Space Science

Since 1998, the European Southern Observatory's VLT has returned spectacular imagery full of highly useful data. Many astronomers believe these are some of the best ground-based images ever taken, presented here in chronological order.

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Employment Committee have compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths. Below is our interview with Andy Cantrell, an astronomer turned math teacher. After his first postdoc, he worked with a recruiting agency for private schools to find his new position. He describes his working environment as ‘warm and supportive, and extremely family friendly’. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below. For access to all our Career Profile Project interviews, please visit http://aas.org/jobs/career-profiles. We plan to post a new career profile to this blog every first and third Thursday of the month. What field do you currently work in? K-12 What is the job title for your current position? Mathematics teacher. What is the name of your company/organization/institution? The Blake School What city, state, and country do you live in? Work in? Minneapolis, MN What is the highest degree in astronomy/physics you have received? Ph.D. What is/was your ultimate/final academic position in astronomy/physics? 1st postdoc. What has been your career path since you completed your degree? 2009-10: Postdoc with C. Bailyn at Yale. 2010-11: Lived in Japan, where my wife was doing dissertation research. 2011- present: Mathematics teacher at The Blake School. What were the most important factors that led you to leave astronomy and/or academia? The most important factor was simply that I loved teaching and wanted that to be my primary job. I also wanted a career path which would allow me to settle down earlier and give me more time at home with my family. If you have made a career change, what was your age at the time? 32 What have been particularly valuable skills for your current job that you gained through completing your degree? The depth and breadth of my experience with math and its applications has allowed me take students places that most calculus classes never go; for example we end the class with an exploration of the heat equation and its connections to analysis. My teaching experience as a graduate student, and the admirable mentoring I got from Charles Bailyn, was also invaluable in setting me up for a career teaching. What, if any, additional training did you complete in order to meet the qualifications? None. Describe a typical day at work. I teach four classes a day, with the rest of the day spent either preparing materials for class or meeting with students or my colleagues. My classes are generally fairly freeform; I let myself follow up on ideas suggested by students, while also making sure we get through the core material of the class. The students I teach are smart, lively and fun; I often find myself disbelieving that anyone would actually pay me to spend the day talking about math with such a lively and interested bunch of people. Describe job hunting and networking resources you used and any other advice/resources. I found the job through Carney, Sandoe & Associates, a major recruitment agency for private schools. They were extremely helpful and patient in working with me to find a job which was a good fit for my skills and background. What advice do you think advisors should be giving students regarding their career path? I wish more advisors had real respect for positions outside academia. Even if they don’t feel comfortable recommending or discussing positions outside their field, they should do whatever they can to mitigate the stigma often attached with leaving academia. I was incredibly lucky to have Charles Bailyn as an advisor, and he was completely supportive of my transition to teaching. I wish more of my peers had the same support that I did in making this transition. How many hours do you work in a week? 40-45 hours What is your

Join us Friday, 24 May, at 10:00 CEST for an 800 km-high tour with spectacular images from Earth-observing satellites

A soldier was hacked to death on a London street in an apparent terror attack.

DENVER (AP) — Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper's decision to block the execution of convicted killer Nathan Dunlap for as long as he is governor infuriated victims' relatives and drew quick criticism from Republicans ahead of the 2014 election.

Nine-year-old Sydney loved softball, while eight-year-old Kyle loved soccer.

Forecast for Titan: Wild weather could be ahead #space

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An eastern Ohio grand jury examining whether other laws were broken in the case of a 16-year-old girl raped by two high school football players prepared to resume work Thursday after a three-week break.

i caught myself staring at this image of the 2009 total solar eclipse that was skillfully put together by miloslav druckmuller and crew. to create the image, they stacked 38 individual images together and captured the fine structure of the sun's white corona, a far-reaching layer of the sun that we rarely get the chance to study because it is hugely out-shined by the blinding photosphere - except during a total eclipse. it amazes me just how far out the corona reaches - at least three times the width of the sun away. and its light flickers and changes as super-heated hydrogen bubbles up through the layers of the sun to be released into space, if it escapes the traps of the rolling magnetic fields.there exists an interesting mystery about our sun's corona. while the regular surface of the sun, the bright yellow bit hidden by the moon in the image above, has a temperature of about 6000 degrees celsius, the corona reaches a temperature of over one million! no one really knows how this happens, although "magnetic braids" might give a clue.we can see evidence of the sun's strong magnetic activity all the time. using specially-designed telescopes, we see solar flares, prominences and other activity happening closer to the sun's surface. to gain a feel for the size of our star - you can fit one hundred earths across the middle of the sun.this last photo is a still from the movie of the "tree of avatar" solar flare - well worth a watch.the surface of the sun appears alive with activity. every normal star out there in the universe also experiences these surface bursts and flares, but we cannot study them in as much detail because the stars are so far away. this realization makes me appreciate the work of the planets hunters, both professional and citizen scientists, even more. not only do they have to measure a miniscule dip in the light from the star because a planet passes in front of it and blocks it, but they have to try to be sure that the light dip isnt caused by normal stellar surface activity, nearly impossible to resolve at such large distances. despite the recent end of the kepler space telescope's lifespan collecting data of potential planets around distant stars, there is much astronomers have yet to learn from the telescope's plentiful archive. as of today, we have found between 719 and 889 exoplanets. i'm sure more and more will be revealed as the kepler data is explored. exciting times!

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is pressing ahead with the construction of a research reactor that Western experts say could eventually produce plutonium for a nuclear weapon if Tehran decides to make one, a U.N. report showed on Wednesday. In another development likely to worry the United States and its allies, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had added to its capacity to refine uranium, which can also provide the fissile core of a bomb if enriched to a high level. The IAEA also said Iran had asphalted a part of a military site, Parchin, that the U.N. ...