Astrophysics Land

This past Friday, August 10th, 2013, I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting Astrophysics Land, as a good friend of mine was defending his PhD thesis at Northwestern University. I rode up from Hyde Park with my friend and his wife, and I spent some time lurking in the Dearborn observatory.

Photo Source - My friend's office is in the circular room directly underneath the telescope.

His PhD talk was excellent. To orient us in space, he used this really fascinating virtual space map called Chromoscope. If you look at our galaxy using the visual filter you can see little black patches littered throughout the Milky Way. If you switch the filter to "microwave," the dark patches seem to glow. These patches are nebulae, or "cold Galactic interstellar clouds," and within these clouds stars are born.

My friend studies these nebulae, which is pretty rad if you ask me. Even crazier is how he studies them: he goes to McMurdo Station in Antarctica and launches a gigantic helium balloon up into the Earth's outer atmostphere. A telescope and two star cameras are attached to the balloon, which are able to measure the magnetic fields within these clouds of gas. In this way, he is able to better understand the forces that shape the formation of stars.

All this is part of a large collaboration called "BLAST," or "Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope." You can see photos of the expedition here, and I interviewed my friend for the Groks Science Radio Show, where he discussed the issues involved in attaching your thesis project to a giant balloon and launching it into almost-space from Antarctica. It's pretty crazy stuff!

To celebrate his awesome talk and successful defense, I drew a picture in the physics building lecture hall. Here is a blurry photograph of it:

Cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make females mad

Afterwards we spent some time in the Northwestern Shakespeare garden, which is really beautiful. While my friend and his wife relaxed, I wandered around taking pictures. As usual!

Nothing says "Shakespeare" like a barfing lion ...

We celebrated with dinner and cocktails at a vegetarian restaurant, and then walked back to the Dearborn observatory in the rain. I popped upstairs to see the telescope but, due to the clouds, we couldn't look through it. Such a shame - it would have been a perfect end to the day.

Goodbye, Astrophysics Land! And thanks for all the fish stars chickens.