in an effort to understand how the supermassive black holes in this early epoch evolved. Credit: NASA/CXC/D.Berry & M.Weiss

The astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to look at targets selected from a catalog of quasars whose characters and distances were already known from their radio emission and optical emission. In particular, the team selected quasars whose radio emission appears (based on its spectral shape) to arise from a small volume within the galaxy.

The astronomers analyzed the X-ray emission from these quasars with other data to infer how these objects and their emission may have evolved in comparison with quasars in the nearby universe. The most significant conclusion from this ongoing work is that there does not appear to be any clear evolutionary trends during this era. They also identified several outlier quasars, one of them named J1606+3124 with an extremely high gas density along the line-of-sight, only the fourth known quasar in the early universe known to have as much dense material.

Reference: X-ray Properties of Young Radio Quasars at z > 4.5 by Bradford Snios, Aneta Siemiginowska, Magosia Sobolewska, C. C. Cheung, Vinay Kashyap, Giulia Migliori, Daniel A. Schwartz, ukasz Stawarz and Diana M. Worrall, 20 August 2020, The Astrophysical Journal.DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aba2caarXiv: 2007.01342

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Comments on: Puzzling Astrophysics of Quasars in the Early Universe - SciTechDaily

Lead author of the study, PhD student Yuanming Wang. Photo: Louise Cooper

Astronomers have for the first time used distant galaxies as scintillating pins to locate and identify a piece of the Milky Ways missing matter.

For decades, scientists have been puzzled as to why they couldnt account for all the matter in the universe as predicted by theory. While most of the universes mass is thought to be mysterious dark matter and dark energy, 5 percent is normal matter that makes up stars, planets, asteroids, peanut butter and butterflies. This is known as baryonic matter.

However, direct measurement has only accounted for about half the expected baryonic matter.

Yuanming Wang, a doctoral candidate in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, has developed an ingenious method to help track down the missing matter. She has applied her technique to pinpoint a hitherto undetected stream of cold gas in the Milky Way about 10 light years from Earth. The cloud is about a trillion kilometres long and 10 billion kilometres wide but only weighing about the mass of our Moon.

The results, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offer a promising way for scientists to track down the Milky Ways missing matter.

We suspect that much of the missing baryonic matter is in the form of cold gas clouds either in galaxies or between galaxies, said Ms Wang, who is pursuing her PhD at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy.

This gas is undetectable using conventional methods, as it emits no visible light of its own and is just too cold for detection via radio astronomy, she said.

What the astronomers did is look for radio sources in the distant background to see how they shimmered.

We found five twinkling radio sources on a giant line in the sky. Our analysis shows their light must have passed through the same cold clump of gas, Ms Wang said.

Just as visible light is distorted as it passes through our atmosphere to give stars their twinkle, when radio waves pass through matter, it also affects their brightness. It was this scintillation that Ms Wang and her colleagues detected.

Dr Artem Tuntsov, a co-author from Manly Astrophysics, said: We arent quite sure what the strange cloud is, but one possibility is that it could be a hydrogen snow cloud disrupted by a nearby star to form a long, thin clump of gas.

Hydrogen freezes at about minus 260 degrees and theorists have proposed that some of the universes missing baryonic matter could be locked up in these hydrogen snow clouds. They are almost impossible to detect directly.

However, we have now developed a method to identify such clumps of invisible cold gas using background galaxies as pins, Ms Wang said.

Ms Wangs supervisor, Professor Tara Murphy, said: This is a brilliant result for a young astronomer. We hope the methods trailblazed by Yuanming will allow us to detect more missing matter.

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Student astronomer finds galactic missing matter - News - The University of Sydney