Guest Scientist at the Royal Greenwich Observatory

I had a great day yesterday, traveling to London to participate in the Royal Observatory, Greenwich's "Meet a Scientist" program.

I spoke about my work with the Galaxy Zoo project to two groups of around 25 gifted year 9 students (13 and 14 year olds who are already taking their GCSE in science).

I also (finally) got to see the "We are Astronomers" planetarium show (which is as good as I had heard!), as well as get a tour of the night sky presented by my fellow AstroTweeter "skyponderer".

And I got to take the boat along the Thames from Waterloo to Greenwich.

All in all a fun day in the life of an Astronomer. :)

Talking about LOFAR on the Astronomy Now YouTube Channel

At NAM in Llandudno I talked with Nick Howes from Astronomy Now about the LOFAR project. The video was posted on the Astronomy Now YouTube Channel this week.

Asking questions at NAM

In this month's A&G (the magazine members of the Royal Astronomical Society get sent) there is a review of the hi-lights of the recent National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) held in Llandudno, which I attended (in part because of my work for LOFAR-UK).

Image 9 from "NAM in North Wales", June 2011 edition of Astronomy & Geophysics.

I was a bit surprised to see as part of that article a picture of myself waiting to ask a question at the end of Mark Thompson's plenary talk on "Einstein at Teatime - the popularisation of Astronomy" (I'm the one in pink!), particularly as there's actually no mention of the many excellent talks and discussion on science communication which happened at NAM2011 (spearheaded by this interesting plenary discussion). For me those sessions were one of the major hi-lights of NAM2011.

On a practical matter, I've been contacted by people at "The Observatory" (where reviews of the talks, and transcripts of the questions are published) who are looking to identify the other question asker (in blue above). If anyone can help let me know and I'll pass it on.

Talking on NPR Science Friday

Last Friday I spoke on NPR's Science Friday about the 2MASS Redshift Survey. Archive page link. Link to MP3. 

I think I was a little too technical, but it was an interesting experience. Lots of my American friends seem to have randomly heard it. It was nice to hear John's voice, although it made me go more cosmological than I would have liked. Also I wish I got to finish the story about why 2MRS took so long (and mention Lucas).

I'm curious to know how many people listen to this show...... must put that on my to do list to figure out!

Galaxy Zoo Session at the Boston AAS

I just posted an article on the Galaxy Zoo blog about the Galaxy Zoo session I organized at the Boston AAS. Check it out here.

I put the slides from my talk online here.