A press release from CSIRO (AU) tells us that for the first time radio astronomers have linked up telescopes in Australia, China and Europe to form a Very Long Baseline Interferometry array that was nearly the size of the earth, in REAL TIME! This is a significant achievement, as prior VLBI efforts required the use of taped data synchronized to time signals from atomic clocks being post-processed at a data center. The real-time VLBI array used 256Megabit data streams to link up the telescopes and the data center in China.
Archive for September, 2007
Real-time VLBI
Posted by astrogeek on September 7, 2007
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Pamela’s Travels: ASP-EPO
Posted by astrogeek on September 5, 2007
Star Stryder (a.k.a., Dr. Pamela Gay) is in Chicago for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s 2007 Annual Conference: EPO and a Changing World: Creating Linkages and Expanding Partnerships.
Last year I had the opportunity to speak in public school classrooms a few times, usually with the aid of a solar telescope. The feedback I got from those sessions was wonderful. Generally the kids were engaged and interested in “space stuff”. Of course, I got all kinds of questions about aliens and UFOs, but I also got questions about the life and death of stars, how nebulae form, and what quasars are.
Pamela blogged about listening to astronaut George “Pinky” Nelson on things that need to happen for education to be made more effective. One thing that is consistently brought up is more hands-on activities. My comment on her post was that elementary, middle and high school educators need to reach out to the amateur astronomy community, and the amateur astronomy community needs to reach out to the schools.
So… what have you done to help your local schools teach astronomy?
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