In March I will begin working at Oxford University, as a postdoctoral researcher in citizen science. The ‘post’-doctoral part of that title means that I must submit my PhD thesis by the end of this month. Eek! It has been on the boil for some time now, and I’m pleased to say that next week [...]
2010 is going to be a big year for me and my family. I will be submitting my thesis in February and am currently applying for jobs.
So it’s that time of time year – “what was the Star of Bethlehem?”. This is a question a lot of astronomers will be innocently asked by all sorts of people over the festive season. Best answer: “nothing, it doesn’t even make sense”.
Just a short post to draw your attention to this really cool collection of portraits by photographer Max Alexander. A wide range of people – all astronomers – are shown in quirky these photo portraits that refer to their fields of research.
I am once again enjoying a timeout in Provence, where I have dark, clear skies most nights and a supply of good wine and too much cheese
How did I get into astronomy? I was born in 1981 so my formative years were the late 80s and early 90s. I am an astronomer forged from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Hubble Space Telescope and of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. I would say that those were the things that got me into astronomy? What got you into astronomy? I’d be interested to know. In the spirit of sharing, here’s my story.
I have been working on a way to internationalize (is that a word?) my OverTwitter feeds, which predict visible passes of satellites as well as Iridium flares. It started to become embarrassing that the @overparis, @overmadrid and @overberlin feeds were not in French, Spanish and German, for example.
I think it is technically now possible and so I am putting [...]
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the BBC in Birmingham to help edit The Sky at Night as an astronomy researcher. The episode was about near-Earth objects, specifically 2008TC3, which crash landed in the Sudan last year, after being tracked from space. You can currently catch the episode on the BBC iPlayer.
The BBC [...]
I am part of a new podcast called Science or Fiction, that takes a light-hearted looks at the science behind science fiction. We already have four episodes out in the wild, with more on the way.
Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Simpson. Twitter @orbitingfrog
