The Amateurs Who Discovered the U Scorpii Eruption

January 29, 2010 | Astronomers worldwide were waiting — but two remarkable amateurs in Florida turned out to be the ones watching at just the right time. Read more

A GRB without the Gamma-rays.

For you SNe folk :-) The article is here.

Does she lack sufficient knowledge or not?

Nature Jobs article on the Impostor Syndrome . This article is specifically about women astronomers! First described in 1978 by two clinical psychologists, the impostor syndrome is where a sufferer believes himself or herself to be inadequate in his or her field despite evidence to the contrary. Hopefully this article will point out to women astronomers that they need not drop out of astronomy after a PhD due to a misplaced lack of confidence.

(This AAS study is done by Pat Knezek who was at STScI when I was - Pat's a good friend of Duilia's. Duila was Theresa's MSC supervisor.)

Cosmological Simulations catch up with Observations.

Here's a Nature page that introduces a letter and an article on the decade old problem that cosmological simulations predict cuspy DM cores in galaxies but observations show constant density DM cores instead. The solution is to add star formation to the code and watch the winds blow material out of the centres. I'm looking forward to reading these articles, but the intro alone cleared up some of the difficulties in understanding the press release.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7278/edsumm/e100114-05.html

Canada's science policy:

What science policy? Or why we don't have one: See this Nature article.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7278/full/463135a.html

ASTRONAUT JOHN GRUNSFELD APPOINTED STSCI DEPUTY DIRECTOR

Now this is interesting - instead of an astronomer, they are appointing an astronaut.  He has been the captain on at least 2 Hubble servicing missions - I attended one shuttle launch as a guest of his guest. 

"Dr. John M. Grunsfeld has been appointed Deputy Director of the Space
Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., effective
January 4, 2010. He succeeds Dr. Michael Hauser, who stepped down in
October. STScI is the science operations center for NASA’s orbiting
Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope planned to
be launched in 2014."