Archive for National Astronomy Meeting

Newer Entries »

Astronomy Look-alikes, No. 55

Posted in Astronomy Lookalikes with tags , , , on April 20, 2011 by telescoper

One of the bonuses of being at the National Astronomy Meeting here in Llandudo – aside from being at the seaside at a time of gloriously sunny weather – is the chance to attend plenary lectures from other fields and learn a bit about what’s going on in the wider world of astronomy, space science and geophysics. More importantly, it also gives me new ideas for my look-alikes series. Take today, for example. I attended a nice plenary talk about the EISCAT facility by a speaker, Dr Esa Turunen, who may well be related to Norman Tebbit…

Norman Tebbit

Esa Turunen

Share/Bookmark

Leave a comment »

Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est

Posted in Biographical, Cricket, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on April 17, 2011 by telescoper

Well, dear readers, I’ve had a lovely day of gardening and watching cricket; the former hacking down the dead half a Forsythia this morning, the latter watching Glamorgan gain their first win of the Championship season by beating Gloucestershire in fine style here in Cardiff. I also managed to catch a bit of the sun, which has left me a bit woozy. I’ll have to buy myself a hat to wear on days like this. With fair skin and blue eyes, I don’t tan – I stroke.

Anyway, tomorrow morning I’ll be heading off up to the fine seaside resort of Llandudno in North Wales for this years National Astronomy Meeting (NAM for short). It starts this evening, in fact, with a wine reception and other festivities, but unfortunately the journey by train from Cardiff takes absolutely ages on a Sunday, so I decided to eschew the delights of the first evening and travel up tomorrow morning. On a weekday it only takes 5 hours from Cardiff to Llandudno….

I’ll probably miss most, and possibly all, of tomorrow’s talks but should get there in good time for the out-of-town meeting of the RAS Dining Club which will be held in the St George’s Hotel in Llandudno and to which a number of illustrious guests have been invited. On Tuesday morning there’s the session I organised on astrostatistics, which I am looking forward to chairing, and then the conference dinner in the evening. The following day I’m chairing a session on astroparticle physics too. There’s no rest for the wicked. Most of the rest of the time I’ll probably be at the numerous cosmology or extragalactic astronomy sessions or, more likely, in the bar. If the weather stays like this, however, I might wander along the beach and, rolling my trousers up and donning a knotted handkerchief, go for a paddle in the sea.

I’m told there will be wireless connectivity in Llandudno throughout NAM 2011 so I hope to post a few brief blogettes about interesting events, but possibly not tomorrow as I might not have time. The excellent RAS Press Office will no doubt be hard at it for the duration, so watch out for a stream of press releases. I’m not sure whether the mass media will be bothered to get off their backsides and travel all that way from their London offices, so we’ll just have to see how much gets onto the main news.

I’m not particularly looking forward to the journey by the slow train tomorrow, but am definitely looking forward to the change of scenery and to catch up not only with the astronomy but also with some old friends.

If anyone I’ve never actually met before who reads this blog is there, do please say hello! You’ll find I’m quite a friendly chap, really…

P.S. The latin quotation I used in the title here isn’t really relevant. I just picked it because it starts with the word “NAM”. If you’re interested, however, it’s by Francis Bacon and it means, roughly speaking, “knowledge is power”.


Share/Bookmark

2 Comments »

Astrostatistics at NAM

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on March 22, 2011 by telescoper

I’m using the opportunity of my enforced layoff to remind astronomers that this year’s forthcoming Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting, incorporating the MIST and UKSP meetings, will be taking place at the splendid Venue Cymru conference centre, Llandudno, North Wales, from Sunday 17 April to Thursday 21 April.

The period for egistration has been extended , and you can now also submit abstracts of either oral or poster presentations to be considered for inclusion in the various sessions described in the science programme.

I’m organising a session on Recent Developments in Astro-statistics. I haven’t exactly been overwhelmed with offers to speak and there are still one or two slots available, so if you’d like to give a talk in that session please register and upload an abstract to the website. You can’t do the latter until you have done the former. Astro-statistics will be interpreted widely, so I hope to have a varied programme including as many applications of statistics to astronomy and astrophysics as I can get!

NAM is a particularly good opportunity for younger researchers – PhD students and postdocs – to present their work to a big audience so I particularly encourage such persons to submit abstracts. Would more senior readers please pass this message on to anyone they think might want to give a talk?

If you have any questions please feel free to use the comments box (or contact me privately).

Oh, and I should have mentioned that Andrew Jaffe is also touting for trade for the cosmology sessions he’s organising…


Share/Bookmark

Leave a comment »

NAM 2011

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on January 20, 2011 by telescoper

Just a quick post to plug this year’s forthcoming Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting, incorporating the MIST and UKSP meetings, which will be taking place at the splendid Venue Cymru conference centre, Llandudno, North Wales, from Sunday 17 April to Thursday 21 April.

Registration is now open, and you can now also submit abstracts of either oral or poster presentations to be considered for inclusion in the various sessions described in the science programme.

I’ve been asked to organise a small part of this meeting, namely a session on Recent Developments in Astro-statistics, so if you’d like to give a talk in that session please register and upload an abstract to the website. You can’t do the latter until you have done the former. Astro-statistics will be interpreted widely, so I hope to have a varied programme including as many applications of statistics to astronomy and astrophysics as I can get!

NAM is a particularly good opportunity for younger researchers – PhD students and postdocs – to present their work to a big audience so I particularly encourage such persons to submit abstracts. Would more senior readers please pass this message on to anyone they think might want to give a talk?

If you have any questions please feel free to use the comments box (or contact me privately).


Share/Bookmark

2 Comments »

The Next Three Weeks

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on April 11, 2010 by telescoper

Busy day today, getting ready for tomorrow’s return to teaching. The year’s second semester is always a strangely fragmented affair because of the Easter hiatus. We teach for eight weeks from late January until late March, have three weeks off for Easter, and then return to teach another three weeks before a brief revision period and, then, the examinations. It’s an awkward business, that gap.  There’s also quite a danger of missing lectures later on, if you happen to be teaching on a Monday, owing to the Spring Bank Holiday. I lose a lecture in that way,  for my first year module Astrophysical Concepts, although it’s only in revision week so I’m not going to be struggling for time. I hope.

I’ve organized my first year lectures (if “organized” is the right word!) in four sections and managed to make sure I finished three of them, representing areas covered by three of the four questions in the forthcoming examination, before the break. Now I just have half-a-dozen  lectures on cosmology to get through, so this bit should be reasonably self-contained and it won’t matter too much if the students have forgotten the other three parts I did before Easter.

I’ve also got my third-year particle physics lectures to finish off in this period, so it’s going to be quite a busy three weeks. Still, I’ll have plenty to distract me from the General Election campaign which will cover pretty much the same period. Polling day is May 6th, and my last (revision) lecture will be on May 7th.

Another curiosity about Cardiff’s calendar is that we only get three weeks for Easter. I seem to remember it’s usually been four weeks in the other places I’ve worked. One of the downsides of this is that we’re back to term-time while the annual National Astronomy Meeting is going on. This moves around from year to year, and this time is in the splendid city of Glasgow. I’d like to have gone, and would have done if I hadn’t had so much teaching concentrated in this period. Regrettably I’ll have to give it a miss this year.

Anyway, I was getting my notes together this afternoon, sitting in the April sunshine among the new flowers and listening to the birds singing. Completely by accident I came across this little quote from Johannes Kepler, translated from the Mysterium Cosmographicum, which I thought I’d share with you…

We do not ask what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing.  Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens…  The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

4 Comments »

Newer Entries »