Monthly Archives: July 2021

The long double file of scarlet-robed doctors which processed, at this years brilliant Commemoration at Oxford, from Wadham, the vice-chancellors College, to the Sheldonian Theatre was, from the feminists point of view, less interesting from its inclusion of the prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Jellicoe, and the archbishop of Canterbury, than from the unique event that it contained a woman.

Miss Annie Cannon, the eminent astronomer from Harvard Observatory, on whom, on June 10, Oxford conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree, walked in procession with her host, Professor Turner, Oxfords Savilian professor of astronomy, and the crowd which had come out to look at the prime minister found its sensation instead in this startling precedent of a woman in a procession consecrated to academic masculinity and distinguished male service.

In honour of her visit to England, Professor Turner gave a lecture at Sommerville on Miss Cannons invaluable contribution to astronomy, and linked it to the wonderful tradition created by Mary Somerville after whom Oxfords famous womens college is named and Caroline Herschel, whose gold medal is now in possession of Girton.

Dr Annie Cannon is to-day carrying on the work of her two famous forerunners. With the help of the spectrum she has classified 25,000 stars in the northern and southern hemisphere according to their heat as well as their substance, distance and velocity. It remained for Professor Eddington to order this accumulated data by his theory that nebula evolve from a low through a high temperature back to a low one again. Thus the aim of William and Caroline Herschel was achieved, and the life of the nebula traced as the life of a planet.

This is an edited version.

Go here to read the rest:

Oxford recognises Annie Cannons invaluable contribution to astronomy archive, 1925 - The Guardian

Authors note: This piece references harassment and other potentially uncomfortable experiences.

I would have been lost if not for this one, singular professor who made it her lifes work to get me to stay in astronomy. Thats Fletcher Waller, a masters student at the University of Victoria who uses spectroscopy to study populations of metal-poor stars in the Local Group, explaining why hes still a scientist. Unlike more privileged individuals, his journey through astronomy has been shaped not just by his chosen specialty, but also by a fundamental part of his identity. Waller is transgender, and in a field that remains dominated by straight, cisgender white men, being queer often means constantly having to worry about harassment and abuse. While his supervisor went to extraordinary efforts to ensure that he felt supported, having a close ally is the exception, not the rule. As Waller puts it, The department is so cis-het that its impossible to know who is even remotely safe to go to.

I interviewed 14 current and former astronomers who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Some, like Dr. Kaitlin Rasmussen, a spectroscopist at the University of Michigan, have survived bigoted environments through sheer determination. Others, faced with intense discrimination, have been forced out of astronomy entirely. Our conversations covered queerphobia in the field, resources for both LGBTQ+ astronomers and allies, and what individuals and institutions can do to provide safer and more inclusive environments. At a time when societal acceptance of the queer community is growing but significant structural barriers to equality remain, actions or field takes today are crucial to the survival of LGBTQ+ astronomers. Today, in the first half of this two-part Astrobite, Ill introduce you to some of the folks I talked to, the challenges they face, and the ways astronomy has failed them so far.

Dr. Claudia Antolini is a science communicator based in the United Kingdom. Antolini identifies as asexual, and throughout her years in academia, she experienced harassment from those who either didnt understand her sexuality or simply didnt care. She described having to run away and hide from men who continually made unwanted advances, summing up her experiences by saying, I could tell you things that would make your skin crawl.

Antolinis encounters are far from atypical both of women and of queer people in astronomy. I spoke with a former graduate student who asked a professor for a letter of recommendation for his PhD application while finishing his masters degree. The professor told him no ones gonna hire [you] because [youre] trans. While the student eventually found a professor to do his PhD work with, this professor was disdainful after finding out about his transition; subsequently, he lost his funding and, subsequently, their apartment. He left astronomy, and has found it extremely difficult to reenter the field.

Some of the more insidious barriers queer astronomers face are those others view as trivial. Avery Kiihne, an undergraduate at Rutgers studying star formation in dwarf galaxies, encountered difficulties when changing their name. Administrative mishandling led to Kiihne having to use their deadname on certain forms seen by colleagues and supervisors, and they received an aggressive response when they tried to correct the matter. A problem that should have been solved in a day turned into a drawn-out, emotional ordeal.

Departments arent the only places where queer astronomers face the potential for discrimination, harassment, or assault. Conference organizers should be cognizant of the potential for meetings to be hostile environments. Recent legislation in certain states and jurisdictions has made it harder for nonbinary and transgender individuals to access the bathroom of their gender identity, which groups should take into account. International conferences should also strive to avoid regions where queerphobia is rampant. Winter Parts, a nonbinary PhD student at Penn State University studying exoplanets, brings up the example of a friend of theirs attending a conference in Dubai, where LGBTQ+ rights are nearly nonexistent. Parts was concerned about whether they could safely attend the conference.

Finally, there are the everyday microaggressions that slowly contribute to a climate of animosity. Waller faced hostile looks when he used gendered restrooms because his department lacked gender-neutral restrooms. One student I spoke to describes an instance they were told of where a professor made no effort to understand the purpose of properly using personal pronouns an uncomfortable situation because of the potential for misgendering.

When attempting to improve inclusivity, many astronomy departments treat LGBTQ+ astronomers as a singular, inseparable group an assumption that is at best naive, and at worst actively harmful. As Antolini puts it, The queer community is extremely varied, and all the different layers of the our full identities will take us down a very different path. For example, being a person of color and gay is an extremely different experience than being white and gay. Nicole Man, now a data scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, notes that overwhelmingly white queer spaces alienated her, saying, I think my experience as a queer scientist and astrophysicist has also been tied with my identity as a woman of color. I think a lot of the times when I did try to be a part of the communities that were queer, I did feel like I had to fracture other parts of my identity in order to have some common ground with them. At a time when astronomy departments are grappling with systemic racism in the field, ignoring intersectionality when working on inclusivity initiatives is a recipe for disaster.

A similarly problematic assumption is that all queer people are essentially the same; in reality, LGBTQ+ folks have varying needs. For example, transgender, intersex and nonbinary individuals urgently need gender-neutral restrooms an issue most astronomy departments have utterly failed to address. Antolini points out that unlike other sexual orientations, asexuality is not a protected characteristic in the United Kingdom, meaning asexual folks may need additional departmental support for addressing academic harassment. Its possible that a lack of representation of many queer groups throughout history and in modern media has contributed to this one-dimensional view of LGBTQ+ people. While gay astronomers and physicists can look up to the likes of Frank Kameny and Sally Ride, Antolini puts her own experience as an asexual scientist bluntly: We have no Alan Turing.

Finally, departments often fail to understand the importance of particular support systems in the queer community. Charlotte Olsen, a graduate student at Rutgers University working on distant galaxies, emphasizes the importance of a queer persons chosen family, the individuals who support, comfort and care for them, particular in the absence of a normal family structure: I think that there are times when the academy doesnt recognize the importance of chosen family, because its not something thats really super well understood. So, for example, participating in pride events or doing stuff at the local LGBT Center, people who participate in the balls or anything like that a lot of times people who are outside of the gay community see these as hobbies, or special interests. . . . For some of us our chosen family is the only family that we have.

Being queer in science entails an invisibility that other underrepresented minorities dont face. The fact that you cant tell whether someone is gay or trans or asexual just by looking at them can be both a blessing and a curse, a shield for individuals against potential harassment and a shield for institutions pretending or assuming that this harassment doesnt exist at all. Unfortunately, some of the hostility incumbent in the current climate in astronomy compounds this invisibility by forcing queer astronomers to hide part of who they are. One PhD student I talked with says that while she is still not out, seeing other queer people thriving in the field brings her happiness and hope, and I hope that we can work towards a fully inclusive community, where more LGBTQ+ astronomers are able to enjoy this freedom. Tomorrow, Ill look at what measures the field can take to better support queer astronomers, discuss some of the resources and support systems already in place, and take a peek down the path we can take to a more welcoming astronomy community.

Astrobite edited by Lili Alderson and Luna Zagorac.

Featured image credit: Laurie Raye

About Graham DoskochI'm a first-year graduate student at West Virginia University, pursuing a PhD in radio astronomy. My focus is on neutron stars and pulsar timing, a method of detecting gravitational waves by monitoring arrays of pulsars over the course of many years. I'm an associate member of NANOGrav, and I'm starting to help with their ongoing timing efforts.I love running, hiking, reading, and just enjoying nature.

See the article here:

Queer Astronomy, Part 1: Acknowledging the problem | astrobites - Astrobites

Thank heavens for the Royal Observatorys Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards. After most of us spent the better part of a year shut inside, the worlds brightest and best astrophotography stars are here to remind us of the spectacle of whats out there.

The shortlisted images include a stunning shot of comet Neowise screaming past Stonehenge, a magical glimpse of the Northern Lights as seen from a frozen river in Iceland, and an awe-inspiring photo of a dying star named the Dolphin Head Nebula.

The competition, which is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine, is now in its thirteenth year. This year the competition received over 4,500 entries from enthusiastic amateurs and professional photographers, taken from 75 countries across the globe.

Winners will be announced on the 16th September, and then displayed at the National Maritime Museum from Saturday 18 September.

Heres our favourite images from this years batch. If these inspire you, why not try your hand at a bit of astrophotography with the help of our guide to astronomy for beginners.

Stefan Liebermann

A mesmerising panorama of the Milky Way over the lavender fields in Valensole, France. Parallel rows of flowers set against a heavenly dome make for a stunning image, even though the light pollution the golden orange hue is clearly visible over the whole area. The foreground was captured in the blue hour (twilight) with the camera set to a high ISO value since the wind means the lavender never stands still.

Matt Naylor

Here the photographers managed to pull off a rare feat: capturing the Moon and the famous Lovell Telescope in one image. Finding a spot with a clear view, far enough away from the subject, and the Moon being in the sky at the correct time of day was all part of the puzzle. By the time the Moon appeared, the photographer had to drop down the focal length to 286mm to compose this image.

Yovin Yahathugoda

This is an image of the Dolphin Head Nebula, also designated as Sharpless 308, located at the centre of the constellation Canis Major. The star at the centre of this image is dying. The stars gravity became too weak to hold onto its outer layers, and so they were blown away by stellar winds generated by nuclear reactions deep within. The stars surface material is blown out into space, creating this nebula, a giant cloud of gas and dust. Eventually, the star will go supernova and die. The photographer struggled to capture this nebula for over a month due to poor conditions and was thrilled to get just 1.5 hours of total exposure time spread over 3 nights. The raw data was acquired using the Telescope Live remote telescope in Chile.

Andrew McCarthy

This image shows how the magnetic field of the Sun pulls up portions of the chromosphere following a large solar flare, with the magnetic field lines on crystal clear display along the limb in hydrogen-alpha light. This also happened while a particularly large active region was along the face of the solar disc. This was captured in black and white and processed partially inverted to highlight the contrast on the surface as well as the atmospheric features on the limb, presented in false colour for the aesthetic. This was one of the most interesting features on the Sun in all of 2020 and represents the first major activity since the start of the new solar cycle.

Yang Sutie

As the photographer was driving on the mountain road at Ranwu, Tibet, China, he saw a mound on the right side of the road. The mountains and the Milky Way were lined-up in front of the photographer, so he stopped and climbed up the side of the road, set the camera to shoot automatically, and then drove back and forth in this curve. Then he climbed up the hillside and integrated himself into the picture.

Jean-Claude Canonne, Didier Chaplain, Georges Chassaigne, Philippe Bernhard, Laurent Bourgon and Nicolas Outters

This image, captured by the Cielaustral team, is a large mosaic covering a wide portion of the sky and allowing us to admire incredible details in the gaseous structures. The team acquired both narrowband images in hydrogen-alpha, doubly ionised oxygen and singly ionised sulphur spectral lines as well as natural colour images using red, green and blue filters. The total exposure time of all the frames needed to compose these majestic images is 253 hours.

Vitaliy Novikov

Capturing the polar lights in Murmansk wasnt an easy feat for the photographer because of the bright lights in the city. To photograph the Aurora Borealis in Murmansk, Russia, you must wait for a very strong solar flare. The photographer was able to capture the Aurora over the Kola Bay after several attempts and many hours of waiting and wanted to showcase this optical phenomenon in an urban landscape.

Pter Feltti

The Veil Nebula complex is the remnant of a giant supernova explosion. This image shows only a part of the complex as the entire nebula is around 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. Objects of this type can be photographed very effectively with narrowband filters. The photographer processed a bicolour photo from monochrome images of hydrogen-alpha and oxygen emissions.

Anthony Sullivan

The Milky Way is rising over Durdle Door, Dorset, United Kingdom. This is a perfect spot for astrophotography as the landscape is so fascinating and aligns with the Milky Way core during a few months of the year. Saturn and Jupiter can also be seen to the left of the frame, just above the horizon. To achieve less noise in the image, the photographer used a star tracking mount to lengthen the cameras shutter speed. However this also creates motion blur in the foreground, so two images were blended together to produce the final result.

Steven Mohr

The Dark Molecular Cloud found in the constellation Corona Australis, lies some 554 light-years away from Earth, and this field of view is spanning approximately the size of a full Moon. To the left of the image, far in the distance, is the globular cluster NGC6723 which is some 28,400 light-years away. NGC6723 resides just within the constellation border of Sagittarius.

Markus van Hauten

The photographer always wanted to capture a picture like this. During a visit to Breidamerkurjkull, Iceland, in January 2020, he decided to do a double exposure one from the cave and one of the Aurora Borealis and stacked them together. The weather conditions that day were ideal, and the final result came out perfectly.

Masoud Ghadiri

This image showcases the splendour of Mount Damavand. Located north-east of the city of Tehran it is approximately 5,670 metres high and according to the photographer it is one of the most beautiful natural wonders of Iran. The Milky Way is shining on the left of the sky, and you can see Tehrans light pollution on the right. The photo was taken from the mountain at Nandal village beside a small lake and the photographer had to hike for about seven hours and ascend more than 1,000 metres to get there. The photo contains ten stacked images, five for the sky and five for the foreground.

Steven Mohr

The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion, lying some 900 to 1,500 light-years away from Earth. The bright star Alnitak (just outside the field of view at the top of this image), the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion, shines energetic ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionised hydrogen recombine. Additional dark gas and dust lies in front of the bright part of the nebula, and this is what causes the dark network that appears in the centre of the glowing gas.

If you are enjoying this gallery, why not check out some of our other sets:

Wang Zheng

In the Tengger Desert, located in Minqin County, Wuwei City, China, there is a mysterious group of artificial sculptures. The metal columns that point to the sky in this picture are called raindrops. By day, it falls like a raindrop in the desert, but the photographer prefers it at night under the Milky Way. After the Moon sets, the metal sculpture reflects the light of the Milky Way, making the sculptures outline very clear. Extremely bright starlight in the desert is reflected off the metal surface like a column of light from a vast universe of stars hitting the ground.

Ivan Vucetic

The photograph shows a captivating star trail over Dugi Otok in Croatia and the extraordinary relationship between our Planet and the Universe in a way that the human eye cannot perceive it. The photographer intended to capture the reflection of the stars on the water together with the sky, however during the long exposure time that was necessary for star trails the wind increased and seeing conditions were not favourable enough for a clear reflection of the stars. The photographer had to use the stars from the sky in post-processing to achieve the final result.

Damian Peach

In this image, taken in La Palma, Mucia, Spain, Saturn is shown near its best for 2020, displaying a wealth of details across the globe and ring system. The famous polar hexagon can be seen around the pole at bottom, while many other belts and zones are seen across the planet. The Cassini and Encke divisions dominate the view of the rings.

Larryn Rae

This is a 250 panorama of the Aurora Borealis in Iceland. The photographer came across this estuary that reflected the sky perfectly on a well below freezing winters night, and captured the panorama first, and then took a shot of himself out on the ice. For the photographer this is one of the most amazing aurora images that he has ever captured, and it sums up an awe-inspiring trip to Iceland in wintertime that also emphasised the feeling of being just a tiny part of the planets existence in the face of a very powerful natural environment.

Pter Feltti

Photographing galaxies has excited the photographers imagination for a long time, as has putting well-known subjects into unusual and unexpected compositions away from traditional depictions. A good way to do this is to show a galaxy in such a way that it completely fills the field of view and that is exactly what the photographer accomplished here with the Andromeda Galaxy.

Benjamin Barakat

This magnificent chteau in Chambord, Centre-Val de Loire, France, was an amazing location chosen by the photographers best friend and mentor Ralf Rohner, but it proved to be a challenging one as the castle had intervals of illumination with a minutes pause every 15 minutes. During the pauses, the photographer shot away trying to get as many images as possible and while processing it he had to try to mimic the reflection due to the time delay caused by the castle lights.

Jiajun Hua

Shanghai is one of the most economically developed cities in China. The photo is taken 16 kilometres away from Lujiazui financial district. Every year there are only a few weeks when photographers can capture the scene of the Sun rising over the Central Business District. The photographer waited for a few days and finally witnessed the Sun rising from the most prosperous area of Shanghai on a heavily polluted morning. The photo is composed of four different exposures from the same perspective, recording the process of the Sun rising.

James Rushforth

The image depicts the Comet NEOWISE passing over Stonehenge in the United Kingdom. The orange glow is light pollution from the nearby villages of Durrington and Larkhill, and a passing lorry very kindly painted the rocks with light. For the photographer, the thought that this historic site did not exist when the comet NEOWISE last passed the Earth is quite fascinating. The comet is due to return in approximately 6,800 years. The photograph is a single exposure taken early on the morning of 20 July 2020.

Daning Kai

This image shows star trails over the Lujiazui city in Pudong District, and you can even distinguish the Belt of Orion. Lujiazui is the most prosperous place in Shanghai, China and the light pollution is very heavy but if the weather is clear, you can see the stars. The photographer captured this photo on a very clear autumn night. The beautiful starry sky is above us, and even if you live in a city, and you can still look up at it.

Antoni Cladera Barcel

Menorca was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1993 and credited as a Starlight Reserve in 2019. The photographer captured this image at this natural stone bridge shaped by water erosion at Pont den Gil, Ciutadella, Spain. A watchman stands vigilant under the stars as the Milky Way is vertical above the natural arch. To add a soft and warm tone to the arch, the photographer used the light pollution from Mallorca, the neighbouring island. The photographer wanted to humanise the landscape and incorporate the human element in the composition to prove that we are just natures guests.

Go here to read the rest:

Wonders of the Universe: 23 mind-blowing photos from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021 shortlist - BBC Focus Magazine

The Tumult of the Sun Hassan Hatami

From a turbulent image of our star and an odd-looking Martian sunset to the mesmerizing Dolphin Head Nebula and a close-up of the International Space Station set against the Moon, the Royal Observatorys annualAstronomy Photographer of the Year competition has once again produced some astonishing images of our Solar System and of the deep sky.

Run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London in association withBBC Sky at Night Magazine and now in its thirteenth year, the competition this year received over 4,500 entries from around the world.

Here are eight of the Solar System and deep sky entries from Iran, Sri Lanka, China and even from the Martian surface, some of which will triumph and feature in the final 11 when the results are announced in September 2021.

Above: Using a specially selected image from NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory collection, photographer Hassan Hatami from Iran used a combination of three wavelengths to create this image of the turbulent Sun.

The original images were taken by the SDO in January 2015 when our Sun was close to solar maximum.

Dolphin Head Nebula Yovin Yahathugoda

Above: interstellar winds create a perfect cosmic bubble in this bi-colour image of the Dolphin Head Nebula in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. At the center of the image is a rare Wolf-Rayet star.

It took the photographer 1.5 hours exposure time over three nights to capture this image using a remote telescope in Chile.

Saturn at its Best Damian Peach

Above: ace planetary astrophotographer Damian Peach here shows-off an image of the ringed planet taken from La Palma, Murcia, Spain in July 2020.

Its polar hexagon can be seen around the pole at bottom, while many other belts and zones can be seen across the planet.

Martian Sunset John White

Above: When NASAs Mars Curiosity Rover captures images it dumps them on a server thats publicly available. Photographer John White searched over 390,000 images in the Mars Curiosity raw archive and found these four that show a sunset on the Red Planet.

Why is it blue? Unlike on Earth, blue light better penetrates the fine dust in the Martian atmosphere. The images were taken in April 2015.

A Daytime Transit Andrew McCarthy

Above: the International Space Station (ISS) transiting a slim waning crescent Moon during daylight. Shot in Elk Grove, California in October 2020, this ISS transit of the Moon was captured using two cameras and two telescopes.

The Rose Josep Drudis

Above: the Ring Nebula (M57) is the glowing remains of a Sun-like star and a very famous planetary nebula previously photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, but its rarely looked like this before. Taken with a professional Planewave CDK24 telescope in the near infra-red, you can see its faint halo as a collection of petals.

This image was taken with hydrogen (red) and oxygen (green and blue) filters, but also adding nitrogen (deep red). Taken from Mayhill, New Mexico, USA, during April, May and June 2020.

Pleiades Sisters Jashanpreet Singh Dingra

Above: Heres a gorgeous image taken in December 2020 from Patiala, Punjab, India by 14-year old Jashanpreet Singh Dingra. The Pleiadesalso known as the Seven Sisters and M45is an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in constellation of Taurus, the Bull. The closest open cluster to the Solar System, the Pleiades is easy to see naked-eye.

Here the photographer has used a Takahashi FSQ-85ED telescope to reveal its nebulositythe hot gas between the stars and illuminated by themover the course of three hours of exposures.

NGC 3981 Bernard Miller

Above: The windswept NGC 3981 is a spiral galaxy about 65 million light years away in the constellation of Crater. Taken using a remote telescope in Chile in February 2021 over 34 hours.

Wishing you wide eyes and clear skies.

Here is the original post:

In Photos: Angry Sun, A Blue Martian Sunset And Weird Dolphin Head Star In Astronomy Photographer Of The Year Entries - Forbes