Astronomy: A Video of the Local Universe

Cosmic flow near the Local Group of galaxies. Credit: Courtois et al 2013; Cosmic Flows conference.

You don't need to be an extragalactic astronomer to find the video below amazing.
This 17-minute video walks you through the distribution and velocities of galaxies within 300 million light-years of the Milky Way Galaxy. Distinct regions like the Virgo Cluster, the Local Void, and the Great Wall are easily seen and pointed out by the video. There's a lot of rotations going on, and the field of galaxies is complex, but the video does a good job of highlighting what's important at each step so that one is not completely overwhelmed. It's great to see where all these structures are and be reminded of how large the Universe is, as I tend to deal with stars that are a million times closer.

Check it out:

Cosmography of the Local Universe from Daniel Pomarède on Vimeo.

Astronomy: MOSFIRE First Light

MOSFIRE, or the Multi-Object Spectrometer For Infra-Red Exploration, has seen first light at W.M. Keck Observatory. This is means the instrument was mounted on the 10-meter diameter Keck I telescope and took its first images of the night sky. It's a big step as it shows that things are moving along.
The MOSFIRE instrument had been under construction at UCLA during my time there and several of my friends worked on it. It is good to see their efforts paid off and the instrument is online and will soon be taking data.