Space...they keep moving the final frontier further and further out

I'm on the island for the International Year of Astronomy. It's the first anniversary of that year actually. There was a press conference today sponsored by the American Astronomical Society. THey released some new images and data analysis from the Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer telescopes that make very cool pictures but also show things about the universe's distant past. Here's a link to the official press release - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/01

Here's a link to the location. Not sure how long the pics will be up, but the whole island is worth investigating --- http://slurl.com/secondlife/Astronomy%202009/27/246/27

Here's a big overview pic - a not bad crowd - that's me in the sweater sitting on the left.

Here's the pic from the Hubble using the Wide Field Camera 3 the shuttle astronauts installed early in 2009.  These pics were taken in October & November 2009. The dots aren't stars - they're galaxies! And the smallest, faintest ones are the light those galaxies emitted 13 billion years ago.







and here's the picture from the Spitzer telescope of the Magellenic cloud, specifically it's tail. They're studying the life cycle of space dust and it's role in galaxy formation. The blue colored dots are the older stars; they spit out dust. The green areas are organic dust and they're the hottest areas, and the red areas are stars forming that are covered by dust

And here's a cool avatar that was present - a steampunk flying cat

Another event at the Smarter Technology sim

Today they had someone from Cisco who's involved in education - not in terms of employee training but in terms of what do students need to learn to succeed in the future. Skills for the 21st century. He's the avatar on the right and the picture is the cover of a book that he wrote that's coming out soon.

I like the space Smarter Technology has - there's a raised stage, seats that are sloped so you can see without throwing your camera around. There's not muchin the background to be distracting. They ahve some big spaces for product demonstrations too.

Nice mix of avatars too - almost always a good size crowd. A few furries, a tiny or two. And that's Mitch Wagner the robot in the picture on the right.

Second Skin documentary

I watched the SecondSkin documentary about gamers over the weekend on Hulu. It was in a limited release in New York City over the weekend too. The documentary focused mostly on World of Warcraft and Everquest2. They had interviews with lots of gamers including some couples who met playing and a couple of people seriously addicted to game playing.

Then Monday evening Smarter Technology hosted a talk with the director/writer in SecondLife (which makes a cameo appearance in the movie). Here are a couple of pictures that I took of the presentation so you can see the set up and the speakers.

Another Student Presentation

Mike Palumbo, known in SL as Shmapple Patrono, presented the results of his independent study project on intellectual property and other legal issues in virtual worlds on the Park Communication island on Tuesday. The topic seems to be very popoular; his talk attracted a lively crowd. Mike dealt with a variety of tough questions. Some he could answer, and others he'll have to take to law school (which he starts in the fall).

Mike identified a variety of issues that residents of virtual worlds need to consider. He interviewed lawyers in world and visited a variety of law related spots.

Streamed a presentation live

Saturday morning, David Spiegelman from New Line Cinema gave apresentation to about 25 students on campus in Ithaca. We also streamed it live on the internet and into Secondlife. Here are a couple of pictures. It went pretty good. We had 4 or 5 people come by, including one from Australia (it was 1:30 Sunday morning there).

Thursday 4/26 at 7:30pm EDT (4:30 SLT) we're going to stream author David Macauley. Stay tuned for more details about that.