Thursday, November 24, 2011

Teaching

As proof of non-slackage, I offer the following in-class activity developed for my intro astro for non-scientists class.  Students work out the length of the solar days on Mercury and Venus using those planets' orbital periods and sidereal days.  Usage in classes, comments, and suggestions are all welcome.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Scattered

Research time has been scattered lately, what with funding proposals and other demands.  Only thing to report is that collaborator Jianfeng Wu's look at the newly public COS spectrum of PHL 1811 revealed that it did not turn into a BAL quasar, which would have been a simple solution to the mystery of its weirdness.  Nature isn't so simple, it seems.

A paper to referee and then I'm back to my own research in more than just interstitial time.