ASSISTANT RESEARCHER
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
ASTRONOMY DEPARTMENT
BERKELEY CA 94720-3411
510/224-3411 (voice)
510/642-3411 (fax)
Time Lapse Saturn/Jupiter Video: "Outer Space."
Wed 2012-05-02 12:09
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I just found out about this awesome video by Sander van den Berg, using Voyager and Cassini imaging data. If you're like me, you've seen some of the videos in this compilation, but this is a really breathtaking new way to absorb them. A lot of physics, some understood and some not, is captured in this 1:52 piece.
Space Senator.
Thu 2012-04-12 14:01
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I just went to browse MAST, formerly the Multimission Archive at STScI, and found out that it's been renamed. It's still MAST, but now it stands for the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.
Senator Barbara Mikulski was honored for becoming the longest-serving woman in U.S. Congressional history, and also for being a great defender of space exploration and research. There are nice writeups about MAST and Sen. Mikulski on the about MAST page and a Hubble press release. Although some NASA advocates focus their support on the manned space program with its associated defense contractor expenditures, Senator Mikulski's record shows support for the kind of stuff I do: science. I'm proud that they renamed the archive after her.
Space Ronin.
Tue 2012-02-28 12:20
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My career is not not going quite the way I thought it would, back when I was 18. Shouldn't I have a faculty job by now? Or a civil servant position at NASA?
Things just didn't work out that way though. Advancement in my researcher track at Berkeley is extremely slow. The only real way to advance is to branch out. So I'm starting a new (part-time) Visiting Scientist gig at University of Michigan, following on an awesome Visiting Scientist stint at Space Telescope in 2009-2010. At Michigan I'll be working with the SAM instrument on the Curiosity rover.
Although the working arrangement is odd, and inconvenient... I don't think it's extremely unusual these days. I'm a Space Ronin; I have no tenure and I work here and there. The whole reason why is because I've traded job security for geographical location. A person of my sub-Nobel intellect cannot always have both. I totally believe in the quote usually found on the whiteboard behind the bar at Tommy's: "IF YOU LIVE IN S.F. PLEASE REMEMBER HOW LUCKY YOU ARE."