President Obama speaks to Space Station Astronauts

The President welcomed a group of school children to the White House and held a conversation with the astronauts on board the Space Station. The astronauts explained the importance of the Space Station as a scientific research laboratory, the President discussed NASA's goals, and the students asked great questions.

Nice to see that the White House blog on this conversation also mentions WISE. 's first images. We "professionals" may sometime feel manned vs unmanned space programs are rivals, but to the public it is one joint enterprise, and we must stand or fall together.

First images from WISE

If I had stayed at IPAC I would have loved to work on the new WISE mid-infrared sky survey. So I'm excited to see this new WISE image of Andromeda just released by NASA:

And here are stars in Carina:

Science-Engineering-Technology Congressional Visits Day

I'll be participating in the Fifteenth Annual Science-Engineering-Technology Congressional Visits Day through the American Astronomical Society this spring.

The CVD is a two-day annual event that brings scientists, engineers, researchers, educators, and technology executives to Washington to raise visibility and support for science, engineering, and technology. Uniquely multi-sector and multi-disciplinary, the CVD is coordinated by coalitions of companies, professional societies and educational institutions and it is open to all people who believe that science and technology comprise the cornerstone of our Nation's future.

Objective
.. . to underscore the long-term importance of science, engineering, and technology to the Nation through meetings with congressional decisionmakers.

Participants
.. . . members of the Science-Engineering-Technology Working Group and other colleagues in the science and technology enterprise.

Should be interesting!

The need to publish scientific datasets and code

One of the interesting angles of the so-called CLIMATEGATE scandal, where files and e-mails of climate change researchers were stolen and selectively published, is the READ_ME file documenting someone's work trying to read old data files and getting models to work. Whatever ethical problems the e-mails reveal -- and I agree there are some -- the file is solid documentation that these are real scientists grappling with problems that are all too familiar to me as an astronomer, especially because I have programmed in IDL and Fortran. It seems physicists and software developers have the same reaction. Here's a sample from the file:

4. Successfully ran the IDL regridding routine quick_interp_tdm.pro (why IDL?! Why not F90?!) to produce '.glo' files.

5. Currently trying to convert .glo files to .grim files so that we can compare with previous output. However the progam suite headed by globulk.f90 is not playing nicely - problems with it expecting a defunct file system (all path widths were 80ch, have been globally changed to 160ch) and also no guidance on which reference files to choose. It also doesn't seem to like files being in any directory other than the current one!!

6. Temporarily abandoned 5., getting closer but there's always another problem to be evaded. Instead, will try using rawtogrim.f90 to convert straight to GRIM. This will include non-land cells but for comparison purposes that shouldn't be a big problem... [edit] noo, that's not gonna work either, it asks for a 'template grim filepath', no idea what it wants (as usual) and a serach for files with 'grim' or 'template' in them does not bear useful fruit. As per usual. Giving up on this approach altogether.

I have any number of text files that look like this, though I doubt as I am quite as good in documenting each step anymore, since I don't work in big projects lately. One of the worst aspects is trying to figure out what someone else really did -- whether it's regridding temperature data stored in binary files (as in the stolen file), or seeing how the 2MASS pipeline really calculates PSF and aperture photmetry, and where the aperture corrections come from (as in my life as a Staff Scientist at IPAC.) More generally, NASA and all astronomers historically had a lot of problems preserving old data since file formats were not standardized decades ago. The days when the data are a photographic plate that can be preserved in a vault for a century are long gone. In short, the READ_ME file is a snapshot of what many scientists' work is like.

Also interesting is what this reveals about how scientists should publish today. My friend David Hogg is a great advocate for publishing the code along with data and model results in journal articles. I think he's correct and astronomical (and climate!) journals should work to encourage this is in the future. I'm on the Spitzer Science Users Panel, and in a recent meeting we recommended that the Spitzer Science Center release all the computer code used to process Spitzer Space Telescope data. All this pipeline will not compile or work on other computers, it does provide a precise documentation of what was really done, and if some poor future grad student finds himself recreating it, at least he or she has a better chance of getting the answer right in less time. Furthermore, it may be useful as a model to other projects. Given the public controversy over global warming, publishing the full model codes and datasets needs to be encouraged. It may be reveal some sloppy comments or evenmistakes, but in the long run it will benefit the scientific community and the broader public.

History of Science

The Royal Society has published online a number of historic scientific documents. I particularly like the letter from Ben Franklin on the famous kite experiment:

The kite is to raised, when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, (which is very frequent in this country)...

NASA Internships

I attended a very interesting talk today at the annual Delaware Space Grant Consortium meeting by Margaret Maher of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She described their active internship program. I came away with the impression that there are many internships and they are a key path to permanent positions. I understand NASA has the goal of hiring recent graduates. Our physics and astronomy students should definitely keep these opportunities in mind. Some Useful Links:

NASA Jobs Website.
Goddard Internships.
NASA Undergraduate Internships

AstroBetter

The last time I learned a really useful trick on the Mac it was from visiting Kelle Cruz.Now I can just read her blog, AstroBetter: Tips and Tricks for Professional Astronomers. Thanks Kelle!