Link Roundup

I'll admit, this may have less actual content than some of the previous entries in this blog. Think of this, maybe, as a snapshot of the last three years:

From the National Geographic News, coverage of the second "puffy planet" HATnet discovered. There's nothing here that hasn't been said before, but it does quote Bakos, and the quotes are fairly interesting.

Via the Space Telescope Science Institute, it's possible to look up in their archives when in the past Bakos has given talks for various colloquia and symposiums. They have from the previous spring's colloquia certain talks archived as videos, and Bakos' is among them.

Finally, there is another article relating to this year's discovery, through Astronomy Now. What is truly of interest, though, is at the end of the article. A new space telescope, the Kepler, is to be launched next week; its purpose is to search for extrasolar planets, particularly of Earth-like nature. One of the planets it will scrutinize will be this new discovery by HATnet, according to the article. From space, so the hope is, it will be possible to resolve more information than the currently ground-based telescope system that makes up HATnet.

Website: Research Crossroads

Another result of a late-night trawl through Google, Research Crossroads is a website that, according to their mission statement, aims to make accessible who gets public funding for their research. Their argument is that researchers are able to connect with their peers and stay up to date with the latest in research across fields, and that the funding foundations both receive access to important statistics and get publicity.

Gaspar Bakos has a profile on this website. From here, it is easy to find out how funding he has received, for what projects and organizations, as well as which organizations funded the projects. Furthermore, it lists summaries of the proposed projects.

While both of Mr. Bakos projects listed on the site currently date to 2007, the concept behind this website is quite intriguing especially for interdisciplinary interaction. It provides a good place for scientists receiving or applying for grants to not only publicize what they are investigating, but what others are receiving funding for.

On webspace

Like any good scientist, Gaspar Bakos maintains a website. Here it is, under the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Aside from certain points of interest, such as his curriculum vitae, there is an overview of HATnet that might look familiar. Yes, I linked to that last week. I would like to point out (and this is not intended as a slight on Mr. Bakos) that some of the HTML on the HATnet page is incorrect, leading any visitors who click on those links to find that the URL goes elsewhere. The pages he intended to link to are still in existence, the coding was simply done improperly.

Of more interest, however, is the list of publications. Over the following week, I intend to briefly summarize and discuss some of them, including the one in regards to the planet HATnet discovered in 2006.