#astronomnomysposts

[astronomnomy-blog]

A secret -

I’m writing these “fun” facts about planets but I’ve absorbed so much information about planets since I was a kid intro facts now bore me to tears.  “Did you know Mars has polar ice caps?” “Did you know Venus spins backwards (or upside down depending on POV)” “Did you know Saturn’s rings aren’t solid but are bits of rocks and ice?” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA  I’m including my fave fact though, which is that the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan is thick enough and the gravitational field weak enough that you can fly by flapping your arms.

[astronomnomy-blog]

Last-minute prep for our BBC Stargazing Live event on Wednesday at Sussex, we’re sorting out a scale model of the Solar System 1:10 billion over the 450m walk from the station to the host building. On this scale the Sun is only 13.5cm ish wide...  Gotta get these posters made including fact sheets and laminated ASAP  SO Does anyone have a favourite fact about a planet or moon? Let me know and I’ll put it on the sheets to tell 300/400+ people! :) 

[astronomnomy-blog]

So apparently there’s a couple of asks sitting in my ask box that could be /months/ old that I don’t remember getting a notification for. How do I even function as a human being? Is there a way to set up an email notification for the ask box rather than me refreshing every two seconds as is my compulsion on other sites? Or get someone to come to your house and scream “YOU HAVE AN ASK” through the letterbox because that might help a lot. Seriously how do I do this I’m sorry...

[astronomnomy-blog]

Yooo, think I've found out the quickest way to lose weight for me - high altitude. Currently on a five-night observing run in Hawai'i and am really struggling to eat enough, usually I inhale food. It's like I'm sick. 

Suffice to say I'm taking tonight off and leaving the observations to our two new students so I can have access to infinite ice cream to get in some calories.

More importantly, tomorrow (Sun 25th) night is also the last night's observing on JCMT before it's handed over to the East Asian Observatory, and that could mean that we're the last ever short-visiting astronomers to go observe on the summit for JCMT, no one's 100% sure yet. 

Sadfaces allround.  

[astronomnomy-blog]

Picture of me last night in the "Submillimetre Valley" outside JCMT, camera pointing up towards (L->R) Canada-French-Hawaii Telescope, Gemini Telescope, University of Hawai'i 2.2 meter telescope, UKIRT. Shadows are (L->R) NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, W. M. Keck Observatory (domes 1 and 2) and Subaru Telescope. Submillimeter Array and JCMT are hidden in the shadows of the valley.

[astronomnomy-blog]

MADE IT. I woke up at 3am, twenty nine hours ago, and it's STILL Monday :weeps:.

Also, thanks so much for the well-wishing,everything was safe and dandy - was even able to recline my seat back guilt-free on second flight as no one was behind me!  I hope to overload you all with volcano pictures in the next couple of days before going observing!

[astronomnomy-blog]

apparently my standards have dropped drastically between videos because I was able to put the one uploading now together within an afternoon as opposed to a few weeks?????

Flying off tomorrow, will update obnoxiously, who knows I might even buy internet at the airport hohoho

[astronomnomy-blog]

Working in astronomy, especially in a big collaboration, is not just about working on your own little project over in a corner. A good supervisor will push you to get involved with other collaborators and to take on responsibilities from other members (who, due to the transient nature of post-doctoral research contracts, will soon leave). 

This can lead to the very strange scenario that you're very junior and yet the only person who can do a certain task. In my case, it's finding the galaxies in our images (or, in astro-speak, "producing the catalogues/cats for the maps"). We had a big team working for a while to produce the software to find the galaxies, but a few years later they've moved on to other projects. So I, like many other PhD students, are "standing on the shoulders of giants" to quote Newton (in a non-sarcastic way!).

This is great when everything's going smoothly. But, when things go wrong (like today, when we've spotted an error in the data release!) it can mean digging through a lot of code you didn't write (that is well documented, thankfully) to make code that ran three years ago work. Really not sure why there was a problem in the first place but hey-ho, I can address that when the code is running again...