Astronomy: Observing at CTIO

This past week I went to two observatories for some observing runs: Cerro Tololo International Observatory (CTIO) and La Silla Observatory. I've talked about La Silla before (here and here). However, it's been several years since I've been to CTIO. I'll briefly go over my experience there observing the Dark Energy Camera (DECam).

Book Review: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa

The latest selection our book club is Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (La tia Julia y el escribidor) by Mario Vargas Llosa. There's been a desire to read (English-translated) Latin American authors and this is one of the more popular ones. It reminded me of my days in high school where I had to read all manner of books for my Spanish class including works by Enrique Laguerre, Gabriel Garcia Marques, and many others. I know read mainly for entertainment and choose to do so in the genre of speculative fiction. I will endeavor to provide more fine science fiction and fantasy selections for our book club!

Read on for my full review.

Book Review: Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

This is the second book in Brandon's Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. While projected as a ten-book series, it is already very strong and has a healthy community of speculation as readers try to decipher secrets and hints as to what may come next. Fortunately, Sanderson has shown his skill at writing quickly and efficiently so we have not had to wait too long between installments of his series. Hence, I highly recommend people give this series a try.

Read on for the full review, spoiler free (at least for book 2).

Book Review: Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson

Dust of Dreams is the ninth book of the ten-book series Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. This has been a good series overall and the end is just in sight. It's taken a long time to go through these books for various reasons, though, which is a drawback when trying to remember the many names or plot lines. As always, I try to avoid direct spoilers, though some knowledge of the prior books will help.

Read on for my full review.

Book Review: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

This upcoming month's book club pick was Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I hesitated to start it as it did not sound appealing at all. However, once I did I was quickly sucked in by the story. Despite being nonfiction and a memoir of her travels along the Pacific Crest Trail, it reflects elements of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, perhaps most commonly known as "the hero's journey." This lends the story a broader appeal and was one of the main reasons why I quickly dug right in despite the initial hesitation.

Read on for the full review.

Book Review: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I read Ender's Game a long time ago, back when I was in high school. When I think back and remember the science fiction and fantasy books that shaped my childhood years, that is one of the few that I can remember. One of my friends would send me the latest news on the Ender's Game movie for the past decade or so. It seemed we waited forever for the movie to be made.

Well, the movie has been made and I saw it a week or so ago. I'm not a movie critic, but while watching it I kept thinking back to the book. About how much I'd forgotten, and how much I'd remembered. It had been so long I decided to go back and re-read the book.

Read on for my review of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

Astronomy: Cloudy Weather on a Nearby Brown Dwarf

Artistic rendering of clouds in the Luhman 16 system. Credit: ESO/I. Crossfield/N. Risinger

Brown dwarfs are failed stars in the sense that they are not large enough to fuse hydrogen in their cores like our own Sun. As such, they straddle the boundary between planets like Jupiter and faint, cool stars. Gas giant planets have been found around many stars in our Galaxy, but they are frequently hard to study given the proximity to their host stars. Brown dwarfs provide an alternative as they can be studied more carefully without worrying about a bright star being too close.

One aspect of giant planet and brown dwarf science that has been active of late has been the study of their atmospheres. To this effort, Dr. Ian Crossfield, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and his team have created an impressively detailed map of the closest brown dwarf system we know.

Astronomy: The 223rd American Astronomical Society Meeting

Last week, I was at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Now, I'm back in Chile and have finally written up a post about my experiences there. It's taken a while to write this up, mainly because I got very excited for some of my science at the meeting, but more on that later. Now, without further ado is a brief discussion of my time at the meeting and why I always enjoy it.