Supermarket Sweep

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on February 11, 2024 by telescoper

Since I’m in a self-catering apartment here in Sydney, I’ve needed to scout out the local shops. It turns out the nearest supermarket to my residence is called Coles. When I was buying a few bits and bobs there I showed the name on my debit card to the person at the checkout, but they wouldn’t even give me a discount.

Coles is one of the two big supermarket chains in Australia, the other being Woolworths. I was a bit surprised by that as the UK Woolworths went down the tubes some time ago. I’ve tried both stores during my stay here and it pains me to say that I think Woolworths is the better of the two; it also has the highest market share. There’s also an Aldi near me.

One thing that surprised me about both Coles and Woolworths is that neither sells alcoholic beverages while Aldi does. It turns out that both have associated drinks businesses, Liquorland and BWS respectively, usually located right next to the supermarkets. For some reason it has been decided to keep them separate from the general stores. That might be because of licensing laws or because of purely commercial reasons. I’ve sampled a couple of wines while I’ve been here (one red and one white, both mid-price) and both were nice. Imported wines are available, but I’ll be sticking to local producers while I’m here. Of course the grape varieties are of European origin, but grown in Australia: the red I tried was a Montepulciano and the white a Riesling.

Other than that the main difference between supermarkets here and in Ireland (or the UK) is the much greater selection of Asian food and ingredients. Most groceries are of Australian origin, though, and even brands that are familiar back home (e.g. Heinz) are generally made here under licence. Anyway, I didn’t come all the way here to eat what I would eat at home, and it’s been fun sampling some of the local delicacies, such as Barramundi. I haven’t had kangaroo yet. I did try a Tim Tam but was unimpressed.

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Walkabout in Sydney

Posted in Biographical with tags , , , , , on February 10, 2024 by telescoper

It was a bit rainy this morning so my planned Saturday walk around Sydney was a bit truncated. I made it to Sydney Harbour but didn’t go on a boat trip, which I’ll do later. I didn’t have time to visit the Botanical Gardens or the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which are nearby, but will do so later. I was planning to take more pictures with my little compact camera too, but when I took it out I realized its battery was virtually flat and I had to use my phone camera instead. The light here is very different from Ireland! Fortunately I’m here long enough that I’ll have other opportunities for exploration.

My residence in Sydney is the district called Ultimo, which is very central and close to the University of Sydney campus. There is excellent public transport from here to Circular Quay, close to both the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, but I needed to stretch my legs so took a leisurely stroll of about an hour, my route taking me through Haymarket and Chinatown to Circular Quay. It being Chinese New Year, I took a detour to look at some of the preparations for two weeks of celebrations. I enjoyed the walk, which followed the tram line most of the way there, and it was getting rather warm in late afternoon so I returned by tram.

Anyway, after much fiddling about, I’ve managed to embed a video I put on Instagram. As you can hear, it was quite windy!

P.S. Here’s an interesting factoid for you: the population of Greater Sydney (5.3M) exceeds that of the entire Republic of Ireland (5.0M).

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In the Park – Gwen Harwood

Posted in Poetry with tags , , , on February 10, 2024 by telescoper

Victoria Park, Sydney

She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date.
Two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt.
A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt
Someone she loved once passed by – too late

to feign indifference to that casual nod.
“How nice” et cetera. “Time holds great surprises.”
From his neat head unquestionably rises
a small balloon…”but for the grace of God…”

They stand a while in flickering light, rehearsing
the children’s names and birthdays. “It’s so sweet
to hear their chatter, watch them grow and thrive, ”
she says to his departing smile. Then, nursing
the youngest child, sits staring at her feet.
To the wind she says, “They have eaten me alive.”

by Gwen Harwood (1920-1995)

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A Euclid Milestone!

Posted in Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , on February 9, 2024 by telescoper

I just heard some excellent news about Euclid so thought I would post a quick update here. I won’t say much because there will no doubt be official communications from the European Space Agency and the Euclid Consortium. You can find a variety of Euclid-related posts on this blog here.

Over the past few months, there has been a huge amount of activity relating to commissioning the instruments, verifying their performance, and measuring parameters of the optical system that will be needed for analysis of the huge amount of data due to come from Euclid. All this effort fed into the Mission Commissioning Results Review (MCRR) which concluded yesterday that all was well.

This is an important milestone for Euclid because, in ESA parlance, it marks the change from a project to a mission. Until commissioning, there is a project manager who works with ESA and the industrial contractors to ensure everything functions properly; when nominal operations start the project team is disbanded and the mission team takes over; and so it came to pass that the Project Manager (Giuseppe Racca) handed over the reins to the Mission Manager (Pierre Ferruit).

That’s when the role of the Euclid Consortium increases substantially. In particular the Science Ground Segment (SGS), which includes the pipelines that will process the data, has been declared to be ready for business. You can read more about the SGS here but here’s a graphic that shows how data comes from the telescope, external telescopes, or simulations, then run through their respective pipelines for VIS, NISP, or external data, then are merged into a coherent format. Pipelines then extract scientific information and compute science data products for further analysis

Each element of this diagram is rather complex. Here, for example, is the organization of the Science Data Centre (SDC) component of the Science Ground Segment at the bottom of the above picture, consisting of computing centers responsible for implementing and running the data processing pipelines:

Anyway, the immediate upshot of all this is that full surveying activities of Euclid can now proceed. The Euclid mission will conduct primarily two different surveys: a “Wide Survey”, covering about 15,000 square degrees on the sky, and a “Deep Survey” of about 50 square degrees, where the instruments will observe three fields much longer than the rest of the sky to capture much fainter galaxies and hence look further out into space. I understand that the Wide Survey will commence in earnest on 14th February.The timescale from now is that the first full set of survey data (DR1) will be available internally to the Euclid Consortium in May or June 2025 and will be made public a year later (i.e. by June 2026).

That doesn’t mean that Euclid will be silent until 2026. In fact, the first batch of post-launch papers will come out very soon, in May 2024. This will include science papers resulting from the Early Release Observations – the data from these will also be made public at the same time – as well as an overview paper for the whole mission and papers describing the details of NISP and VIS instruments using measurements made during commissioning. There will also be a release in May 2025 of data from the Deep Survey patch of about 50 square degrees.

So, the board is set. The pieces are moving.

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Sydney Calling…

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on February 7, 2024 by telescoper
Zoom calls from Australia are awkward…

I know that’s an obvious joke, but I couldn’t resist.

The thing that’s really awkward about Zoom calls from Australia is when the other attendees are in Europe and North America. I had to chair a (Euclid-related) telecon in the early hours of yesterday morning, which wasn’t much fun, though I think it went OK and I did manage to get some sleep afterwards.

Other than that I’ve been remarkably free of jet lag. I had received dire warnings from other colleagues who have made the trip, but it doesn’t seem to have affected me badly at all. By now I’m used to what time it is, though I still have problems with what day it is. That’s because most of the emails I get are sent from Europe and these are generally sent yesterday (my time), i.e. from a place where my today is the sender’s tomorrow. If somebody says “let’s chat tomorrow” that confuses me!

Although I haven’t had much trouble with the time difference, the one thing that I have taken time to adjust to is eating habits. I got on the plane at Abu Dhabi at 10.25pm and once the plane had reached cruising altitude they served dinner (and, of course, wine). The trouble is that was around 7am Sydney time when I should have been having breakfast. I arrived in Sydney around 7pm Sydney time, when I should have had dinner, but all I had was a craving for breakfast (especially coffee). Obviously my stomach wasn’t yet tuned in. Anyway, just two (or is it three?) days later, I’m back to having breakfast at breakfast time and dinner at dinner time so all is well.

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University of Sydney, Physics, and Astronomy…

Posted in Biographical, History with tags , , , , on February 7, 2024 by telescoper

Here’s a gallery of random pictures I took on the way to the Physics Department at the University of Sydney this morning.

The academic year at the University of Sydney is about to start, with the new intake of students beginning to arrive next week and the first lectures taking place the week after that. The rows of tents are for the various student societies which will be hoping to recruit new members. The University was founded in 1850 and the architectural style of the older buildings on campus is what you might call Victorian Gothic Revival. There are also buildings dating from the 1920s, such as the Faculty of Medicine (1922) and the Physics Building (1924); the latter seems much bigger on the inside than the outside, and also has a new building next to it devoted to nanoscience.

Entrance to Campus
Preparing for Fresher’s Fair
Gothic Revival
Built in 1922
Way in to Physics
Long Corridor
A refracting telescope
Grubb Telescope Company 1893

I’ve posted before about the famous optical instrument manufacturer, the Grubb Telescope Company, founded in Dublin by Thomas Grubb and later renamed Grubb Parsons after its relocation to Newcastle upon Tyne. I’ve posted about other connections too, including the presence in the Physics Department in Barcelona of a refracting telescope made by Grubb. Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw yet another Grubb Telescope near the entrance to the Physics building of the University of Sydney, this one made in 1893. This is further evidence – as if it were needed – that, in its time, the Grubb Telescope Company really was the world leader in optical instrumentation.

P.S. The later manifestation of the Grubb Telescope Company – Grubb Parsons – also has Australian connections, including making the primary mirror for the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) and building the UK Schmidt situated next to the AAT at Siding Spring Observatory (about 500 km from Sydney).

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R.I.P. Barry John (1945-2024)

Posted in R.I.P., Rugby with tags , , , on February 6, 2024 by telescoper

I just read the terrible news of the death at the age of 79 of yet another icon of Welsh Rugby Union, the legendary standoff Barry John.

Five years ago I posted an item about Barry John inspired by this clip

The opening part of this clip had caught my attention because it was filmed near the bus stop just outside The Halfway, a pub on Cathedral Road just a few yards from the house in Cardiff in which I lived for many years; in the background you can see Llandaff Fields.

I had often wondered what became of Barry John. He was 74 when I wrote about him and no longer the slim young prodigy who was undoubtedly the best rugby player I ever saw. Since he played in a great era for Welsh rugby that included Gareth Edwards, J.P.R. Williams, Gerald Davies et al, that really says something. As the Guardian obituary aptly puts it, he “played Rugby from another world”.

As a sort of rugby equivalent of George Best, Barry John was incredibly famous during his career. Budding rugby players – even those not born in Wales – all wanted to play like Barry John. But suddenly, at the age of just 27, after playing just 25 internationals, he turned his back on all the publicity and adulation and retired from rugby. He found the pressure of being such a star in the amateur era too difficult to cope with.

So was Barry John really that good? Absolutely yes, he was. Slight of build but with superb balance, he had an extraordinary, almost magical, ability to find his way through a crowd of potential tacklers as if they weren’t there at all. In the memorable words of that great commentator Bill McLaren “he flits like a little phantom”. But you don’t need to take my word for it. Just look at him – and some other giants of the time – in these highlights of the classic Scotland-Wales tie in the Five Nations of 1971. Watch about 30 seconds in, where he wrong-foots half the Scottish three-quarter line before ghosting through three more and releasing the ball to his forwards. Will there ever be another Barry John? I doubt it..

I’m sure there are many of us who remember the excitement of watching Barry John play and feel enriched by what he gave us.

Rest in Peace, Barry John (1945-2024).

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Masters in Theoretical Physics & Mathematics at Maynooth

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on February 6, 2024 by telescoper

Yesterday was a holiday in Ireland but now, with the January examinations over, it’s back to teaching. I am not in Maynooth to enjoy the fun but I can use the medium of this blog to advertise the fact that the MSc in Theoretical Physics & Mathematics is now open to applications for entry in September.

This postgraduate course is run jointly between the Departments of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics & Statistics, with each contributing about half the material. The duration is one calendar year (full-time) or two years (part-time) and consists of 90 credits in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). This is split into 60 credits of taught material (split roughly 50-50 between Theoretical Physics and Mathematics) and a research project of 30 credits, supervised by a member of staff in a relevant area from either Department.

This course is a kind of follow-up to the existing undergraduate BSc Theoretical Physics & Mathematics at Maynooth, also run jointly. We think the postgraduate course will appeal to many of the students on that programme who wish to continue their education to postgraduate level, though applications are very welcome from suitably qualified candidates who did their first degree elsewhere.

Postgraduate admissions in Ireland operate differently from the UK, in that there is a central system in Ireland (called PAC) that is similar to the undergraduate admissions system; in the UK PG courses are dealt with by individual institutions. You will need to apply online via PAC after the following the instructions here. The requisite PAC code for the full-time version of the course is MHQ56.

The closing date for applications is 30th June 2024.

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Two New Publications at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , on February 5, 2024 by telescoper

Now that I’m settled in Sydney it’s time to post another update relating to the  Open Journal of Astrophysics.  Since the last update we have published two more papers, taking  the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 11 and the total published by OJAp up to 126. I should have posted these before leaving but it slipped my mind.

Both the current papers discussed here are in the folder marked Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, our most popular category.

Anyway, the first paper of the most recent pair – published on February 1st – is “LimberJack.jl: auto-differentiable methods for angular power spectra analyses”, Jaime Ruiz-Zapatero (Oxford, UK), David Alonso (Oxford, UK), Carlos García-García (Oxford, UK) , Andrina Nicola (Bonn, Germany), Arrykrishna Mootoovaloo (Oxford, UK), Jamie Sullivan (Berkeley, USA), Marco Bonici (Milan, Italy), and Pedro Ferreira (Oxford, UK). This paper presents a fully auto-differentiable code for cosmological analyses of two-point auto- and cross-correlation measurements from galaxy clustering, CMB lensing and weak lensing data written in Julia.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

 

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

The second paper was published on Friday 2nd February and has the title “Can we constrain structure growth from galaxy proper motions?” which, as its title suggests, looks at the feasibility of using transverse peculiar velocities (i.e. proper motions) of galaxies for cosmological studies. The authors are Iain Duncan (Oxford, UK), David Alonso (Oxford, UK), Anže Slosar (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA), and Kate Storey-Fisher (New York University, USA). To find out the answer to the question posed in its title you’ll have to read the paper!

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

 

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

Because of the high rate of publications coming out, we’re moving to a system where we register papers in batches once a week rather than individually as they are published. This is just a temporary measure until we can automate this process more fully. Anyway, you can expect another update in a week or so.

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Arrived Down Under

Posted in Biographical with tags on February 5, 2024 by telescoper

The plane from Abu Dhabi to Sydney set off a bit late but, 13 hours later, arrived slightly ahead of schedule in Sydney at about 7pm local time. I hadn’t quite realized how much of the flight is actually across Australia itself. It’s quite a big place. Who knew? The route took us over Sri Lanka, incidentally.

Australian immigration and customs were a bit of a rigmarole but didn’t really take all that long and once through I took a taxi to the hotel where I’ll be stating for the next month or so. I have a self-catering suite, which is very nice so I’m looking forward to my stay here.

It’s warm in Sydney – about 26° when I landed – but a bit overcast and very muggy. Rain is forecast.

Today is a public holiday in Ireland, the first Monday on or after 1st February. Astronomically speaking this cross-quarter day is about half-way between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Here of course it’s between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox, which takes place at the beginning of August in the Northern Hemisphere and is in Ireland sometimes referred to as the start of Autumn. The climate here in Sydney is very different from Ireland, however, and I don’t think anyone thinks of 1st August as Autumn.

Anyway, the flight went really well. I even slept for a few hours so I’m not particularly tired, but I’m still 11 hours out of kilter so I’ll try to stay up as long as possible and get a good night’s sleep to try to reset my internal clock. I plan to go for a walk tomorrow morning to explore my immediate surroundings then head up to the University campus to say hello to Physics Department.

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