Astronomy
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Leon Lucy, R.I.P.
I have the unfortunate duty of using this blog to announce the death a couple of weeks ago of Professor Leon B Lucy, who had been a Visiting Professor working here at Imperial College from 1998. Leon got his PhD in the early 1960s at the University of Manchester, and after postdoctoral positions in Europe…
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Sepia Astronomers
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When cleaning out an office here in the Astrophysics Group in the Physics Department at Imperial College, we came across this photo: The background is the Mark I telescope at Jodrell Bank, and the man in the middle with the notebook has been identified as either Fred Hoyle or Francis Graham-Smith (which is more likely…
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Senses working overtime
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I listened over the weekend to a story on the podcast of the radio show Studio 360 about Wanda Diaz-Merced, a blind astronomer. She is working hard at “sonification” — representing astronomical data in sound rather than in graphs. Of course, this works best for certain kinds of data — I gather from the piece…
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Astrostatistics at the Royal Astronomical Society
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This week I’m co-organizing a meeting at the Royal Astronomical Society in London, “Novel methods for the exploitation of large astronomical and cosmological data sets“. It’s an unwieldy title, but we’ll be discussing the implication of the huge flood of astronomical data for cosmology and astrophysics. How do we deal with the sheer volume —…
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Playing catch-up
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So, apologies for taking so long between posts. For now, I’ll blame twitter and its ADD version of blogging, because that at least lets me point to an interesting meeting that went on last week: the .Astronomy Conference on Networked Astronomy and the New Media. the conference brought together several related strands of astronomical computing,…
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Gemini telescope: back for the UK
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In an unexpectedly rational decision, STFC (UK astronomy’s funding council, if you haven’t been paying attention) and the board of the Gemini telescope, have come to some sort of agreement to reinstate UK observing time for the time being, with the further statement from Gemini that “The Board asks that the Chair and Designated Members,…
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UK Gemini telescope bid rejected
Many others have been doing their best to disseminate information on the UK Physics funding crisis (especially Sheffield Prof Paul Crowther) but it’s probably worth pointing out the latest repercussion (which has already been picked up by the BBC): despite a bid to remain involved at a reduced level, it looks like the UK will…
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Big Smoke Science
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In his comment on last week’s post, fellow physicist blogger Tommaso lets me know that he’ll be attending a meeting that we’re hosting here at Imperial College next week, Outstanding questions for the standard cosmological model. We’ll be casting a critical eye over current cosmological models and data, but I expect most of us will…
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Hubble
By now you’ve heard that NASA has changed its mind and decided to send a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has been an amazing instrument, its pictures seen and marvelled at by people literally around the world. The most amazing thing about NASA’s decision is that it’s front page news for the…
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NASA Science Decimated
The Bush administration has cut $3 billion from NASA’s science budget over the next five years, “postponing” (until who knows when) important science in favor of getting back to the moon (in more than twice the time it took to develop the program in the 60s) and then to Mars. This comes on the heels…
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