Friday, February 27, 2009
Does counting hours make sense?
I agree that useful question is not “how many hours do you work?” but “how much energy do you put into your work?”. For more details read this
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin)
In 1996, a 7-year-old boy in China bent over the eyepiece of a small telescope and saw something that would change his life--a comet of flamboyant beauty, bright and puffy with an active tail. At first he thought he himself had discovered it, but no, he learned, two men named "Hale" and "Bopp" had beat him to it. Mastering his disappointment, young Quanzhi Ye resolved to find his own comet one day. And one day, he did.
Fast forward to a summer afternoon in July 2007. Ye, now 19 years old and a student of meteorology at China's Sun Yat-sen University, bent over his desk to stare at a black-and-white star field. The photo was taken nights before by Taiwanese astronomer Chi Sheng Lin on "sky patrol" at the Lulin Observatory. Ye's finger moved from point to point--and stopped. One of the stars was not a star, it was a comet, and this time Ye saw it first.
Comet Lulin, named after the observatory in Taiwan where the discovery-photo was taken, is now approaching Earth. "It is a green beauty that could become visible to the naked eye any day now," says Ye.
Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3) is approaching Earth for a 38-million-mile close encounter on Feb. 24, 2009. At the moment it is glowing like a magnitude +5.5 star, dimly visible to the unaided eye and a fine target for binoculars and backyard telescopes.
Lulin's green color comes from the gases that make up its Jupiter-sized atmosphere. Jets spewing from the comet's nucleus contain cyanogen (a poisonous gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon. Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space.
Fast forward to a summer afternoon in July 2007. Ye, now 19 years old and a student of meteorology at China's Sun Yat-sen University, bent over his desk to stare at a black-and-white star field. The photo was taken nights before by Taiwanese astronomer Chi Sheng Lin on "sky patrol" at the Lulin Observatory. Ye's finger moved from point to point--and stopped. One of the stars was not a star, it was a comet, and this time Ye saw it first.
Comet Lulin, named after the observatory in Taiwan where the discovery-photo was taken, is now approaching Earth. "It is a green beauty that could become visible to the naked eye any day now," says Ye.
Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3) is approaching Earth for a 38-million-mile close encounter on Feb. 24, 2009. At the moment it is glowing like a magnitude +5.5 star, dimly visible to the unaided eye and a fine target for binoculars and backyard telescopes.
Lulin's green color comes from the gases that make up its Jupiter-sized atmosphere. Jets spewing from the comet's nucleus contain cyanogen (a poisonous gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon. Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space.
Photo by Phillip Jones, Central Texas Astronomical Society observatory grounds, Clifton, TX (Feb. 22, 2009)
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