Graduating this year?

Image from OAA

If you will be completing a major or minor in Astronomy and Astrophysics, either alone or with another program (e.g., a double major), then please send me an email.  I’ll be wanting to set up an appointment with you before end of the Autumn semester so we can check that you’ve fulfilled the degree requirements and tie up any loose ends.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

APOD for August 28, 2016

A good place to get a daily Astronomy fix is NASA‘s Astronomy Picture of the Day.  Have a look!  Each day there’s a beautiful picture with a description written by professional astronomers.

The image shown here is a large cluster of galaxies, in which the gravity from the galaxies and the dark matter magnify and distort images of much more distant background galaxies.

How to live wisely

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times series Education Life called How to Live Wisely.  It raises some good questions, including

What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? And how do I use my time here at college to build on the answers to these tough questions?

Give it a read, and comment below on your thoughts about being productive and happy in college.

Welcome to the new semester!

Path of total eclipse

I wish all of you a happy and productive term!

As long as you are planning classes, study time, work time, and maybe the occasional break time, you may wish to mark your calendars for Monday, August 21, 2017.  On that day there will be a total solar eclipse across the continental USA.  This will be your last chance for quite a while to see a total solar eclipse in the United States – the next ones will be in 2024 and 2045.    Unfortunately, classes begin at OSU the day after the eclipse, so you might have to apologize to your professors in the Autumn 2017 term that you were a day or two late getting back!

Click on the image to see a larger version of the map.

First announcement: ASC scholarships

Photo from ASC

The College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State holds a scholarship competition each semester.  This competition is conducted by the ASC Honors Program, and makes awards from $500 to about $6000.  Students work with a faculty advisor to design a research or scholarly project.

Eligible students have attained junior standing and meet one of the following criteria: be a potential candidate for graduation with research distinction or with honors research distinction or present other evidence of work on a significant research project.

Full details may be found at this link.

The deadline is 5:00 p.m. on Monday, September 19.  If you are interested, please speak with a potential advisor as soon as you can once the semester starts.

 


In other news: In my previous blog post, I mentioned opportunities to work as an Instructional Aide in the fall semester. When I posted that, I did not realize that the deadline for making appointments was imminent, so we had to rush to settle everything. I’ll do better at getting the news out for the spring semester appointments.