Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network http://lcogt.net/en/atom/feed 2010-03-10T10:49:20+00:00 LCOGT Santa Barbara Gets a Play Day for Pushing Pedals http://lcogt.net/en/blog/dpetry/lcogt-santa-barbara-gets-play-day-pushing-pedals 2010-08-05T20:36:38+00:00 2010-08-05T22:52:42+00:00 dpetry

Santa Barbara– August 2010

In April of this year, LCOGTLas Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network mechanical engineer, John Hygelund, challenged fellow Santa Barbara staffers to participate in Traffic Solutions’ Bike Challenge bike commute competition that was part of a month-long series of bicycle-related events during May called CycleMAYnia.  read more »

Santa Barbara– August 2010

In April of this year, LCOGTLas Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network mechanical engineer, John Hygelund, challenged fellow Santa Barbara staffers to participate in Traffic Solutions’ Bike Challenge bike commute competition that was part of a month-long series of bicycle-related events during May called CycleMAYnia.

As a result of his efforts, 24 of 50 potential LCOGT employees participated, making a total of 449 commuter trips, avoiding over 1800 pounds of CO2 released through car trips and taking first place in their tier (companies with 11 to 50 employees). According to Traffic Solutions’ Lori LaRiva, LCOGT staff members saved (avoided? eliminated?) over 2100 car miles.

On July 29th, Hygelund reaped the rewards for his efforts by bringing a massive bouncer race course and bar-b-que to LCOGT for a celebration. (The default prize was a set of bike racks, but LCOGT is already well-endowed in this area.)

The CycleMAYnia competition was kicked off for the first time this year. A Bike-to-Work Day started in 1999 expanded to Bike Week. In its inaugural year, 540 Santa Barbara County competitors rode 8,119 commuter bike days, avoiding 47,000 car miles as they competed in the challenge. This resulted in 1,000 fewer pounds of toxic air pollutants and 42,000 fewer pounds of greenhouse gas emissions. Using the conservative 2010 Internal Revenue Service rate for vehicle business mileage of $0.50/mile, participants saved themselves some $23,000.

LCOGT has maintained a commitment to decreasing greenhouse gases since its inception in 2005. The employee manual provides for a Commuter Transportation Benefit that subsidizes employees for public transportation use and parking costs for vanpools, and a Bicycle Commuter Benefit, providing reimbursement for expenses related to commuting to work by bike.

 

 An orbital period of 0.94 days for the hot-Jupiter planet WASP-18b http://lcogt.net/en/science/paper/orbital-period-0.94-days-hot-jupiter-planet-wasp-18b 2009-08-27T17:42:36+00:00 2009-09-03T00:08:50+00:00 tlister

The ‘hot Jupiters’ that abound in lists of known extrasolar planets are thought to have formed far from their host stars, but migrate inwards through interactions with the proto-planetary disk from which they were born, or by an alternative mechanism such as planet–planet scattering. The hot Jupiters closest to their parent stars, at orbital distances of only 0.02 astronomical unitsThe average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Approximately 1.496 × 10^8 km or 93 million miles. , have strong tidal interactions, and systems such as OGLE-TR-56 have been suggested as tests of tidal dissipation theory.  read more »
The ‘hot Jupiters’ that abound in lists of known extrasolar planets are thought to have formed far from their host stars, but migrate inwards through interactions with the proto-planetary disk from which they were born, or by an alternative mechanism such as planet–planet scattering. The hot Jupiters closest to their parent stars, at orbital distances of only 0.02 astronomical unitsThe average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Approximately 1.496 × 10^8 km or 93 million miles. , have strong tidal interactions, and systems such as OGLE-TR-56 have been suggested as tests of tidal dissipation theory. Here we report the discovery of planet WASP-18b with an orbital period of 0.94 days and a mass of ten Jupiter masses (10 MJup), resulting in a tidal interaction an order of magnitude stronger than that of planet OGLE-TR-56b. Under the assumption that the tidal-dissipation parameter Q of the host star is of the order of 10^6, as measured for Solar System bodies and binary stars and as often applied to extrasolar planets, WASP-18b will be spiralling inwards on a timescale less than a thousandth that of the lifetime of its host star. Therefore either WASP-18 is in a rare, exceptionally short-lived state, or the tidal dissipation in this system (and possibly other hot-Jupiter systems) must be much weaker than in the Solar System.

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