Friday, September 30, 2011

Blinking Cursor

Research-wise, this week was Rogerson research evaluation, and some discussion of the BAL photovariability project.  DeRobertis pointed out in the evaluation that if an absorbing cloud at a fixed distance from a quasar expands and decreases in density, it can effectively photoevaporate in an ion of interest (n goes down, L and d are constant, so ionization parameter U=L/nd^2 goes up).  I don't think anyone's considered that possibility for BAL variability before.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Equinoctial

Chajet research evaluation passed; we resolve to make some better figures.
Read over redshifted BAL troughs ESO proposal.
Read over drafts of Rogerson research evaluation.
A few revisions to redshifted BAL draft paper.
That plus teaching, the parents in town, and being a bit under the weather fills up the week.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Centenarian

Passed the 100-post mark without noticing.  Guess I'm getting forgetful.

Mon.: Continued reading paper for journal club.  Skimmed another paper for colleagues.  Brief discussion with Chajet.  Email responses to Filiz Ak.  Incorporated textual revisions to redshifted BAL quasar draft.  ngCFHT.
Teaching: lecture prep, wrote & sent TA email.  Moodling.

Tue.: Inclination-angle revision and email. Journal club. ngCFHT. Teaching: Moodling, Bit of TA organization.

Friday, September 9, 2011

The Secret of Comedy

Wednesday:
Bus ride to York: finished reading parts of consultants' report on CDN astronomy. Mildly edifying.
8-10:15 am: E-mail; course preparation online.
10:15-11:45 am: Teaching.  Sabbatical indisputably over now.
11:45-12:30: reading draft research evaluation for Chajet; e-mail.
12:30-1:15: Journal club.
1:15-2:30: e-mail, discussion of draft research evaluation with Chajet.
2:30-6:30: thinking about polar broad absorption line quasars, keeping up with email/newsletters/etc.

Thursday:
9:30-10:30: outlined calculation of unobscured line-of-sight distribution in Lawrence & Elvis tilted-disk obscuration model and a variant thereof.
10:30-11:30: ngCFHT.
Bus ride to York: reading preprint on AGN-driven galactic winds.
12:30-1:30: Physics grad student orientation BBQ.
1:30-2:15: emailing students in intro astro class.
2:15-9:00: ngCFHT, mostly.
9:00-9:30: tweaks to tomorrow's class slides.

Friday:
8:00-8:30: email, quick response on redshifted BAL quasar draft.
8:30-10:15: teaching work in Moodle, mostly.
10:15-11:45: teaching
11:45-12:15: lunch
12:15-1:00 teaching work
1:00-2:15: randomly inclined disks writeup & extension.
2:15-7:15: ngCFHT and student emails; some discussion of L&E unobscured sightlines.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Timing!

Breaking things down more than usual this entry, for my own edification:
Bus ride to York: wrote paragraph on ideas for followup work on redshifted BAL quasars
8-9 am: updated solar system model @ York website, thought & wrote about spectropolarimetry of above
9-10 am: thought & wrote about redshifted BAL quasar variability &c.
10-11 am: wrapped up internal draft on redshifted BAL quasars.  Whew!
11-12 am: lunch, errands, short summary of paper on CIV/MgII emission on shareflow
noon - 1:30 pm: website prep for teaching tomorrow, errands
1:30 - 2:30 pm: prepped digital cameras for checkout by students taking constellation photos
2:30 - 3:30 pm: finished website prep for teaching tomorrow, brief chat with Rogerson re: research this month.
Bus ride home (early to avoid the rush): reading a little of a consulting group's report on Canadian astronomy
Evening: project management style discussion & implementation of a few more teaching items.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Figuring

Skimmed paper on emission from narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy 1H 0707-495 right down at the event horizon.

Looked at some new figures from Chajet, and discussed results.

Redshifted-trough BAL quasars: looked at images for signs of binarity; made lots of spiffy figures; revised most sections of the text (but two figures and two sections remain).

Resolved an issue regarding average inclinations of randomly inclined disks: the median inclination angle (i=0 being face-on) is 60 degrees, but the mean is 57.3 degrees; http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AJ....132.2231C and http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ...697.2057L are thus in agreement.