Resonant Constellation

Well, it’s finally over, and aside from a slight headache and severe sleep deprivation, I’m not too much worse for the wear. Just before the semester ended, however, fun things began to occur. The first was that my name is now on a submitted paper, which you can find here. It is not yet accepted to the journal, and we’re still waiting on referee’s notes.

Also on the research front, I have a new job, researching the stellar population around the light-echo source V838 Monocerotis. This is a really interesting star, and my research is aimed at determining if it is part of a young or old population. This could tell us a lot about how the outburst event occurred, and even what it was.

This weekend, I have been in Phoenix at the invite of my friend Pete (you can find his website to the right in my links) attending a blog bash and the NRA Convention. I went to this event as a member of the media and as such, felt obligated to take pictures, investigate things, and write interesting things down. In all honesty, I did feel a bit out of place at this convention (Star Trek conventions are much more my speed). There were quite a few people there, and the overwhelming majority of them live by the de-facto catchphrase of the convention: “Guns, Family, and God.” This is obviously not the usual crowd that I hang out with, hence the slight uncomfortableness, but we did meet up with several other bloggers who are anything but stereotypical NRA members. In fact, I believe I was the only non-member in that group. I channeled my inner journalism nerd (high-school paper) and wrote down many fascinating observations. I’m still mulling over these, but expect to see my reaction here within a couple of days.

Tomorrow, before leaving Phoenix, we plan to visit Luthier Walt Kuthman of Gypsy mandolins. I’ve been in contact with Walt about the possibility of him building me a custom Bouzouki. At the moment, this seems unlikely due to financial concerns, but I’m still hopeful about the future. Also musically, I just got a new CD by 2Duos, which includes Claire Mann and Aaron Jones, whose album I reviewed in one of the first posts for this blog. I may post a review of this new album here when I get home.

Every summer, I have a project-this is a tradition I have going back at least…well, about three years. This project invariably involves building something. For example, last summer one of my projects (there were two) was building and painstakingly painting a model of the U.S.S. Reliant, Khan’s ship from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. My other was constructing a custom prop-lightsaber. These were very entertaining. At the moment, I am considering several things for this summer’s project (or projects). First, I have designed a system for focusing many laser rays into a single beam. This would involve wiring the lasers to power supplies, and making or otherwise obtaining an optics system. So far, this is my best idea, but if anybody out there has any suggestions, I’d be glad to hear them.

The best thing, of course, is that I survived another year, becoming one of the approximately 6 astronomy majors out of 100 beginning in our freshman class to make it to senior year on schedule. 6% made it. I’m going to need this summer to recuperate a bit.