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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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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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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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Back to Maynooth; a Look Ahead

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on June 26, 2023 by telescoper
A pensive Maynooth University Library Cat

I’m back on Maynooth University campus after a very busy but enjoyable week in Copenhagen. I spent the morning catching up on a few things, including a bit of OJAp business and a visit to Maynooth University Library Cat.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I have to Chair a PhD viva (for a candidate in another Department). It’s interesting that viva voce examinations at Maynooth follow a similar practice to those at Cardiff University, my previous institution, in that each viva has a Chair as well as the internal and external examiners. The Chair is really present to ensure fair play and that proper procedure is followed, and is rarely (if ever) called upon to intervene in practice. I chaired a quite a few such examinations in Cardiff, but this will be my first in Maynooth.

On Wednesday there is the official handover of the position of Chair of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee during which I’ll be briefed about various ongoing matters, as well as generally being given the keys to the kingdom in terms of access to documents, websites and other paraphernalia.

There is a big announcement scheduled for Thursday by the NANOGrav collaboration. I don’t know what is on the agenda, but I suspect it may be the detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background using pulsar timing measurements. I may of course be quite wrong about that, but will blog about it anyway.

Then on Friday I have to prepare for another trip, a short one this time, to attend part of the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff.

Alongside those other things I have to make sure my repeat examinations are ready to be printed ahead of the examination session in August. Students received their final grades last week (while I was away). I don’t know how many will need to take repeat examinations, but there will undoubtedly be some.

Anyway, I have an article I really want to finish by the end of today, so I’ll stop there and get on with it.

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Copenhagen Looking Back

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, OJAp Papers, The Universe and Stuff on June 23, 2023 by telescoper

So here I am then, back in Maynooth. I had a relatively stress-free trip back, although my plane was a bit late and I had to run through Dublin Airport to catch the Hopper Bus I was booked on. Made it though.

The first thing I want to do is to thank the organizers for what was a wonderful event. I wasn’t able to attend the Euclid Consortium meeting in Oslo last year, largely because it was earlier in the year, in April (i.e. term-time) and I had teaching responsibilities. I gather it was a rather gloomy occasion because there was no concrete plan for the launch of Euclid thanks to the Russian war against Ukraine. I guess few would have predicted then that the 2023 meeting would be just a week or so before a launch on SpaceX!

I have to say the atmosphere was also helped by the excellent weather and very fine catering. The conference dinner was held in the Banqueting Hall, on the first floor of the Hans Christian Anderson Castle which stands at one of the entrances to the famous Tivoli Gardens, a few minutes from the conference venue.

Finally, one other memory that will stay with me for a while. It turned out that the week of the conference coincided with high-school graduation celebrations in Copenhagen, so every day we encountered lots of exuberant and largely inebriated teenagers around wearing funny hats and generally going a bit berserk. They made quite a lot of noise in the evenings, but it was all harmless. You’re only young once!

Having not been at an in-person conference for over four years, it was great to see some new faces and catch up with some people I haven’t seen for a long time. It was especially nice to talk to a couple of members of the Editorial Board of the Open Journal of Astrophysics. It was also nice to talk to some authors. Talking of which, here is Nicolas Tessore delivering a plenary presentation featuring work from one of the papers he has published with OJAp:

Anyway, I was up a stupid o’clock to catch my flight this morning so I think I’ll have a bit of rest and hope for the rain to stop so I can do some shopping.

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Euclid Diversity Matters

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , , , on June 22, 2023 by telescoper

It was officially announced at the Euclid Consortium Meeting in Copenhagen this morning that I have been appointed to the role of Chair of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee (ECDC). This has been in the pipeline for a while, but I have refrained from saying anything publicly until the appointment was endorsed by the Euclid Consortium Lead (ECL) and Euclid Consortium Board (ECB) which has now happened.

The previous Chair, Prof. Mathilde Jauzac, is stepping down because her term on the ECDC has come to an end. I’ve been a member of the ECDC for three years during which time Mathilde has done a brilliant job as Chair and she’ll be a very difficult act to follow in this role. There was a standing ovation in the room this morning when Mathilde finished delivering her final ECDC report. It will be down to me to deliver next year’s report, at the 2024 Euclid Consortium Meeting, which will be in Rome.

Instead of trying to describe the role and activities of the ECDC generally, I will direct you to the information given on the brand new Euclid Consortium website which is a one-stop shop for everything to do with Euclid. You can find specific information about Equity, Diversity and Conduct there and/or on the ECDC’s own public website here from which I’ve taken a screengrab of the nice banner:

Just for information, the Euclid Consortium has about 2700 members so it really is a very large organization, and it is the aim of the ECDC to encourage a positive and inclusive environment within it for the benefit of everyone in it.

I’m looking forward to this role for the next year. I have only one year left of my term left on the ECDC so I will almost certainly be Chair for one year only. As regular readers of this blog – both of them – will know, I am on sabbatical next year which means I should have time to take on this responsibility, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I had my full teaching and admin load.

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Euclid Consortium Meeting 2023

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on June 19, 2023 by telescoper
Foyer

I made it to the conference venue (CPH Conference) for this year’s Euclid Consortium Meeting, which is 5 minutes walk from my hotel.

One thing that confused me when I looked at the programme last night was that all the rooms in the conference centre are named after locations in and around the city, e.g. Kastrup, Amager, Vesterbro, etc. For a while I thought the delegates would be running around Copenhagen to find their parallel sessions! Then I realized these were just names of meeting rooms…

The full programme doesn’t start until tomorrow but today I attended a couple of sessions aimed at early career researchers, not because I identify myself as such but because I wanted to listen to questions they asked and the advice given to them, much of which was very sound.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, especially the plenaries, but first: dinner.

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