http://orbitingfrog.com/nam Blogging the UK National Astronomy Meeting 2008 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:32:15 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Well 2008 was a very interesting National Astronomy Meeting, as is evident from all the press releases, blog posts and more that are still spawning from the event. Belfast did a great job hosting everybody, and the baton passes to Hatfield for next year's marathon of astronomy. We all look ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/11/nam-blog-closing-remarks/ It may be brief, it may be pointless but one way or the other I wanted to use the NAM YouTube channel. So here it is, a video of two esteemed Cardiff Professors 'observing' a poster about 3D HARP Data [youtube]FOIJ8-0oejo[/youtube] You'll find the poster they are looking at here. Thanks to ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/07/3d-observing/ NAM may have finished last week but we still have a couple of interviews to upload. At the start of the National Astronomy Meeting the latest version of the AstroGrid software was released. Jonathan Tedds of the University of Leicester tells us all about AstroGrid - part of the UK ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/07/astrogrid-interview/ You can now listen to the full audio from the NAM STFC session, which has generated many comments and views from everybody. MP3: STFC NAM Session http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/stfc-session-mp3/ I'm in the last science session of NAM 2008, but there's just time to warn observers in Scotland and Northern Ireland of an important and unusual astronomical event. Asteroid 1886 Lowell will occult (pass in front of) the naked eye star HIP 63355, otherwise known as 36 Comae Bernices. The ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/observing-alert-asteroid-occultation/ Using radio observatories in the UK and US and computer simulations, a team of astronomers have identified the youngest forming planet yet seen. Team leader Dr Jane Greaves of the University of St Andrews tells us about it. MP3: Dr Jane Greaves Interview http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/embryonic-planet-interview/ We talked to Dr Douglas Pierce-Price of the European Southern Observatory about the telescopes they operate in Chile and the recent involvement in the Quantum of Solace James Bond movie. MP3: Dr Douglas Pierce-Price Interview http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/eso-interview/ Guest report from Tim Horbury of Imperial, who  is also (quick plug) one of the guests on this month's Sky at Night. I’m sitting in a session called “Solar and Solar-Terrestrial Physics Mission Forum” – it’s full of talks about current and future spacecraft from around the world, as well ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/news-from-the-sun/ Nick caught up with another of the plenary speakers - Professor Brian Schmidt - who led a team studying Type Ia supernova at huge distances. Brian tells us about those observations and how they required the introduction of the cosmological constant into our understanding of cosmology. MP3: Prof Brian Schmidt Interview http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/expanding-universe-interview/ The UK infrared telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii has been doing great work recently thanks to its brand new camera, the cannon shaped object in the picture below.  The camera is responsible for the UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey, which includes the deepest ever look at the infrared sky known ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/worth-a-thousand-words/ Professor Richard Ellis gave a plenary talk on galaxy evolution on Tuesday morning. We caught up with him to find out more. MP3: Prof Richard Ellis Interview http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/04/interview-about-galaxy-evolution/ Updated: listen to the MP3 of this session. We're about half an hour away from the 'town meeting' that forms the one chance in the year for the whole of the UK astronomical community to 'discuss' issues and progress in our field. I put 'discuss' in inverted comments deliberately, because in ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/crisis-what-crisis/ We found out about the Armagh Planetarium from its Director - Dr Tom Mason. MP3: Armagh Planetarium Interview http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/armagh-planetarium-interview/ The eternal dilemma of the conference speaker was nicely encapsulated by Rita Tojeiro from the Institute for Astronomy in Edinburgh.  "Writing this code was a year and a half of my life. I'm going to explain it to you in about a minute" http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/quote-of-the-day/ Presented by David Nutter, the poster for the 'JCMT Gould Belt Legacy Survey' is listed as part of the 'Star Formation: The First Three Million Years' session. Abstract: With the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) Gould Belt Legacy Survey, we will map almost all of the well-known star-formation regions within ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/nam-poster-the-jcmt-gould-belt-legacy-survey/ ...or from beyond the cosy home we have here. Andy Lawrence's comments on NAM can be found here; reading his archive will provide anyone with a pretty fair guide to the politics of the last few months, too. And Darren Baskill from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich is in Belfast ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/bloggers-from-other-worlds/ I'm currently sitting in the Young Astronomers' Session at NAM, coming to terms once again with the fact that I'm not really a young astronomer any more. Although PhD students present their work throughout the week, this is an extra opportunity to hear about the best work from a wide ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/m82yamnam/ NAM isn't just attended by professional astronomers. At the Education & Outreach session a talk was given by Jacquie Milligan and pupils from a school south of Belfast - Glenlola Collegiate School. Jacquie is a biology teacher but has been using astronomy for various out-of-hours activities. The pupils have been ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/interview-with-jacquie-milligan-pupils/ While we heard about the great successes of SuperWASP in discovering ten new planets by watching for small dips in the star's light caused by the passage of a planet across our line of site to the star, what everyone wants to see is Earth-sized planets being discovered. A new ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/earths-the-easy-way/ I have a strong feeling the first lecture I ever heard on gamma-ray bursts was by Nial Tanvir, now at the University of Leicester. I remember him explaining how in the early days of the field, astronomers studying GRBs were among the first people to get mobile phones as they ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/03/interview-with-nial-tanvir/ Working out how to extract observations from many different telescope's archives can be a big pain in the neck. Once you've tracked down the appropriate archive you then have to work out how the data are stored. Over the years there have probably been as many ways to store and ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/02/astronomy-20/ The National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) is organised by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). Nick caught up with the current President of the Royal Astronomical Society - Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson - to find out about NAM, the RAS and how Michael first got interested in astronomy. MP3: Interview with the RAS President. http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/02/interview-with-the-ras-president/ Bianchi models and why you don't need to know about them.  By Andrew Pontzen from the IoA in Cambridge.   http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/02/title-of-the-week/ On a night when Man Utd won in Rome, all astronomers' eyes were on Belfast for the NAM 5-a-side football tournament. And what a nail-biting, cliche-ridden, game of three halves it was! In a cliff-hanger of a final Edinburgh narrowly defeated the home team 2-1. Local conference organiser and lightning-quick ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/02/edinburgh-triumph-in-belfast/ Gravitational lensing is one of nature's more useful gifts to astronomers. At a very simple level (the kind I can reach given what time I got up this morning) the path of light is bent by the presence of mass, as best seen in galaxy clusters like this one.  The arcs ... http://orbitingfrog.com/nam/2008/04/02/shear/