Tag Archives: Star Formation

Herschel Stares into Aquila

Herschel Stares into Aquila

Herschel has done it again – releasing an incredible image filled with beauty and science. This time it shows a distant, dark cloud located a thousand light years away in the constellation Aquila, the Eagle.

Herschel and Planck Ready

Herschel and Planck Ready

Herschel and Planck have a launch window confirmed: May 14th (shortly after lunchtime here in the UK). They will be taken up on board an Ariane 5 from ESA’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory  has the largest single mirror ever built for a space telescope. Herschel’s mission is to [...]

Simpson et al. 2008

Simpson et al. 2008

Finally my paper studying the Ophiuchus star-forming region is done and dusted and has been accepted for publication. Today it appeared on the online research paper service, astro-ph and it be published properly by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in (hopefully) the near future.

SCUBA-2 Installed on the JCMT

SCUBA-2 Installed on the JCMT

The much anticipated SCUBA-2 instrument has been installed on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii. The question is how did they manage to get one very large and expensive piece of kit inside another? Here are some photos from the JAC website.

NAM Poster: 3D HARP Data

NAM Poster: 3D HARP Data

This is my second conference poster and it is going up at the UK National Astronomy meeting in a couple of weeks. It will found in the Star Formation section of the conference proceedings. I have taken data from the HARP instrument on the JCMT and processed it as 3D models in order to gain [...]

Observing Run

Soon I will be off on an observing run in Hawaii. I will be using the 15m JCMT telescope on Mauna Kea to take spectral line data using an instrument called HARP.
Since this will be my first professional expedition I will be taking lots of pictures and notes as I try to get to grips [...]

A Brief Explanation

If you’ve ever wondered what it is that I do (this one’s for all you family and friend types), then worry no more. Today I’m giving a talk to the incoming PhD students as part of our Postgraduate Conference. All the 2nd years give talks to all the 1st years and simultaneously bore all the [...]

A New Distance to Rho Oph

A very timely new paper to aide me in my research which states that Rho Oph is 135pc away. give or take a few parsecs.
read paper

The 10 Strangest (Real) Things in Space

The 10 Strangest (Real) Things in Space

I recently saw a Digg article which linked to a space.com page about the 10 Strangest Things in Space. All but 2 of the items were not pictures at all but computer simulations, or artists impressions. So here to correct this injustice to phenomena everywhere I present the REAL 10 Strangest Things in Space – [...]

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Simpson. Twitter @orbitingfrog