Why Santa Claus is correlated with Aids?

Probably this in one of the most sirius post in this blog!

Ok, so, what "science" is all aboute? Well, partly about finding correlations. The other part is to discover if that correlation is real. For example people that are talking about "global warming" mostly forget about second part.

How dose it work? How can We find correlation betwean Santa Claus and Aids?
It's easy, You have to compare two curves. You can use google trends - it shows how often topics have been searched on Google over time.

ok, just try SANTA (claus) and AIDS



santa is blue, aids - red.
correlation - obvious!!!!!!

Why? Does that mean that people think of Santa Claus as filthy, immoral, obscene old man with aids?
No, so why there is correlation.

Let's start with comparing google trends curves for CHRISTMAS and SANTA:



natural,
next step is CHRISTMAS and SEX



christmas is red, sex blue. Correlation isn't so perfect, but We belive it exist.
Last step is:

SEX vs. AIDS



and that is why we have correlation SANTA (claus) - AIDS




so, do You belive and undarstand now?
YOU SHOULDN'T!!!! It's an illusion. There IS NO real correlation between SEX and AIDS.
The trick is, that 1 December is World AIDS Day.

Show some compassion to astronomers, almost all their work is finding correlations!

Ps.
Find out why there is anticorrelation with VODKA - POLAND !!!!!!!! XD

To prove how hard we are working we started on-line streaming from our workplace, OAUW.



Watch here!

sediment?

Very soon there will be another astronomers meeteing. This time it's OSAD - meeteing specially designed for PhD astronomers.

here is THE link

and exlusively for our most observant readers here is a very hot gossip: there will be a premiere of "In the land of evil Seeing"!

CLOAOtW

One of our readers sent to us another picture of cosmic latte obseravatory. This one is an Observatory of the University of Zielona Gora. The plague is spreading.

Thanks Bartek!!!

Comsic Latte Observatories All Over the World?

Did you see 1st November (2009) Astronomy Picture of a Day? link
This is it:

They say it's an average color of The Universe (named "cosmic latte"), but only this?
Some unanswered questions:

• Is this color also an average color of all observatories?
• Sholud we rename our project to "Comsic Latte Observatories All Over the World"?
• How long astronomers know this color?
• Is it some kind of conspiracy?
• Previous question can be reduced to: what is the very first astronomical observatory painted in that color?
  

"In the Land of evil Seeing" - second trailer

So, soon we will publish full movie (we need just to record audio track), but now, watch "the" trailer - the full one.

In the land of evil Seeing - trailer

Coming soon.

Try once more!

Has anybody seen differences between pictures on my last post? At least nobody wrote them in comments.

Now it's time for second part! Two cars are used by our observatory staff and students. Can you find any differences?



Answer: there is no valid car insurance for red arrow!

Is there a difference?

It's normal to see some animals when you're in the observatory, because usually observatories are built in isolated places. Can you found 10 differences between these photos taken in Ostrowik Observatory and Las Campanas Observatory?

ICYA - preparations & arrangements

ICYA, International Conference of Young Astronomers will be held in Krakow, but organizers are from different Polish cities, Krakow, Zielona Gora, Torun and Warsaw. So from time to time we have to arrange meetings of organizing committee.



This time it was in Krakow, so we had opportunity to check lecture hall and other conference devices. As can you see we had real hard-working time.

And the questions are:
Who the hell is paying for it?
What color of identifier should we have?
How to escape in case of conference failure... :p

http://www.icya2009.org/

Is it dark enough?

Astronomers tend to situate their telescopes in places where are no artificial light sources - they want to observe dark sky. One of such places is Las Campanas Observatory in Chile where twin 6.5 m Magellanic telescopes, 2.5 m Du Pont telescope, 1 m Swope telescope and of course 1.3 m Warsaw telescope operate. There are some smaller telescopes like ASAS or Pi of the Sky. It isn't true that we don't like physicists from our faculty, we just don't like the way they treat dark sky. Their telescope during observations looks like that:


Are you able to find any unnecessary light on that picture?
(Clue: there is one in camera casing)

Man on the Moon

Since last week I work in Warsaw Planetarium. This job is so boring, because I have to sit there on a chair and watch visitors if they're not doing anything nasty. Also, from time to time, I have a speech about what You can see on a nightsky now. Today I took a camera and made some very unique pictures of landing on the Moon. Here:

Psychological portrait of an astronomer or an astronaut

Few weeks ago, at the small pancake-party we discovered our psychological portraits. I present you my own, which is some kind of an ideal portrait, and I'm proud of it:D (not the best quality, but I'm testing bluetooth connection between Ubuntu 9.04 and my K510i).

Notice small dotted line, this is a zero-line of my profile. Scale is relative, my minimum is 1 and maximum is 8, so zero-line is about 3-4. Now, you can see all pros and cons of my character.

For an ideal astronomer/astronaut it is important to (my result in brackets):

• be keep watching at high level (7)
• be a loner at medium level (5)
• be non-usual at medium level (5)
• be rowdy at zero level (4)
• be changeable at low level (1)
• be dramatic at low level (2)
• be self-sure at medium or high level (5, ok, I have to work on it)
• be sensitive at zero level (3)
• be devoted at zero/medium level (5)
• be hard-working at high level (8)
• be a "comfortable" person at low level (2)
• be an autocratic person at low level (1)
• be offering at zero/medium level (5)
• be serious and medium/high level (6)

As you can see, I am almost an ideal astronomer;p

Our pancake-party finished at half of "La Dolce Vita" by F. Fellini. The half means here: 1h30m without any action. We gived up with the movie.

No more "La Dolce Vita"

ICYA - conference

The International Conference of Young Astronomers (ICYA) is a scientific meeting of undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students of astronomy and physics as well as more advanced astronomers. We, as young scientists, feel a big need to contribute our share to this year’s International Year of Astronomy 2009 and use this opportunity to establish global, annual conference for all scientists, researchers and advanced amateur astronomers who could meet in future and work together in projects which will develop modern astronomy.

For this reason we aim to arrange an international conference to broaden our minds and to discuss challenging issues of astronomy. Furthermore, and most important, the meeting gives a chance to get in touch with other young scientists, with whom we might cooperate in the future.

Our goal is to establish ICYA as a regular conference, held once a year in different countries, connecting young astronomers from all over the world. Let's make it happen!

This year ICYA is organised by the Polish Astronomical Society in collaboration with Polish universities (Jagiellonian University of Cracow, University of Warsaw, Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Nicolaus Copernicus University of Toruń, University of Zielona Góra, University of Szczecin and Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre of Polish Academy of Sciences) and hopefully will be supported by foreign universities and astronomical societies as well as international astronomical organizations.

The conference will take place in Cracow, Poland, September 7 – 13.

(I)CYA there!


http://www.icya2009.org/

Astronomer's plant

Certainly astronomers like flowers and other plants. In fact recently we have grown our own plant... or rather we think it's a plant. For few weeks we have cultivated it in proper temperature, humidity, hiding from sun light. Today it has bloom... we think...

Astronomer 's day

One of the most important message this year!
Astronomer's day - 9 may 2009

The Day The Earth Stood Still?

So we have to choose when to organize this years Astronomers Day...

Let's poll:

YOAAW project

Despite all gossips one of ours scientific projects - Yellow Observatories All Over the World- is gathering more data. (The truth is that for now its the only working project...)
Here is picture of observatory in Barcelona sent to us by Ania. (Thanks!)

Astronomers Day

If You want to help organizers in organizing Astronomers Day please vote in this poll:



NOTE: This is not official programme of this party, and some of activities may be cancelled or added.

Observations

Mr. Gorzelnia is preparing "Red Arrow" for trip to Ostrowik. The plan is to make observations for OCO project! What's wrong with that picture? :D

How to make use of a good weather, when you can't observe

Sometimes it happens, that you can't observe despite good weather. It may be caused by full moon, some hardawre failure or too much alcohol drunk. It just happens. But if you'd like to make some use of weather conditions here are some tips:

You can make profile picture for social websites, like Facebook:


You can make another boring picture of Orion:
(This is a stack 5x15sec, ISO 1600, without bias, flatfield, dark correction)



You can try to make some charming pictures using fullmoon, such as "moonset":



or forest road iluminated by moon:



And finally, you can just make some pictures of telescope and stars, but remember that it's so predictable...