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Back to Maynooth

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, GAA, Maynooth with tags , , , on July 8, 2023 by telescoper

I made it back to Maynooth from Cardiff last night after a relatively uneventful journey, although sitting next to a hen party on a RyanAir flight en route to Dublin wasn’t exactly the most peaceful experience and I was quite tired when I got home.

Among the many things that have changed over the last few years is how much quieter Cardiff Airport is. When I arrived there at about 6pm yesterday there were only two flights on the departure screen. One of them (a KLM flight to Amsterdam) was then cancelled, so all the intending passengers had to leave the departure lounge and collect their checked luggage. My flight was on time, however, and was very full.

In a previous pre-pandemic existence I spent half my time in Cardiff and half in Maynooth so had to cross the Irish Sea twice a week. The airline I used in those days, FlyBe, went bust just before the pandemic. RyanAir has taken the Cardiff-Dublin route, deploying a Boeing which is much bigger than the Embraer used by FlyBe, but there is only one flight a day. The other routes previously operated by FlyBe from Cardiff (e.g. to Edinburgh) no longer exist. Bristol is relatively easy to get to from Cardiff so I suppose people go that way nowadays if they have to fly.

A consequence of the small number of flights from Cardiff Airport is that the shuttle bus to Cardiff City Centre no longer runs. That was the method I used to get to and from the airport in my previous existence when I had to cross the Irish Sea twice a week. That no longer being available, I travelled to the airport by train and bus transfer. It’s a lot less convenient than the old bus, and a bit more expensive, but went off without any hitches.

Anyway, it’s nice to be home. I plan to spend the day chilling and watching the hurling semi-final between Limerick and Galway. UPDATE: Defending Champions Limerick beat Galway by 2-24 to 1-18 and thus get to the final yet again. The other semi-final, between Clare and Kilkenny, is tomorrow.

P.S. I forgot to mention that the good folk of Cardiff gave me a mug advertising CHART – Cardiff Hub for Astrophysics Research and Technology – which is new since my day.

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NAM Ending

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff on July 7, 2023 by telescoper

So here I am, getting ready to check out of my hotel and head off to the last day of the UK National Astronomy Meeting 2023.

I had to miss out on yesterday afternoon’s sessions to deal with some personal matters, all thankfully resolved, though that had the bonus of having to take a walk through Bute Park and get some lovely fresh air. I managed to sort out the things I needed to do, but it took longer than I thought it would for various reasons. Anyway, there is still the best part of a day to go, and my flight back to Dublin is not until this evening, so I’ll be attending most of the day’s session.

Since I did my talk on Wednesday I’ve been a free agent and while I have been at the meeting I have been moving from session. It’s been good to catch up with what’s going on across the field. I went to sessions on infrared astronomy and gravitational waves as well as a number on cosmology (including one on the UK contribution to Euclid).

I think the meeting has been excellent and I congratulate the organizers and all the contributors for putting on such a great programme. It’s great to see Cardiff at the forefront of so many great things going on UK Astronomy.

P.S. This may have been the biggest NAM ever..

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Brainstorm Flash

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff on July 6, 2023 by telescoper
Euclid being launched on a Falcon 9 rocket on 1st July 2023

The media activity surrounding the launch of Euclid on Saturday continues. Yesterday a piece by yours truly appeared on RTÉ Brainstorm with the title All you need to know about Euclid’s six year space mission. It subsequently got picked up by the main RTÉ News website on their News Lens panel, although it’s in second place after a story about a hot-dog eating competition:

P.S. There is also piece in siliconrepublic based on an interview with me here.

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NAM Plenarius

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , on July 5, 2023 by telescoper
Picture by Renée Hložek

Today I contributed to a Plenary session at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff, in the form of a a joint presentation by myself and the wonderful Dr Tana Joseph. It isn’t the first time that there’s been a talk about Equality Diversity and Inclusion at a NAM – there was one in 2017 – but it’s definitely the first one I have done. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but in the end I think it went pretty well.

The word “Plenary”, by the way, is derived from the Latin adjective plenarius (meaning complete) which is in turn derived from plenus (meaning full). I wasn’t sure ahead of the event how full the room would be, as I worried that some people wouldn’t attend this and might leave after the previous plenary talk. Some people did leave at the start, actually, but fortunately they were replaced by a a larger number of new arrivals.

There have been parallel sessions yesterday and the day before on EDI issues, but there’s a tendency for the people attending such sessions to those who are already engaged in related work, while it is important in my opinion for everyone to pay attention. That’s a point I tried to make during the session.

Tana and I agreed beforehand that we would try to stimulate a discussion and I did worry that we might not succeed in provoking questions, but in fact there were many. That, and the nice comments we got after the talk, convinced me that the session had gone well. I was, however, quite nervous as I haven’t given any kind of conference talk for some years now.

One problem was that a meeting of RAS Council was timetabled in such a way as to clash with this morning’s Plenary, so nobody on Council could attend. That was regrettable.

Anyway, that job done, I’m now back at my hotel getting myself ready for the conference dinner. That reminds me that last night I attended the out-of-town dinner of the RAS Club which is usually held at National Astronomy Meetings. This time it was at the Ivy Restaurant in Cardiff. I took my chequebook to pay for the dinner (which is practically the only thing I pay for by cheque) only to discover that they now accept card payments. Looking at the stubs, though, I realized that the last Club Dinner I attended at the Athenaeum in London was on 14th February 2020. The dinner after that was cancelled due to the pandemic, and I haven’t been able to attend any since then.

Update: dinner (in the Principality Stadium) was really excellent, and congratulations to all the award winners. And so to bed.

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Calling out Entitlement

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc, Science Politics with tags , , , on July 4, 2023 by telescoper

Looking around for topical material beyond Euclid to include in tomorrow’s plenary presentation at the National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff in the session on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Astronomy and Geophysics I came across a story about Nobel Laureate Kurt Wüthrich.

Professor Kurt Wüthrich gave a talk at the Lindau Meeting last week during which he claimed there was anti-male discrimination in modern science. I have uncovered further relevant evidence. Here is a picture of four old white men from the same meeting being discriminated against by being forced to participate in a panel consisting entirely of old white men:

72nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting Agora Talk „The Future of Structural Biology“

Setting aside Kurt Wüthrich’s ridiculously elevated sense of entitlement, the really serious issue is that it was a (female) early career researcher that called him out. One point that I want to make tomorrow is that those of us who are old white men have a vitally important role to play in calling out this sort of nonsense. More generally, whatever your scientific status it is important for you to ask yourself “what can I do to make the research environment as good as possible for people who are not like me?”.

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Opening the National Astronomy Meeting

Posted in Cardiff, Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on July 3, 2023 by telescoper

My first impressions of Cardiff after arriving yesterday is that a lot of things have changed. That sadly includes the fact that a number of my favourite places in the city centre have closed. On the other hand, some thing have improved. The Centre for Student Life, for example, is completely new since my days here and is a definite improvement on the previous dingy premises. It also just happens to be where the plenary sessions of the 2023 National Astronomy Meeting are being held:

Centre for Student Life
Mark Drakeford addresses the opening Plenary

The first plenary session of the week was opened by the First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, who gave very a nice speech, in which he spoke very knowledgeably of the inspirational nature of astronomy as well as the history of the subject in Wales. It was a very impressive start to the week!

The Vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, Colin Riordan, was also there.

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To Cardiff

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, The Universe and Stuff on July 2, 2023 by telescoper
Cardiff Castle

So I’m here in sunny Cardiff for the UK National Astronomy Meeting which is taking place here from tomorrow 3rd July until Friday 7th July. I’m here all week!

On my way here this morning, in Dublin Airport, I picked up a copy of the Sunday Times Ireland edition to find this:

Sunday Times Ireland 2/7/2023.

It’s not a bad piece except I’m uncomfortable about being in the same subheading as Elon Musk! More amusingly still, my piece is next to a story about how your sex life needn’t stop when you reach 50. I wish someone had told me that 10 years ago!

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Countdown to the Euclid Launch

Posted in Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on July 1, 2023 by telescoper

Today’s the day! Weather permitting, of course, all eyes will be on Cape Canaveral for the launch of the Euclid satellite later this afternoon (as reckoned in Ireland). You can watch the launch on YouTube via the following stream (but it won’t start until 15.30 Irish Time; 16.30 CEST):

The Key Events to look for in local time are:

16:12 Euclid launch on SpaceX Falcon 9
16:53 Separation of Euclid from Falcon 9
16:57 Earliest expected time to establish communication with Euclid

After that, the mission is handed over to the ESA Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany as it sets out for the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. Approximately four weeks after launch, Euclid will enter in orbit around this point, which is located at 1.5 million km from Earth, in the opposite direction from the Sun. Once in orbit, mission operators will start verifying all the functions of the telescope. During this, residual water is outgassed, after which Euclid’s instruments will be turned on. Between one and three months after launch, Euclid will go through several calibrations and scientific performance tests and get ready for science. The telescope begins its early phase of the survey of the Universe three months after launch. There will be a preliminary release of a small amount of data in December 2024, but the first full data release – DR1 – will take about two years.

UPDATE: All critical stages of the launch passed satisfactorily, and contact has been established with the ground control. Euclid is now on its way to L2. Bon Voyage, Euclid!

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Pushing Euclid

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 30, 2023 by telescoper

I’ve spent a sizeable chunk of the last two days answering press enquiries concerning the Euclid mission, due to be launch about 24 hours from now. Here is a picture of Euclid in the Falcon 9 fairing, getting ready to be moved to the launch facility. It’s all getting very real!

After talking with their researcher yesterday, this morning I did a short interview on Morning Ireland, which is on RTÉ Radio 1. It was shorter than I imagined because the previous item – about the ongoing ructions at RTÉ over various financial scandals – understandably overran quite a bit. The presenter, Rachel English, was very nice though and I think it went fairly well. I did another short interview on Newstalk Radio on a programme called Hard Shoulder, which took place at 5.48pm. I also spoke to a journalist from the Sunday Times Irish Edition, who I think will run a story on Sunday.

Anyway, the purpose of this media stuff is not to try to grab headlines – my involvement in Euclid is very small, really – but to generate some interest in the hope that Ireland takes a more active role in future space missions. I don’t know whether it will work, but I hope it does, and I feel obliged to try although it has made for a very busy day indeed!

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Direct Action from Brazil

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , on June 29, 2023 by telescoper

This blog gets traffic from all round the world, but not often that much from Brazil. When I checked the stats this morning, however, I noticed there were quite a few hits from that direction. It’s been a very busy day, though and, though I vaguely wondered why, I was too busy today to think much about it. This evening, however, I learnt the reason. It seems that there was a demonstration by about 100 students and staff at the University of São Paulo against the appointment of a person to a faculty position in the Physics Department. Here is a poster:

“We don’t want professors involved in harassment cases at the University of São Paulo Physics Institute”

Here are some other pictures from the protest:

I understand that the demonstration resulted in the appointment of the person concerned being delayed until the “harassment case” is investigated. This seems to demonstrate that Direct Action, as they call this sort of thing, certainly seems to be a more effective approach to these matters than official procedures that rarely achieve anything.

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