Spotlight
77 APODs from Adam Block
The search engine on Astronomy Picture of the Day tells us that there are 77 different times, counting weekend repeats, that Adam Block has been featured. Today's image is of the Lagoon Nebula, obtained at the Schulman 32" telescope on Mt Lemmon. Adam's words, and a link to more details, can be found HERE.
Ed Prather Receives ASP Award: Congratulations
Chris Impey and Buell Jannuzi have announced that Ed Prather is the winner of the ASP's Emmons Award. The ASP press release is quoted below and, along with the capsule summaries of other awardees, can be found HERE.
"The Richard H. Emmons Award for excellence in college astronomy teaching is awarded to Dr. Edward Prather. For the past 20 years Dr. Prather has dedicated himself to conducting research on best practices in teaching general education physics and astronomy at the college level. This work has led to development of a huge number of active learning instructional materials and new tools for assessment of student learning. Ed and his team use their courses at the University of Arizona (UA) as laboratories where they test and validate the effectiveness of these teaching and assessment materials, which they tirelessly disseminate through the Center for Astronomy Education Teaching Excellence workshops held around the country each year. These workshops have reached over 2500 astronomy educators and had a dramatic impact on the teaching of astronomy in the US and worldwide. Dr. Prather also serves as the Education Officer of the American Astronomical Society, and Executive Director of the Center for Astronomy Education. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications and given hundreds of talks on issues of astronomy and physics teaching and learning. His teaching has been recognized at the university-level where, in 2007, he was awarded the UA Provost’s General Education Teaching Award, and in 2009 the UA College of Science Innovation in Teaching Award. At the national level, he has been awarded the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) David Halliday and Robert Resnick Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching."
Interviews with Steward Astronomers about the GMT and the Mirror Lab
Arizona Public Media has an article and a 4.5 minute set of interviews about the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. Chris Impey, Buell Jannuzi, and Dennis Zaritsky are interviewed. You can find the link HERE.
Photo courtesy Ray Bertram, University of Arizona
New AO Coronagraph Makes It Possible to See Planets Closer To Stars
Steward Observatory's MagAO team, and collaborators from Leiden University in the Netherlands, have just demonstrated a breakthrough in the quest to image extrasolar planets. Using a technique first proposed by Steward's John Codona, the new coronagraphs in MagAO's Clio infrared camera reach an extreme level of sensitivity to planets very close to their stars. These "Vector Apodizing Phase Plates" fold the light from a star out of the way, allowing the light from the more than 100,000 times fainter planet to shine through. You can read the UA Press Release HERE, and you can read it in Dutch HERE. The photo shows the team at Magellan: from left to right, Matt Kenworthy (a former Steward postdoc), Gilles Otten, and Stewardites Laird Close, Katie Morzinski, and Jared Males.
Lengthy LBT Update from the AZ Star
Tom Beal has written a lengthy article giving an update on LBT progress and on a quick history of the LBT. He quotes from the "LBT2020" draft report. He also discusses progress on the LBTI instrument, an instrument that combines phased light from the two telescopes into a telescope with a 23 meter baseline. You can find his article HERE. (Image courtesy LBTO)
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