Week (and Academic Year) Ending

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on August 14, 2026 by telescoper

I know many people think that University staff are on holiday all the way through the summer, particularly August, but this week has been very busy indeed, not only because of the Eclipse Event. It is somewhat cooler today, but the heat this week has also contributed to my general sense of exhaustion.

For a start I had repeat examinations to correct. I collected my first scripts Monday 10th and managed to correct them all the same day as I wanted to get everything done before the Eclipse on Wednesday afternoon. The other modules I had to grade involved fewer students so I achieved that goal satisfactorily.

Monday 10th also saw the for the dissertations for our MSc course in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics. I’m glad to say all the students handed in their project reports by the deadline and all our now being graded. The presentations were held this morning (Friday 14th) and all went well.

With the repeat examinations and the MSc dissertations now in hand, next week we have two separate sets of Examination Boards, one for the undergraduate repeats and one for the (postgraduate) Masters. I have to attend the Engineering Board as well as Physics, as there were students repeating my Engineering Mathematics module. The MSc students will subsequently be given their final grades and will have completed, as will the final-year undergraduates who needed to pass a repeat in order to graduate. Other undergraduates will find out whether they can pass into the next year of their course. Only after all this will the academic year 2025/26 really come to close.

Conferrring (graduation) ceremonies will be held from 7th to 10th September for those who have already completed – the Masters students and students who need to repeat paper(s) in order to graduate will have to wait until November for their ceremony.

On Friday next (21st August), school students in Ireland will get their Leaving Certificate results, which signals the onset of student enrolment for the 2026/27 academic year. I noticed that in the UK A-level students got their results this week. In Ireland we will find out over the following weeks, we will find out exactly how many new students we have coming in, and how many continuing. Then it will be orientation week, followed by the start of lecturing for the new term, by which point we will know how many people we will have in our classes.

And so it continues. But, for me, not for much longer…

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Jodrell Bank Update

Posted in Science Politics with tags , , on August 13, 2026 by telescoper

With everything else that has been going on recently, I forgot to share this cartoon from the latest Private Eye:

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That was the (Partial) Eclipse that was…

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on August 12, 2026 by telescoper

Today been a very busy but hugely enjoyable day. We had a big turnout for the Eclipse Event at Maynooth University – I don’t have attendance figures right now, but will update when I do – and good weather in the build-up to the eclipse. Unforunately just as maximum coverage approached, clouds intervened. That was a little disappointing but there were some lovely colour effects that made up for it and it did also get eerily dark…

I heard only nice things about the event from people who attended. Here are some random snaps taken throughout the day:

The combination of heat and exertion meant that I couldn’t resist going for a pint or three afterwards so I think I’ll leave it there, except to congratulate Emma Whelan, whose brainwave today was, plus all the lecturers, technicians and students who made it possible, as well as all the members of the public who participated. It was great to see so many people of all ages release their inner nerd.

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The IoA Whistleblowing Case

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , , on August 11, 2026 by telescoper

Regular readers of this blog may remember a couple of posts (here and here) about an Employment Tribunal taking place in Bury St Edmunds in relation to the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) at the University of Cambridge. The claimant in the case was Professor Neil Wyn Evans.

Well, the Employment Tribunal has completed its deliberations and the result is a decisive win for Wyn Evans. You can read more about the judgment here, but the salient points are visible here:

You can see that of the 14 complaints raised by the claimant, 11 succeeded and 3 were dismissed. Now that the judgment has been delivered it is possible to name all the respondents, including the name of the person initially redacted here, Prof. Richard McMahon.

You could call this a Wyn Win situation. (Sorry.)

I’d like to offer my personal congratulations to Wyn Evans on the success of his case. I know this has been a very difficult and stressful episode for him and he deserves enormous credit for pursuing the case to its conclusion. The decision by the University to pursue this case is incomprehensible to me.

It remains to be seen what the consequences will be for him and the respondents. The judgment (details here) refers to “systemic failures” in the University’s handling of the matter. These raise serious questions about governance and the operation of Human Resources at Cambridge University, to add to the questions already being asked in the light of the Jason Arday fiasco. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the end of line for the Vice-Chancellor, but that in itself will not be enough to put things right at Cambridge University.

P.S. Here’s the anonymous guest post on this blog in 2022 that aired the complaints for the first time:

Guest Post: The Bullying of Hannelore

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Chin and Brain

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on August 10, 2026 by telescoper

I’ve been a bit busy today marking repeat examinations, so I’ve only got time for a short post. Yesterday, while working on something else, I got to wondering why it is that people often touch or stroke or scratch or hold their chin while thinking deeply?

It’s such a common visual trope that the stock image collection on wordpress has dozens of photographs of people doing it. Here’s one:

Photo by Hu1ea3i Nguyu1ec5n on Pexels.com

And of course, there’s Le Penseur by Auguste Rodin:

Photo by Charl Durand on Pexels.com

The apparent connection between chin and brain seems to be a cross-cultural phenomenon which is common to all ages and genders. Whatever the reason for it is, it’s presumably related to scratching your head, which is a common idiomatic expression for feeling confused, puzzled, or thinking very hard about a difficult problem. It may also be related to the endearing habit many people (especially children) of poking their tongue out of the corner of their mouth while concentrating on writing or drawing…

None of the explanations I’ve heard for such behaviour makes much sense, so I wonder if any of my readers can suggest a reason?

(Bonus marks for implausibility.)

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Maynooth Eclipse Weather Watch

Posted in Biographical, Irish Language, Maynooth with tags , , , , , on August 9, 2026 by telescoper

As I mentioned last week, the Department of Physics at Maynooth University will be hosting an Eclipse Event, this week on Wednesday August 12th. This sold out very quickly so we expect a good turnout. In the last few days we have been featured prominently in articles in the Irish Times and The Journal and on the RTÉ website. Although it is officially full, there may be a few returns, so it is worth checking on the day to see if we can fit you in.

The viewing of the eclipse will of course depend on the weather, but we have talks lined up indoors and a pop-up planetarium so I hope people will turn up even if the weather isn’t great. I’ve been checking the forecast on the Met Éireann app quite regularly. As of last week it wasn’t very good, with cloud and rain likely but since then it has improved. In the light of my recent post that one can’t really trust Irish weather forecasts more than three days in advance, I thought it would be fun to track the forecast until the big event to see how stable it is.

Here are the summaries for yesterday (Saturday, when it only gave a prediction every three hours for Wednesday), and today (Sunday, where there is an hourly forecast). The peak of the (partial) eclipse is around 7pm (19.00 hours) in Maynooth.

Saturday Forecast
Sunday Forecast
Monday Forecast
Tuesday Morning Forecast (7am)
Tuesday Evening Forecast (5pm)
Wednesday Morning Forecast (7am)
Wednesday Afternoon Forecast (3pm)

As you can see, the Sunday forecast predicts the temperature on Wednesday to be rather high, with little chance of rain, though with more cloud than the Saturday forecast. I’ll update on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to see how it progresses…

Update: Wednesday 12th, 7.30am. As you can see from the above the forecast for the eclipse is quite good. There is quite a lot of rain out to the west, but it is tracking noreth-eastwards and most of it is forecast to miss Maynooth.

The rainfall situation at 7.30am, Wednesday 12th August

P.S. In the Irish language, “eclipse” can be either urú or éiclips. The former is interesting as it is also the name for a form of initial mutation that occurs certain grammatical situations in Irish, the change at the beginning of a word, where a new letter is placed in front of the original consonant, so that the new letter’s sound replaces (or “eclipses”) the old one.

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Learning is the thing for you.

Posted in Biographical, Literature with tags , , , , on August 8, 2026 by telescoper

I was tidying up today and came across my copy (right) of The Once and Future King by T.H. White. This comprises four novels and is a sort of re-telling of the Arthurian legends. I remember buying it when I was at school, at which time I was reading a lot of fantasy novels of the swords-and-sorcery type, but although it is a fantasy, this book was not at all what I anticipated. It’s very funny in places and also full of anachronisms. White uses the legend of King Arthur as a kind of metaphor or political allegory and his novels are only loosely based on the familar stories of Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. The first novel was first published as a standalone book in 1938…

Anyway, I kept this book intending to read it again but never got around to doing that. The edition I bought is in quite small type so I might find it a struggle now! I’ve kept it to one side, though, as I know a certain person whom I think will enjoy it and is young enough to still have good eyesight. I will give it to him when we next meet.

The other day somebody shared the following (wonderful) extract from the first novel, The Sword in the Stone, which is largely about the education of the young Arthur (known by his nickname “Wart”) by the wizard Merlyn. The quote remains extremely relevant today as an expression of the joy – which I wish more people shared – of learning for learning’s sake.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theo-criticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

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Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics 08/08/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 8, 2026 by telescoper

Althouygh it’s holiday season for some, it’s time once more for another Saturday update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further for papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 167 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 615.

I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also show the DOI for each paper.

The first paper to report this week was published on Tuesday 4th August in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies with the title “Small-scale turbulence alongside large-scale turbulence in a z=1.87 star-forming galaxy with an outflowing wind, revealed by multi-point structure functions” by Itzhak Goldman (Afeka College, Israel). A previous study by the author found evidence of large and small scale turbulence in the star-forming galaxy CSWA13, suggesting that star clusters and large clumps within the galaxy could be driving this turbulence.

The overlay for this paper is here

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Small-scale turbulence alongside large-scale turbulence in a z=1.87 star-forming galaxy with an outflowing wind, revealed by multi-point structure functions" by Itzhak Goldman (Afeka College, Israel)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.166324

August 4, 2026, 8:00 am 0 boosts 1 favorites

The second paper for this week, published on Thursday 6th August in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “From Clumps to Sheets: Geometry Controls the Temperature PDF of Multi-Phase Gas” by Zirui Chen and S. Peng Oh (UC Santa Barbara, USA). This study uses 3D hydrodynamic simulations to show that the temperature probability distribution functions (PDFs) of multi-phase turbulent gas differ significantly under interstellar medium (ISM) and circumgalactic medium (CGM) conditions.

The overlay looks like this:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "From Clumps to Sheets: Geometry Controls the Temperature PDF of Multi-Phase Gas" by Zirui Chen and S. Peng Oh (UC Santa Barbara, USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.166483

August 6, 2026, 7:13 am 0 boosts 1 favorites

The third paper of the week, published on Thursday 6th August in folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics is “First Detection of Extensive Air Showers Using a Small-Aperture Fluorescence Telescope” by M. Zotov (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia) and 7 others based in Russia and Armenia. The study reports the first-ever detection of extensive air showers from ultra-high-energy cosmic rays using a compact fluorescence telescope, employing both conventional and deep learning analysis methods.

The overlay is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "First Detection of Extensive Air Showers Using a Small-Aperture Fluorescence Telescope" by M. Zotov (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia) and 7 others based in Russia and Armenia

doi.org/10.33232/001c.166484

August 6, 2026, 7:35 am 0 boosts 1 favorites

The fourth and final paper of the week was published on Friday 7th August in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics: “TDCOSMO XXVI: Uniform Lens Modeling of Eight Doubly Imaged Quasars“, by Ryan Brady (Stony Brook University, USA) and 9 others based all around the world, presents a new method for analyzing doubly imaged quasars using the Hubble Space Telescope, revealing that arc surface brightness is key to precision in mass model measurements.

The overlay is here:

The officially-accepted version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Copen Journal of Astrophysics: "TDCOSMO XXVI: Uniform Lens Modeling of Eight Doubly Imaged Quasars" by Ryan Brady (Stony Brook University, USA) and 9 others based around the world.

doi.org/10.33232/001c.166553

August 7, 2026, 7:31 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

That’s all for this week. We have about a dozen more papers accepted and waiting for the authors to put the final version on arXiv, which they will presumably do when they’re back from holiday. I’ll do an update next weekend and we’ll see!

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Primordial Chaos – Hilma af Klimt

Posted in Art with tags , , , on August 7, 2026 by telescoper

One of a series of 26 small canvasses called Group I. Primordial Chaos by Hilma af Klimt (1906-7, Oil on Canvas, 52.5×37 cm).

A major exhibition of works by Swedish artist Hilma af Klmit (1862-1944) will start in October (2026) and run until January (2027) at the National Gallery of Ireland.

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Girl, by Edna O’Brien

Posted in Literature with tags , , on August 6, 2026 by telescoper

Irish novelist Edna O’Brien passed away two years ago. When I read of her death I didn’t know anything about her writing except that her first novel, Country Girls, had been banned in Ireland. That made me decide to read some of her work. As it happens the first book by her that I came across was the last she wrote, in 2019, which I bought over a year ago and has been sitting on my coffee table ever since. I started reading it this evening and found it so compelling that I couldn’t put it down until I had finished it.

Girl is set in Nigeria and is told in the voice of Maryam, a young girl who is kidnapped, along with her schoolmates, by the jihadists of Boko Haram. Maryam and the other schoolgirls are subjected to appaling horror and degradation described in unflinching detail. Eventually Maryam is given as a prize to a Boko Haram soldier Mahmoud, and bears his baby (simply called Babby). Maryam escapes with Babby with another girl, and drifts into and out of danger. Upon eventually returning home she is punished by her family, but the book ends on an optimistic note as she finds sanctuary.

The story is grim but O’Brien clearly had a great gift for storytelling, with subtle shifts in style as Maryam’s mental state shifts between horror, to relief, to sad reminiscence of happier times. In her acknowledgements at the end, the author explains that Maryam’s tale is actually a synthesis of accounts of various ordeals experienced by real-life women, to whom she spoke to in two visits to Nigeria, where she also learned something of the linguistic mannerisms of Maryam’s people. It is quite an achievement for an Irish woman in her late eighties to find a convincing voice for a young Nigerian girl subjected to pains surely beyond imagination. I think it’s a brilliantly moving book.

Girl has been criticised for O’Brien’s appropriation of the voice of a different culture, which (it has been claimed) makes it feel like an artificial exercise. A book of this kind by a Nigerian author would no doubt be more “authentic” in many important respects, but what I took from it (apart from the beautiful prose) is the emotional authenticity of the emotional tone and her desire to celebrate the strength of the many women whose struggles come together in the story of Maryam. The violent oppression of women is widespread in this world, so Maryam is a universal figure – a survivor.

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