Ground based telescopes will always be worse than space based telescope due to the atmosphere.
Ground based telescopes will always have to deal with the atmosphere, and space based ones won't, yes. That's rarely the only factor in the results.
The only place ground based telescopes beat space based telescopes is ease of access.
Ah, but ease of access translates to ease of upgrades. Hubble's infrared imaging capability is about to be upgraded from 256x256 to 1024x1024... meanwhile, folks in Hawai have been at 4096x4096 for six years already, since they developed the chips for the next (James Webb) space telescope's infrared camera.
Now...a lunar base with a massive telescope...that wouldn't be all that bad.
Sure, as long as you can fabricate instruments from regolith in lunar gravity. Otherwise, you're shipping stuff from Earth to the Moon, which is even more expensive than putting it into orbit.
They've narrowed it down to two sites. It's either going on Mauna Kea, or in Chile.
I was just talking to a guy today who works at an 8-meter-class telescope on Mauna Kea, and he was saying that right now, they have proposals for 7 times as many nights as there actually are available. He thought this might drop off a bit once the TMT is built, but I figure hey, the TMT is only one scope, so at most one of those 7 can go use it. The 8-10 meter guys are safe for probably a good while - Keck I is 17 years old this year, and the 30-year-old, 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii telescope is still relevant and doing good work.
Ten years from now, maybe we have a couple 30-40 meter telescopes, but a huge amount of the serious work will still be getting done on stuff 10 meters or smaller.
Both - in whatever order and whatever pace works.
on
Go For a Masters, Or Not?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Right now, you've presumably got non-zero earning potential. Earning some money might feel good. Getting rid of some student loans might feel good.
Sooner or later, maybe you'll start spotting jobs that you could get if, on top of your natural talent, you had more education. When you start thinking that, go get more education.
I spent about 15 years in IT (went from $18K to $100K+) and never needed more education than I had. If I had more education, I suppose I might have been pushed into management... but I don't really like managing, I like doing.
5 years ago, took my IT skills and went into scientific and policy fields where I got to apply my IT skills, but got to learn a bunch of entirely new stuff, and do completely different work that made my old cubicle-dwelling buddies extremely jealous. Of course, it did put my pay back down to $18K... and I realized that everyone around me had a PhD or JD or something similar! So after racking up some experience, I'm now taking grad classes... and in these fields, just being in grad school makes people take my job applications a lot more seriously.
I already bike to work just about all the time, so I need something different on "bike to work" day. Maybe if I can borrow a horse. Or I could rent the most fuel-inefficient SUV I can find...
The NCS would fall under the auspices of NOAA but would utilize the expertise and resources of other federal agencies to meet the growing demand for climate services, the committee stated.
NOAA describes the NCS as being the nation's identified, accessible, official source of authoritative, regular, and timely climate information. That includes historical and real-time data, monitoring and assessments, research and modeling, predictions and projections, decision support tools and early warning systems, and the development and delivery of valued climate services.
Which part of this is unclear? This is NOAA (who are good at what they do) getting access to even more "expertise and resources." Sounds cool.
Using opt-in saves you the cost of marketing to people who don't want your stuff, saves you the cost of storing data about them, and saves you from the negative word-of-mouth opt-out causes.
I've run opt-in marketing campaigns, and have converted multiple employers from opt-out to opt-in. Before the switch, every mailout would result in an inbox full of complaints and threats. After the switch to opt-in, people would actually mail us asking where the ads were, if we were late.
Apple's "Preview" (included with OS X, and did anyone mention that OS X's display model is visual PDF or something like that?) does pretty much everything you need there, better than Acrobat, and with less bloat. (And to the other poster who was wondering, yes, you can fill in forms. Can't create/edit them, though.) But although it runs on Intel, it doesn't run on Windows. Sorry.:(
I've worked at Gemini in the past. I've worked at UKIRT in the past. The two nights immediately preceding the event, I worked at Keck (although on the summit, not like those webcasting wimps down in Waimea). But every night of the webcast, I'm working at the UH 2.2-meter, formerly known as "THE Mauna Kea Observatory," which somehow managed to not get a slot - my boss claims there were a limited number of slots available and the bigger scopes snagged them all - and then get overlooked completely in the press releases that say "all" the Mauna Kea observatories were involved. Hmph.
So, rather than lull you to sleep with 15 minutes of video, how about a bullet list? * First large telescope to be fully computer-controlled. * Second large telescope to have computer control work properly.;) * Kuiper belt discovered here (1992 QB1, Dave Jewitt and Jane Luu) * 45 of known 63 moons of Jupiter discovered here (Scott Sheppard, 2000-2004) * "Main-Belt Comets" class of solar system bodies defined here (Henry Hsieh) * Size and mass of transiting exoplanets measured 4x more accurately here (John A. Johnson) * 50-60% of all announced supernova discoveries the last few years made here (Nearby Supernova Factory)
My operating shift this time features: April 2 - Nick Moskovitz taking asteroid light curves in preparation for some Spitzer time April 3 - Nearby Supernova Factory April 4 - Dave Tholen, discoverer of the asteroid Apophis (remember to duck in 2029/2036) April 5 - Eric Gaidos, UH geology and geophysics professor
Just as a data point, it cost something like a billion (1990) dollars to put Hubble into orbit, and over the life of the program, I think they're talking something like 6 billion total (including salaries for the folks who operate it and every other conceivable expense).
Hubble's primary mirror is about 2.4 meters. There's currently a proposed project to build a thirty-meter terrestrial telescope, either in Hawaii or Chile, for about $1 billion.
Intel, Nvidia and AMD helped Apple formulate the original proposal for OpenCL... Intel makes Apple's CPUs, Nvidia increasingly makes the GPUs (sometimes 2 in a single laptop). So there's bound to be some smack-talking about CPUs vs. GPUs and all that.
I think Apple will be the first to have OpenCL support in an OS, and as others follow suit and we see more CPUs and GPUs in machines, this little tiff might conceivably end up meaning... something.
It's not 1/4th the price, but it is also not $2799; How about the Voodoo Envy? Or the Dell Studio ($799 CAD)? If by "thin and cool", you mean "trendy fashion statement that runs OS X", then no, these machines are not for you.
Let's leave the ill-defined "cool" out of it, and just go with the first two-thirds of the AC's request:
"Show me another machine with the specs of the MBP that is as thin..."
The Voodoo Envy 133 is a 13.3" laptop, which makes it more of a would-be competitor for the MacBook Air, not the MacBook Pro.
The Dell Studio 17" ranges from 1.18" (30mm) to 1.69" (43mm) thick, compared to the 17" MacBook Pro's 0.98" (25mm), and starts off more than a pound heavier.
So you suggested a system that clearly doesn't have anything resembling the specs of the MBP, and one that clearly isn't as thin... did you misunderstand his request?;)
Once WM is very common, as opposed to now where it pretty much is in a limited selection of phones, both Microsoft, and the WM app makers would benefit
Same question I posed to the guy who said things would change once Android gained market share: what circumstances are going to change that will cause WM to gain market share?
Also, OS X is in a very limited selection of phones. Ditto Android. I can name those phones, as can probably all Slashdotters and I suspect a decent number of people on the street who don't even have smartphones could, too. What phones run WM? Uh... I think some Palms do. Other than that, I have no idea. And my life doesn't seem less rich and fulfilling for not knowing.
Once the G1 has been around for longer and Android gets more market share I expect the Android Market to go head to head with the App Store.
The G1 being around longer seems likely to happen, but I don't know whether that necessarily translates to Android getting more market share. Not saying it won't - the increasing popularity of smartphones is a rising tide that lifts all boats - but I'm not sure what circumstances will change to make it dominant.
I don't recall Commodore BASIC requiring the closing semicolon.:)
I wasn't as anti-retail as that, of course... I just liked to make the screen cycle through the pretty colors (all 16 of 'em) while the computer made siren sounds.
Stations in Hawaii switched on January 15, so as to have their old towers torn down before the start of the mating season of an endangered seabird. So this won't make any difference for those of us in the 808 state.
Why ideologically align yourself with a mealy-mouthed, navel gazing future that would treat your profession as something in a zoo, barely tolerated for diversity purposes? When instead you could be in a future where your profession is highly valued because it allows civilization to exist?
I deal professionally with both the study of things beyond this planet and the study of how to exist sustainably on this planet, so I don't see this being a binary choice, or necessarily see the dichotomy existing at all. I'm not directly engaged in researching how to live in space, on the Moon, etc - those folks are down the hall from me - but I've seen their technology, heard the briefings from NASA folks, and so on.
Yes, there are risks to focusing entirely on this planet. But places like the Moon and Mars have their own drawbacks, in part due to their lower mass and resultant lack of a thick atmosphere. The atmosphere is annoying to us on the astronomy side, since it messes up the view, but it's quite handy for protecting us from radiation and falling rocks. If you really want a comparable new home, you'll be needing something closer to 1 Earth mass. And we who work in astronomy, with NASA or the folks who study exoplanets, are working on delivering that.
Slashdot Mirror
Ground based telescopes will always be worse than space based telescope due to the atmosphere.
Ground based telescopes will always have to deal with the atmosphere, and space based ones won't, yes. That's rarely the only factor in the results.
The only place ground based telescopes beat space based telescopes is ease of access.
Ah, but ease of access translates to ease of upgrades. Hubble's infrared imaging capability is about to be upgraded from 256x256 to 1024x1024... meanwhile, folks in Hawai have been at 4096x4096 for six years already, since they developed the chips for the next (James Webb) space telescope's infrared camera.
Now...a lunar base with a massive telescope...that wouldn't be all that bad.
Sure, as long as you can fabricate instruments from regolith in lunar gravity. Otherwise, you're shipping stuff from Earth to the Moon, which is even more expensive than putting it into orbit.
They've narrowed it down to two sites. It's either going on Mauna Kea, or in Chile.
I was just talking to a guy today who works at an 8-meter-class telescope on Mauna Kea, and he was saying that right now, they have proposals for 7 times as many nights as there actually are available. He thought this might drop off a bit once the TMT is built, but I figure hey, the TMT is only one scope, so at most one of those 7 can go use it. The 8-10 meter guys are safe for probably a good while - Keck I is 17 years old this year, and the 30-year-old, 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii telescope is still relevant and doing good work.
Ten years from now, maybe we have a couple 30-40 meter telescopes, but a huge amount of the serious work will still be getting done on stuff 10 meters or smaller.
Right now, you've presumably got non-zero earning potential. Earning some money might feel good. Getting rid of some student loans might feel good.
Sooner or later, maybe you'll start spotting jobs that you could get if, on top of your natural talent, you had more education. When you start thinking that, go get more education.
I spent about 15 years in IT (went from $18K to $100K+) and never needed more education than I had. If I had more education, I suppose I might have been pushed into management... but I don't really like managing, I like doing.
5 years ago, took my IT skills and went into scientific and policy fields where I got to apply my IT skills, but got to learn a bunch of entirely new stuff, and do completely different work that made my old cubicle-dwelling buddies extremely jealous. Of course, it did put my pay back down to $18K... and I realized that everyone around me had a PhD or JD or something similar! So after racking up some experience, I'm now taking grad classes... and in these fields, just being in grad school makes people take my job applications a lot more seriously.
I just heard through the grapevine that $100+ million in stimulus funds might go for development of the ATST.
(Yeah I know - watch out for Ewoks.)
I already bike to work just about all the time, so I need something different on "bike to work" day. Maybe if I can borrow a horse. Or I could rent the most fuel-inefficient SUV I can find...
The NCS would fall under the auspices of NOAA but would utilize the expertise and resources of other federal agencies to meet the growing demand for climate services, the committee stated.
NOAA describes the NCS as being the nation's identified, accessible, official source of authoritative, regular, and timely climate information. That includes historical and real-time data, monitoring and assessments, research and modeling, predictions and projections, decision support tools and early warning systems, and the development and delivery of valued climate services.
Which part of this is unclear? This is NOAA (who are good at what they do) getting access to even more "expertise and resources." Sounds cool.
It's about time someone found a use for northern Minnesota. :)
(Shout-outs to my friends at the call-center in Chisholm)
Using opt-in saves you the cost of marketing to people who don't want your stuff, saves you the cost of storing data about them, and saves you from the negative word-of-mouth opt-out causes.
I've run opt-in marketing campaigns, and have converted multiple employers from opt-out to opt-in. Before the switch, every mailout would result in an inbox full of complaints and threats. After the switch to opt-in, people would actually mail us asking where the ads were, if we were late.
I'll take opt-in over opt-out any day.
Apple's "Preview" (included with OS X, and did anyone mention that OS X's display model is visual PDF or something like that?) does pretty much everything you need there, better than Acrobat, and with less bloat. (And to the other poster who was wondering, yes, you can fill in forms. Can't create/edit them, though.) But although it runs on Intel, it doesn't run on Windows. Sorry. :(
I've worked at Gemini in the past. I've worked at UKIRT in the past. The two nights immediately preceding the event, I worked at Keck (although on the summit, not like those webcasting wimps down in Waimea). But every night of the webcast, I'm working at the UH 2.2-meter, formerly known as "THE Mauna Kea Observatory," which somehow managed to not get a slot - my boss claims there were a limited number of slots available and the bigger scopes snagged them all - and then get overlooked completely in the press releases that say "all" the Mauna Kea observatories were involved. Hmph.
So, rather than lull you to sleep with 15 minutes of video, how about a bullet list? ;)
* First large telescope to be fully computer-controlled.
* Second large telescope to have computer control work properly.
* Kuiper belt discovered here (1992 QB1, Dave Jewitt and Jane Luu)
* 45 of known 63 moons of Jupiter discovered here (Scott Sheppard, 2000-2004)
* "Main-Belt Comets" class of solar system bodies defined here (Henry Hsieh)
* Size and mass of transiting exoplanets measured 4x more accurately here (John A. Johnson)
* 50-60% of all announced supernova discoveries the last few years made here (Nearby Supernova Factory)
My operating shift this time features:
April 2 - Nick Moskovitz taking asteroid light curves in preparation for some Spitzer time
April 3 - Nearby Supernova Factory
April 4 - Dave Tholen, discoverer of the asteroid Apophis (remember to duck in 2029/2036)
April 5 - Eric Gaidos, UH geology and geophysics professor
Um... Solar is nuclear. :)
I thought it was:
2. ???
3. Profit!
But maybe it's
2. Whine about life on Slashdot.
3. Profit!
Anyway, I too look forward to hearing how many Slashdotters will buy something solely because it's linked from here. :)
A small price to pay for not being eaten by a Grue.
so people who bought their product KNOWM
WTF does that mean?
It means some people don't know how to spell GNOME.
Just as a data point, it cost something like a billion (1990) dollars to put Hubble into orbit, and over the life of the program, I think they're talking something like 6 billion total (including salaries for the folks who operate it and every other conceivable expense).
Hubble's primary mirror is about 2.4 meters. There's currently a proposed project to build a thirty-meter terrestrial telescope, either in Hawaii or Chile, for about $1 billion.
Launch costs are a b*tch, yes.
Intel, Nvidia and AMD helped Apple formulate the original proposal for OpenCL... Intel makes Apple's CPUs, Nvidia increasingly makes the GPUs (sometimes 2 in a single laptop). So there's bound to be some smack-talking about CPUs vs. GPUs and all that.
I think Apple will be the first to have OpenCL support in an OS, and as others follow suit and we see more CPUs and GPUs in machines, this little tiff might conceivably end up meaning... something.
There's a really fascinating video out there on YouTube about extremophile spores that survived the Tunguska explosion... good music, too.
It's not 1/4th the price, but it is also not $2799; How about the Voodoo Envy? Or the Dell Studio ($799 CAD)?
If by "thin and cool", you mean "trendy fashion statement that runs OS X", then no, these machines are not for you.
Let's leave the ill-defined "cool" out of it, and just go with the first two-thirds of the AC's request:
"Show me another machine with the specs of the MBP that is as thin..."
The Voodoo Envy 133 is a 13.3" laptop, which makes it more of a would-be competitor for the MacBook Air, not the MacBook Pro.
The Dell Studio 17" ranges from 1.18" (30mm) to 1.69" (43mm) thick, compared to the 17" MacBook Pro's 0.98" (25mm), and starts off more than a pound heavier.
So you suggested a system that clearly doesn't have anything resembling the specs of the MBP, and one that clearly isn't as thin... did you misunderstand his request? ;)
Once WM is very common, as opposed to now where it pretty much is in a limited selection of phones, both Microsoft, and the WM app makers would benefit
Same question I posed to the guy who said things would change once Android gained market share: what circumstances are going to change that will cause WM to gain market share?
Also, OS X is in a very limited selection of phones. Ditto Android. I can name those phones, as can probably all Slashdotters and I suspect a decent number of people on the street who don't even have smartphones could, too. What phones run WM? Uh... I think some Palms do. Other than that, I have no idea. And my life doesn't seem less rich and fulfilling for not knowing.
Once the G1 has been around for longer and Android gets more market share I expect the Android Market to go head to head with the App Store.
The G1 being around longer seems likely to happen, but I don't know whether that necessarily translates to Android getting more market share. Not saying it won't - the increasing popularity of smartphones is a rising tide that lifts all boats - but I'm not sure what circumstances will change to make it dominant.
I'd be most interested in seeing a YouTube clip of it trying to avoid a hail of bullets fired from different angles.
I wouldn't want to be wearing it in that scenario.
I don't recall Commodore BASIC requiring the closing semicolon. :)
I wasn't as anti-retail as that, of course... I just liked to make the screen cycle through the pretty colors (all 16 of 'em) while the computer made siren sounds.
Stations in Hawaii switched on January 15, so as to have their old towers torn down before the start of the mating season of an endangered seabird. So this won't make any difference for those of us in the 808 state.
...enough so to afford a Sherpa to carry the thing?
Why ideologically align yourself with a mealy-mouthed, navel gazing future that would treat your profession as something in a zoo, barely tolerated for diversity purposes? When instead you could be in a future where your profession is highly valued because it allows civilization to exist?
I deal professionally with both the study of things beyond this planet and the study of how to exist sustainably on this planet, so I don't see this being a binary choice, or necessarily see the dichotomy existing at all. I'm not directly engaged in researching how to live in space, on the Moon, etc - those folks are down the hall from me - but I've seen their technology, heard the briefings from NASA folks, and so on.
Yes, there are risks to focusing entirely on this planet. But places like the Moon and Mars have their own drawbacks, in part due to their lower mass and resultant lack of a thick atmosphere. The atmosphere is annoying to us on the astronomy side, since it messes up the view, but it's quite handy for protecting us from radiation and falling rocks. If you really want a comparable new home, you'll be needing something closer to 1 Earth mass. And we who work in astronomy, with NASA or the folks who study exoplanets, are working on delivering that.