I’ve decided to move the blog to the rather more fully featured WordPress main site rather than the 99c cut-down version of WP offered here on JournalSpace. JS is sadly a dying site - one that hasn’t recovered from the big crash/blog wiping of Jan 2009. A lack of customization ability and an inability to deal with a surge of spam has soured my use of JS, so I’ve decided to move on after about 6 years on JS in various guises.
Sad, but time to move on alas.
Anyhow, you can find the Playing With Dust blog over at WordPress - hope to see you there.
I’m currently sitting in the ESA ESLAB conference in Noordwijk, Holland, listening to a barrage of new results from Herschel. It’s been an extraordinarily busy few months for us all, finally sitting down with our first science-quality datasets from the various instruments on Herschel, and reducing them/analysing the results, and finally, writing the first papers.
Most of us have had their Science Demonstration papers accepted by the ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’ journal - generally, the responsible space agency (ESA in this case) works with one of the professional astronomy journals to publish short papers in a ’special edition’ of the journal, which is given over entirely to those results. The fruit of those labours are being presented at Noordwijk this week - in my case, my work on the Dwarf Galaxy Survey was quite pleasantly namechecked and shown by the project’s PI, so I was quite understandably chuffed. For those of us working on the instrument teams, the last few years of suppressing our own scientific output to get the instruments working has been well worth it - the bonus is that we get to be part of large consortia, doing mind-blowing, cutting edge science as a result.
One of the nice bonuses of conferences is the social aspects - dinner and trips to the pub, after long, long days in the conference hall, hits the spot quite nicely! Good people, good company, and great science - not a bad combination, at all.
Only one last day left for the ESLAB conference - to follow it, keep an eye on the Herschel mission blog (which I contribute to), or on Twitter, using the #eslab2010 tag.
(I was going to blog on the interesting post regarding scientists and data access to the community at large at the Galaxy Map blog, but Dave Clements already did a good job in responding. It’s a worthwhile discussion - check it out.
It’s been quite a week.
The UK physics community is still reeling from the massive slashing of funding to the STFC. Funding for some major projects has been discontinued (including the UK contribution to the Gemini Telescopes, a particular favourite of mine - this had been expected, given the extremely clumsy attempted withdrawal 2 years ago), while funding for others has been reduced. No further UK support for missions such as XMM (whom STFC had lobbied with ESA to keep operating), Venus Express and SOHO.
The *worst* bit though is the 25% reduction in funding for fellowships and Ph.D. studentships - in essence, it makes life extremely tough for a) those of us currently in postdoc positions who will be looking for a more permanent position within the next couple of years and b) new students wishing to move into a career in physics. Scenario a) affects me the most - at the moment, my position is ESA funded - however, if I wish to stay where I am (or stay within the UK), I need STFC funding. Fellowships, already thin on the ground, will become nigh on impossible to get as a result of this decision.
Of course, I’m not the only person affected by this - many other postdocs will be in the same boat, and the number of new Ph.D. students will be badly affected. Indeed, the cumulative effect is to basically nobble the career prospects for many at the lower rungs of physics academia in the UK for the next decade or so. No positions to move into, no funds for projects either. Given this, many of us will be reviewing our career options over the next while - some will move overseas to research positions in Europe, the US and elsewhere, and some will leave academia completely. As for myself, with a young family, moving beyond the UK is a non-starter….. so a lot of reflection lies ahead.
Herschel (which as you may know, is the ESA program I work on) had a very successful First Results workshop in Madrid at the end of last week. Principal investigators from the Key Projects presented the preliminary first results from their projects - the results of which you’ll see shortly in a torrent of press releases. Some of the images have already been released by ESA - my favourite has to be the gorgeous SPIRE/PACS composite image of the Eagle nebula.
The project I work on - the dwarf galaxy survey - also had its results presented in Madrid by our PI. But our stuff isn’t as pretty, so no ESA press release! 
All of us are furiously working on papers to be published in a special edition of ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’ in the summer of 2010 - fun and busy times lie ahead. Herschel is a *superb* instrument, and thanks to the dedication of a *lot* of people, will continue to churn out superb results for the remainder of the mission. Cheers to all my colleagues across ESA and our international partners - it’s been a fantastic year, and fingers crossed for an equally good 2010. Especially as HIFI will begin operations again!
Finally…. I’m off for two weeks of much need R&R with my family. Have a wonderful Christmas and a very enjoyable New Year, and hopefully Santa will be in generous mood to you
No, I’m not mutating into that crazy “Christian” lady from Trading Spouses. At least not yet.
I’m watching with interest the lead up to the Copenhagen climate summit next month - and in particular, the full on assault by those with vested interests on the science of climate change. The recent theft of emails - and very selective publishing of email conversations between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia - is the first serious attempt at the discrediting of climate science. And sadly, a very effective one - it has been extremely disheartening to see climate science getting a pummelling, especially in media outlets which would be less than favourable to acceptance that climate change is ongoing.
Flicking across the TV tonight, I came across a news report on Russia Today - the Kremlin’s foreign mouthpiece these days - in which they attempted to but the boot in on climate science, and on man-made global warming. When you remember that Russia is a major producer of oil and gas - and something its economy is highly dependent on - you can see where this ‘editorial guidance’ is coming from.
Strong, vested interests will try to nobble attempts at mitigating the effects of climate change by reducing carbon emissions - it is up to us, as scientists, to provide the public with the unvarnished truth on climate change, in order to highlight how seriously fucked we really are.
I’m sick of this - it is time to stand up to the vested interests (and to those “scientists” in the pay of those vested interests). Are you up for the fight?
It’s been a while, I must admit - life has been a tad busy with work on Herschel, with performance verification pretty much done (apart from one instrument) and science demonstration kicking off. It’s been pretty much non-stop since August, with me travelling quite a bit up and down to Oxfordshire for the majority of the week. So, unsurprisingly, not a lot of time has been free to update the blog, sadly.
For the last week, I’ve actually had some time off - I’m currently in Ireland on a bit of a busmans holiday. I came over to give a talk to the Irish Astronomical Society on Herschel last Monday night - we got a crowd of 25 or so up to Dunsink Observatory for the talk, and I think it went pretty well. It was odd being back at Dunsink, as I’d spent 18 months as a post-doc earlier in my career and had not been back in the 5+ years since.
The observatory is pretty much abandoned now - the internal politics and restructuring within the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies led to the academics moving into the Dublin city centre, leaving the Observatory empty. Now Irish science isn’t in the healthiest of states - astronomy in particular - but to leave a crown jewel like the Dunsink site to rot is unforgivable. The history of the site (luminaries such as Hamilton and Schrodinger worked there) plus the wonderful historical instruments (a 12″ Grubb refractor in particular) make it a *prime* site for a superb outreach facility for Irish astronomy and science in general. Apart from the sterling efforts of the IAS, the opportunities for using the site for science outreach are being sadly ignored by an increasingly short-sighted parent body and penny-pinching Government department - this sort of thing would *not* happen elsewhere in Europe.
Instead, it is left there to rot. And sadly, that’s the way things happen in Ireland. It’ll be only when the Dunsink site is beyond saving that the powers that be will get up off their arses…. and then it’ll be too late.
The huge southern California wildfires are rather too close to the historic Mt. Wilson Observatory (home to the Hooker 100″ telescope (formerly the largest telescope in the world) and founded by one of the giants of 20th century astronomy, George Hale) and the nearby city of Pasadena, home to JPL and Caltech.
Been there quite a few times in a professional capacity, and it’s a beautiful part of the world - the mountains rise up just north of Pasadena city, and it’s a stunning view (note to me: must dig out photos). As you might expect, it gets bloody hot down in southern CA and with a long drought, wildfires are common in the hills.
Latest updates at: the Mt. Wilson webpage
Stay safe all.
.. to the refracting telescope. Or at least, it’s 400 years to the day that Galileo presented his refined design to Venetian lawmakers.
It goes without saying that we’ve come a long way from this:
to this:
In honour of this momentous occasion, why not break out your telescope or binoculars if the weather co-operates?
*Sadly, I can’t follow my own advice. The remnants of Hurricane Bill are ploughing their way towards the British Isles as we speak.*
P.S. - check out Google’s logo of the day. Nice.
I admit it. I’m a space geek.
Given this nugget of info, you won’t be surprised with my fascination with the Apollo program - certainly the finest engineering achievement of Mankind, but also some of the best ever space science as well, particularly during the J-class missions (Apollos 15-17). NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is currently in lunar orbit, mapping the lunar surface is gloriously high detail ahead of a possible return to the Moon (and I say possible, given the dismaying outcome of the Augustine Commission). They’ve been looking in particular at some of the Apollo landing sites - due to orbital mechanics, the Apollo 14 site has been the main focus so far. The LRO team have released the following mosaic - and the detail is stunning:
You can see Shepard and Mitchell’s tracks on the lunar surface - and as it turns out, they only missed reaching the rim of Cone Crater by 100ft or so.
Magnificent stuff. Can’t wait until they look at the remaining sites in similar detail….
…. I was being overly cynical and yes, surprisingly to those (few) who think I’m a nice guy, overly too much of a git. Apologies to all if offence taken.
If you’re looking for that Pluto post….
Post-paternity leave (a little girl, now 8 weeks old, if you’re wondering), it’s back to the world of astronomy. I work on a mission called Herschel, a far-IR observatory launched by the European Space Agency (you can find the blog we write at http://herschelmission.wordpress.com/). Amongst other things, I work on mission planning for one of the instruments, a photometer/spectrometer called SPIRE, and as a result, I’m spending a good portion of my week in the ops room for SPIRE on duty as the mission planner, in charge of putting together the list of observations to be uploaded to the spacecraft for SPIRE observing days. Fun stuff, but since the commute is 2.5hrs each way (on a good day), it’s bloody exhausting doing this a few days in a row.
And two months of this yet to go, as we’re past the commissioning stage, and have moved into the performance verification stage - we’re tweaking the settings of the instruments to find their optimum performance level. A lot of work ahead, but as my wife puts it, time is flying on this already. Before we know it, it’ll be regular operations time…. and then the real bonanza will begin.
One nice extra bit of news is that I got time on the Gemini South 8-m telescope, to look at a nearby heavily star forming galaxy called NGC 1705 in the mid-IR. Just a few hours of observing time, but it’s already done. The joys of having it done in queue mode (the missus would have strung me up if I told her, “Honey, I’m off to Chile for an observing run. Enjoy the 2 year old and the new born!”
Well, the data to arrived via FTP this afternoon, and will get cracking on it. Once I’ve got some breath to spare, of course. And after a fair bit of sleep.
The next fun bit is writing the follow-up proposal….
Gemini South
AstroDad