POST IDEAS

February 14th, 2013

Hubble outreach / education site: http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/eds/tools/

Lensing picture: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap001210.html

Science GCSE: http://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/gcses-are-dumbed-down-and-getting-worse/ , http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7966688.stm , http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7967600.stm

Redshift & spectra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cumulative-absorption-spectrum-hubble-telescope.jpg

Stars orbiting BH: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/pr-46-08.html videos at http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/phot-46-08.html (scroll down)

Dot Astronomy conference, including Galaxy Zoo and ‘Hacking the Sky’: http://dotastronomy.com/

http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/physics/astronomy/astr101/specials/
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=319

Herschel (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7885051.stm?lss)

SKA (maps whole Cosmic Web in H1)
Horizon
Big open questions
Common misconceptions
A short history
Star formation                                             (Matthew Bate @ Exeter – videos) http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/26-violent-mysterious-dynamics-of-star-formation & game
CMB                                                                          (Dipole: Lavuax, Tully et al 2008); (Thermal & Kinetic SZ effect)
Why study astronomy?
Science reporting after the Revolution
Scientific knowledge vs. method / reasoning
Why telescopes in space
How / why to edit Wikipedia
Parallel computing
Eddington luminosity

Holmberg lightbulbs                                    http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1941ApJ….94..385H

On science funding and bias:                        http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/pay-to-play/

Lookback time & first galaxies
http://www.astro.rug.nl/~onderwys/ACTUEELONDERZOEK/JAAR2003/college2/Cosmology.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060913_galaxy_formation.html z ~ 6-7, t < 1 Gyr

Maths

Fourier transforms + Fourier series
Countability
Induction – do infinity of primes again as example?
Induction vs. First Cause
Powers of 2, 5

Themes

Thursday journal club

Pictures

STEREO images of Sun: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:STEREO-A_first_images.jpg

HiRISE pictures of Mars rovers from space: http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/the-mers-belong-to-mars-now/

Lots: http://www.fromearthtotheuniverse.org/tour_images.php

Pictures, press releases, videos: http://www.eso.org/public/

Pulsar timing array animations: http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/pulsar/array/gallery.html

Shuttle in front of sun:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantis_silhouette.jpg
STS-125 Atlantis Solar Transit (200905120002HQ)
http://www.astrosurf.com/legault/atlantis_hst_transit.html

Galaxy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble2005-01-barred-spiral-galaxy-NGC1300.jpg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2009/may/08/hubble-colour-image-international-year-astronomy

http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/f/

Video – view of someone falling into a black hole: http://www.universetoday.com/2009/03/31/what-would-the-view-be-like-from-within-a-black-hole/

Sunspots animation:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sun_turn.gif

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To touch the face of God

January 29th, 2011

Twenty-five years ago today – in the month when I was born – the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart shortly after launch. Seven human beings were killed on that flight in the pursuit of knowledge, exploration and discovery. There can be few more noble, more fitting, more human causes for which to give one’s life.

Shortly after the disaster Ronald Reagan made this speech, widely regarded – and justifiably so, to my mind – as one of the greatest speeches of an American President.

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

At the end of his speech Reagan quotes the poem High Flight by American aviator John Gillespie Magee, Jr., who died in 1941 in a mid-air collision. A fitting tribute indeed.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Posted in Space travel | 1 Comment »

Perseids time-lapse

August 20th, 2010

Unfortunately, when I went out to look at the Perseids the sky over Oxford was fairly cloudy – and in the clear parts, I didn’t manage to make out any meteors. Ah well, until next year. Did anyone else have any luck?

If not, I suggest you have a look at this beautiful set of time-lapse videos, taken of the shower in Joshua Tree National Park in California.

embedded by Embedded Video

vimeo Direkt

The bright stripe of stars across the sky is of course the Milky Way – the spiral galaxy that’s our home, viewed edge-on from our position inside it. The dark patches are lanes of interstellar dust: compare them to the patches you see in Hubble photographs of distant spiral galaxies, and you’ll be reminded that we do indeed live in one of those things!

Posted in Astronomy | 5 Comments »

Galaxy Zoo on the iPhone, and my house on the BBC!

August 16th, 2010

I mentioned recently that I’ve just moved house. If you want an exciting view of my new home you can see it here, courtesy of the BBC (the segment starts at about 16:30)!

[The embedded video isn’t working for me, but I can’t tell if that’s just the computer I’m writing it on – if you have trouble, use the direct link above]

Perhaps more excitingly, you can see my housemate Joe Zuntz talking about the iPhone application he’s written for Galaxy Zoo. As I’ve mentioned before, Galaxy Zoo is an online project to enlist the help of thousands of members of the public in classifying millions of images of galaxies taken automatically by telescope, so that the data can be more effectively used for scientific study. With this new app iPhone users can classify galaxies during spare time on the train or elsewhere. (It’s a bit of a shame the BBC segment doesn’t mention that the main Galaxy Zoo website lets you classify them online without a smart phone.)

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Perseids tomorrow night!

August 11th, 2010

The Perseids are a shower of meteors which fall on Earth every year in July and August. The shower lasts for a while, but the rate is expected to peak tomorrow night, when you may be able to see a few meteors every minute if you’ve got a good clear sky. I’d definitely recommend going out to have a look – it’s probably the most impressive astronomical event you can watch with your bare eyes, unless you’re lucky enough to live in range of the Northern or Southern Lights. It’s also one of the oldest recorded events: there are Chinese writings documenting the shower at least as early as 36 AD.

A short guide on how to look for them is here, but really you can’t go far wrong by heading out to an open dark area and looking up!

The Perseids last year. This is a combination of 227 separate images taken throughout the night and combined, to show the circular paths across the sky the meteors take due to the Earth's rotation. Click for credit.

The Perseids last year. This is a combination of 227 separate images taken throughout the night and combined, to show the circular paths across the sky the meteors take due to the Earth's rotation. Click for credit.

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Posted in Art, Astronomy, Tuesday Pictures | 3 Comments »

In which I make my return

August 11th, 2010

Hello again, dear reader. It’s been a little over a month since I posted last, during which time I’ve been up to various things. I went to two conferences in Poland – one on the use of supercomputers in astrophysics, which is quite central to my PhD; and one on Wikipedia and its various sister projects, organised by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is nothing to do with my work – scientists are allowed hobbies! I also moved house to a lovely place in West Oxford. My landlord is now the mathematician and author Marcus du Sautoy, which I find pretty cool even if almost no-one else does.

And, I went to this exhibition as promised. I’ll have some things to say about that and maybe the conferences over the next few days.

In the meantime, here again is a video of Jupiter taken by Voyager 1 during its approach, for no better reason than that I find it absolutely awesome. You can read more about it at my post here.

Voyager 1's approach to Jupiter

Voyager 1's approach to Jupiter

It’s good to be back!

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Our Cosmic Origins exhibition at Southbank

June 27th, 2010

There’s a series of exhibitions on at the moment in the Southbank Centre in London to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. One that I’m looking forward to visiting is called Our Cosmic Origins: building the Milky Way. It’s about simulating galaxies using computer models, and from a chat I had with one of the scientists from Durham who are organising it it sounds pretty good: they’ve got lots of nice videos and demonstrations, including a Wii game that lets you fling galaxies together in real-time in an effort to dislodge the Solar System from the Milky Way. There are also Real Scientists there to answer questions and explain what they get up to in this work every day.

The exhibition’s on until next Sunday. I’m going to try and make it down to London to see it, though I’m a bit busy at the moment with moving into a new house. But if any of you gets the chance to go, do let me know what it was like!

Posted in Astronomy, Science communication | No Comments »

Tuesday video: Hayabusa’s fiery return

June 15th, 2010

First, a video (you should definitely watch it in full-screen, or look at this high-resolution copy. The fireworks are beautiful):

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

That was the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa (Japanese for “peregrine falcon”), returning to Earth two days ago after a seven year voyage. It went to explore an asteroid called 25143 Itokawa, which orbits the Sun at an avergae distance a bit further than the Earth but closer than Mars.

Lots of other spacecraft have flown close by asteroids to look at them before, but Hayabusa did something special: it actually landed on the asteroid briefly, so it could collect a sample and bring it back to Earth. This is the first time that a manmade machine has landed on a celestial body other than the Moon and returned home, which is a pretty exciting first.

The plan was for the craft to fire some metal pellets into the surface of the asteroid, and catch the debris thrown up by the impact to bring back for study. Unfortunately though, a problem with the firing mechanism may mean that the pellets weren’t fired (it can be hard to be sure what’s going on on a robotic craft a hundred million kilometres from home). But even if they didn’t fire, it’s possible that the craft itself threw up enough dust to catch – the pellets were to make absolutely sure – so there’s a chance we’ll have a usable sample anyway.

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Posted in Asteroids, Biology, Galaxies, Space travel, Tuesday Pictures | 5 Comments »

Parsec podcast

May 29th, 2010

365 Days of Astronomy is website with daily podcasts (5-10 minute long sound clips) about various aspects of astronomy. Today’s podcast is by yours truly, and is titled “What’s in a name? The story of parsecs”.

It should be appearing on the site at some point today – in the meantime, have a listen to some of the others. There’s a lot good stuff on there.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Why is there stuff?

May 27th, 2010

One of my readers (thanks, Sister Lynn!) drew my attention to an article in the New York Times last week reporting a recent discovery by a team at Fermilab (the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory). Their result pertains to the question of why the Universe has so much matter compared to antimatter.

Antimatter

Every type of matter particle which exists – electrons, protons, neutrons and others – has a corresponding ‘antiparticle’. The antiparticles are very similar to their particle counterparts, having the same size and mass – in a way they’re very like a mirror-image version, and also have reversed electric charge. Antimatter seems very exotic to us, not least because of the well-known fact that a particle and its antiparticle brought together will annihilate each other and release a colossal amount of energy, making antimatter very unstable and impossible to keep sitting in a jar without special precautions.

But this exoticness isn’t really inherent to the antimatter: after all, antimatter people living on an antimatter planet wound find a blob of matter just as strange and dangerous as we find them. Even the naming is arbitrary: neither type is more ‘anti’ than the other, since there’s a complete symmetry between them.

But why, if antimatter is so natural and so naturally paired to matter, is it rare and exotic when ‘normal’ matter is everywhere? Why are the two not equally abundant?

That question is one of the most important ones facing physics today.

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Posted in Particle physics | 9 Comments »

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