stonehenge

my mom came to england to visit last month, and we took a trip to stonehenge. its a gorgeous and mysterious place, strangely located right next to a road. many friends here tell me stories of how they could climb all over the stones as kids, but now they are blocked off so you can only walk around from a distance, listening to a recorded history of the place.

dotastronomy - The Leiden Experiment

more visual entertainment about the .Astronomy workshop. this video was created by zemogle, who also leads a nice little project called teapots from space.



what good is science if you cant sing and laugh about it? (see the 5:09 time mark)

.Astronomy hack day and google wave

i tried to figure out how to benefit from using google wave, in fact, it was one of my goals while attending the dotAstronomy workshop last week in leiden. day three of the conference was "hack day," which had no official sessions planned so that people could team up to create absolutely whatever they wanted, and seemed like a good day to test google wave.... somehow.


this day could have been a major disaster considering the lack of structure, but the enthusiasm of the conference participants generated a fun atmosphere of impressively creative productivity! it really amazed me to watch so many people working together in such efficient collaborations.

markus possel spent his day learning how to use some new editing software to make the dot astronomy trailer. that's him on the right:


pamela gay interviewed many people (including chris lintott seen here) to get material for her popular astronomy-related podcast: astronomy cast.


i assume stuart was doing something here with the jodcast, but i couldnt keep up with all the projects he was working on! (photo by nancy a)


the night before hack day a group of us went to a pub and came up with a fun idea for a project we could actually do on hack day (details to come...)! NOTE: many good ideas come while sitting in a pub. during the morning of the hack day, we accreted more volunteers for our project and discussed the details. (photo by robert hollow)


the people with the technical skills quickly decided who could do what, and set about designing the components that would add together to make everything work. i realized that my normally sufficient nerdy knowledge was failing me, as i only understood bits and pieces of what they were saying.




i decided to share the responsibility of writing the text for the webpage, which allowed the opportunity to test out google wave! i sat in a room with chris, sarah, and michael, started a wave, and away we went.


we found wave beneficial for a little while. the interactive text was nice, as one person could be dictating an idea while watching the words change on the screen as someone else wrote. but then it got really slow and kept freezing at times, causing me to lose some work.

we eventually gave up on google wave and announced on twitter (as was customary at .Astronomy) that we were switching to EtherPad. i really liked the EtherPad set up more, because you could highlight each individual's edits in different colors, and there was a chat window next to the text file which would have been extremely useful had we not all been sitting in the same room together.

shenanigans ensued:


oddly enough, the very next day, we received word that google had bought EtherPad! i was not happy about that. then the next day, the announcement came that ether pad was back online and would be open sourced. um, ok. i'm still involved in some waves, but mostly because i like the projects that are using a wave to communicate, not because i'm a wave fan.

anyway, the main point of all this is that while i dont fully understand google wave, i have MANY many wave invites to share. so if you want one, let me know in the comments! also, congratulations to all who participated in the successful hack day and thank you to those who taught me new things and made the day so exciting and fun!

more photos!

10 simple science stunts

ever get a little bored at holiday family gatherings? watch this short video by richard wiseman to get 10 ideas for great science stunts that can be performed at home!

chromoscope

there is a new interactive astronomy website called chromoscope that allows you to explore our milky way galaxy in several different wavelengths! you can search for individual objects, you can zoom into different areas of our galaxy and you can explorre what various objects look like with x-ray vision, visible light, hydrogen alpha, far-infrared, microwaves, and radio light!



go explore and have fun!

dotAstronomy: my talk about 60 symbols

i havent had a chance to watch my presentation yet, but you can right now!

dotAstronomy: trailer

this was a video someone made yesterday during our hack day!

dotAstronomy: first day impressions

a colleague of mine joked before i came to this dotAstronomy workshop, that it would be a bunch of science, technology, and astronomy dorks sitting in a room twittering to each other and the world. i chuckled and reluctantly agreed, but really, i had no idea:


the laptop to human ratio in the main conference room is very nearly 1! the mac to human ratio is only slightly less than one, and i'm guessing the iPhone to human ratio is quite high too, but cant be exactly one because i dont own one! i admit it, i'm not an iPerson. i kinda wish i had one though, because there are all sorts of great sessions this week on various applications.

anyway, the venue for the workshop is amazing! i have my own office:


but i'm a bit worried that the elevator has a "gravity" switch!?


they keep us properly loaded with coffee.


we heard a nice talk by chris lintott and arfon smith about the galaxy zoo.


and ironically, there is a constantly-morphing schedule of events on a white board in the coffee room. there is NO accurate digital version of this plan of events!


and riding bicycles with a group of astronomers back to the hotel was amusing; the rental bikes here in holland only have foot breaks. the process of locking the bikes was even more hilarious....

participate in dotAstronomy

if you would like to participate in this dotAstronomy technothon, you can follow the action LIVE from the dotAstronomy workshop thru UStream everyday this week: http://tinyurl.com/dotastrotv.

if youre interested, i give my talk friday morning at about 0845 UT.... quite early in the US, sorry!

you can also follow me on twitter for up to the second happenings... or follow @dotastronomy on twitter OR keep up with the #dotastro hashtag.

use the #dotastro hashtag on twitter to ask the speakers questions in real time!

jimmy fallon does neil young doing the fresh prince

thats right... this video shows jimmy fallon (impressively) singing as neil young singing the theme to the fresh prince of bel-air! hilarious!



i'd like to hear him do parents just dont understand.

color and posture

beautiful colors in this photo by lars daniel

christmas cracker joke

last night was my astronomy department's christmas party (yeah, i know its still november). the tradition in the UK at a christmas dinner is to open a christmas cracker, which looks like a cardboard toilet paper roll wrapped in shiny paper! the cracker makes a loud 'crack' when you open it, and inside you find a paper hat to wear during the meal, a tiny toy you can play with until it inevitably breaks, and a joke or riddle or motto!

i received a joke in my cracker and surprisingly, it was pretty good!


Q: why did the scientist install a knocker on his door?






A: he wanted to win the No-bell prize!

dotAstronomy

i'm off to the netherlands on sunday to attend the .Astronomy conference, which just had a press release today! the point of this conference is to explore in interaction between astronomy and the internet. citizens are now able to participate in real science, through projects like galaxy zoo, astronomers are more connected than ever by online databases and networked services, and public outreach possibilities have broadened with projects like sixty symbols.


i'll be presenting a short talk about my participation in the sixty symbols video series. if any of you have opinions or feedback about the series, please let me know in the comments!

i dont really know what to expect from this conference, but i'm excited to find out and learn about a lot of new technologies astronomers are developing to take advantage of the world wide web of information and communication!

smart turkeys

in honor of thanksgiving celebrations in the US...


thanks, lara!

luke skywalker can't spell

from college humor

fireflies or lightning bugs?

a recent big picture set features 25 photos from the international national geographic photo contest.

my favorite is a beautiful photo by steve irvine that shows "about one hour of firefly activity near my home in rural Ontario. The precision of the background star trails is an interesting contrast to the chaotic pattern of the firefly flashes."


his caption captures the contrasting movements in the picture perfectly.

although... i've always called those little flying creatures that periodically light up in neon yellow: lightning bugs. as far as i can tell, fireflies and lightning bugs are the same bugs, and i'm wondering just how regional these terms are.

what do you call them and where are you from? have you heard both names?

i dont remember hearing the term "fireflies" until i moved to austin, texas. even after i heard the word, it took me a while to identify the glowing creature as my lightning bug, because there arent very many flying around austin! i was used to massive hoards of the creatures, and hadnt even realized that i hadnt experienced the mesmerizing feeling of being inside a cloud lightning bugs since i moved away from home!

where i grew up in ohio, there are TONS of lightning bugs! i usually found lightning bug clouds surrounding bushes or around a grove of trees. the last place i lived before moving away from ohio was a small, square building that held 4 apartments. around the back sat a small parking lot shaded by many tall trees that grew along a small creek. the location felt quaint, welcomed the seasons well, attracted loads of pesky mosquitoes, but also harvested lightning bug fiestas!! during certain nights, i could walk around the parking lot and be completely surrounded by little, moving, disorienting, flashing lights that reached all the way up into the trees!

of course as a kid, i would catch a lightning bug in my hands, watch the neon shine thru my fingers, and wonder why i didnt have the cool ability to light up any of my body parts in such a way!

i havent experienced lightning bugs in such a way anywhere else i've been, except for a hint of the feeling on a boat trip down a river deep in malaysia.... even there, people called them fireflies!

candidate collision at LHC!

the large hadron collider (LHC) is up and running again - successfully this time! beams of particles are shooting around the tubes, and professor brian cox is reporting on twitter that this image shows a candidate collision detected by the ATLAS project!!


congratulations to all all at CERN! you can read more at cosmic variance here and here.

dirty car art

if earth had rings like saturn

here is a nice fantasy animation showing what the views might be from earth's surface if we had a ring system!



UPDATE: an interesting discussion on the implications of earth having rings is up at quantum rocketry.

nora the piano cat

this is hilarious! it just keeps getting better....!!!


i miss having a cat in my life.

2012 - a scientific reality check!

here is a message from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology

R2D2 knitted hat!

this is purely awesome knit wear from babbidge patch!!

an astronomer's periodic table

speaking of periodic tables, what chemists call the periodic table of elements is very different from what astronomers consider! listen as dr. omar almaini describes an astronomer's periodic table, followed by the description of how the elements are formed in the hearts of stars!

periodic table, indeed

found at dark roasted blend

3D projections on buildings

wow! NuFormer Digital Media has developed a fascinating way to make custom 3D projections on buildings! i would really like to see one of these in person! advertising with a lasting impact!

Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Digital Media on Vimeo.

marvelous night for a moondance

can i just have one more moondance with you my love?


here's a great recording of moondance by van morrison that i cannot embed.