The picture shows space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour sitting on launch pads in Florida, waiting for Atlantis’ mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. We were going to be there for the Sky at Night, but as you’ll have heard, a major failure with Hubble’s control system means that the flight is to be delayed [...]
Read More...Posts made in September, 2008
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It may surprise you to know that the disparate, motley, collection of individuals that make up the professional astronomical community are as subject to the swings and roundabouts of fashion as anyone else, but nevertheless it’s true. Fashions can change the way we think about our research (can that pet project be pitched as vital [...]
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Catchup post from DotAstronomy
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One of the most interesting talks on day one of the was by Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society, about armchair space exploration.
The development of this field has been incredible, with rapid release of ‘raw’ data now the rule rather than the exception. Emily made the excellent point that in learning [...] -
Here’s my talk from yesterday :
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This is both brilliant, and completely mad. It’s coffee time on day 2 of the dot astronomy conference, and almost everyone here is clustered in front of a poster explaining the philosophy of the WETI institute, which has the following mission statement :
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The mission of the WETI Institute is to understand and explain the origin, [...] -
Not the latest Dr Who episode, but the result of playing with Ed Gomez’s Impact Calculator which he’s talking about at the dotastronomy conference.
Here’s the result of a medium sized impact on the centre of London. Go and make your own.
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I’m in Cardiff, for the dot astronomy conference organised by Rob Simpson of the Orbiting Frog blog. It should be an interesting few days, and I’ll try and keep you up to date here. I’ve just given the first talk – about Galaxy Zoo and our plans for the future – and you can watch [...]
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The New Scientist that dropped through my door yesterday includes what looks like an interesting story, about a strange anomaly affecting spacecraft that have flown past the Earth, a standard technique for hopping about the solar system. Each of them has had what the report’s author, Marcus Chown, calls ‘an inexplicable velocity change’. The effect [...]
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There’s excellent LHC coverage everywhere. Andy has a quick round up for example, and I highly recommend HastheLHCdestroyedtheEarth.com as the best response to the lack of catastrophe. Stuart, meanwhile, has found humour in the online logbooks of one of the experiments…
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I was recently interviewed by a researcher trying to figure out what influences people to [...] -
This weekend is proving to be one of the more bizarre I’ve had for a while. I’m writing this from a barn on a pumpkin farm about two hours’ drive south of Chicago. I’m here for the Chicago Astronomical Society’s Astrofest and I’ll be talking later about Galaxy Zoo (of course).
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I can’t resist sharing this [...]