Thursday, 29 May 2008

An Afternoon of Plotting…

Filed under: Astronomy,School — Tags: , , , , — George Privon @ 15:35

… models.

I’ve been working quite a bit lately on my thesis. Fleshing out chapters and adding figures. One part of this is discussing the models of starbursts and active galactic nuclei that I’m using to study Cygnus A. So, I’ve made a couple plots showing the effect changing the parameters has on the models.

This plot shows the energy re-radiated by a clumpy torus in an active galaxy. The various panels show how the emission changes with the variety of parameters. More information on the model is available at https://newton.pa.uky.edu/~clumpyweb/. I’ll also have a bit of a writeup in my thesis eventually…

Monday, 26 May 2008

Memorial Day Ride

Filed under: Cycling,Virginia — Tags: , , — George Privon @ 16:30

One of the great things about Charlottesville is the outdoors activities which are easily accessible. This includes mountain biking, and suitable trails are scattered around town. My favorite place is Walnut Creek Park, which is just south of town off Old Lynchburg Rd. Fortunately, it is only ~10 miles away from my house…

So, this morning I headed out around 7:45 to hit the trails. After the 10 mile “warm-up” ride to get to Walnut Creek, I started by bombing down one of my favorite trails which features some nice technical turns as well as a stream crossing. Nearly two hours and 14 miles later, I emerged from the woods, almost totally wiped out. There are some great trails down there, most built by the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club I believe. Lots of good climbs and rocky patches keep things interesting.

Almost 4 hours after I left, I returned home, only dragging a bit though. 35 miles under my belt and a great start to the week.

Sunday, 25 May 2008

The Crack Post

Filed under: Climbing,West Virginia — Tags: , , , — George Privon @ 20:46

I had my first introduction to 5.9 handcracks yesterday at the New River Gorge. It was fantastic. I fell a lot. But eventually scratched my way up after hangdoging. I managed to escape with only a few scabs on my hands and wrists from the hand jams, but it was great.

I met up with Mike and friends at the New River Gorge for a day of climbing (he’s still there climbing). We spent most of Saturday at Junkyard, climbing a mix of moderate routes (on toprope for the most part). There were a couple classic routes, ranging from 5.6 to 5.10b. And, the best part.. there were very few people, even though it was Memorial Day weekend!

Suzanne Climbing

After spending most of the day at Junkyard, we headed over towards “Endless Wall” for some sport climbing. It was a bit more crowded, but we managed to find some short sport climbs to do. We started getting hungry around 430 and opted to beat the rush and head to Pies and Pints for pizza, before it got busy.

Through the Roof

Mike and I split the “Cuban Pork Pie” which included pulled pork, pineapple, carmelized onions, feta cheese and jalapenos. It was delicious. And, we had a pitcher of the local brew to wash it down. So, no complaints.

Not finished yet, upon returning to our campsite, we hiked a bit further down the road to run some laps on a 5.10b just down the hill. We wrapped things up as the sun set behind the rim of the gorge.

I had a great day getting back on rock. I’m hoping for more this summer… I’ve uploaded a bunch of pictures from the day to my flickr page:

New River Gorge – (24 May 2008) on Flickr

Thursday, 22 May 2008

Tumble

Filed under: Photography,Virginia — Tags: , , , , — George Privon @ 20:26


Tumble

Originally uploaded by GeorgePrivon

Here’s a cool shot I got while at last week’s “Fridays After Five” in Charlottesville. I saw some kids running around playing and happened to snap the shot just as they both tumbled to the ground.

More pictures from “Fridays After Five” are available here: Fridays After Five on flickr.

Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Productive Few Days

Filed under: Astronomy — Tags: , , , , — George Privon @ 17:33

Well, it’s been a good past few days on the research front. I had my first meeting with my advisor in over a month and got a telescope proposal worked out for the ARC 3.5m in Sunspot, MN to get some data on high redshift quasars. I suspect we’ll hear back on the proposal in a week or two.

In addition, I’ve been working on my reduction of some [[wikpedia:Hubble Space Telescope]] data for our study of the jet-gas interaction in a seyfert galaxy. I just finished reducing the data for the final filter. Next, I’ll begin processing the images to isolate the contribution from just the emission lines (so I’ll be removing the continuum light from the stars in the galaxy). This will allow us to study the properties of the AGN by comparing the morphology and energy output in various emission lines.

Finally, I’ve obtained some data from TripleSpec of another Seyefert galaxy for a separate project. I’ve started playing around with the tool to extract the data, and have made some progress with that. Hopefully in the near future, I’ll have a nice spectra I can show off of the galaxy. I’ll try and post a nice example if one comes up.

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress