My DotAstronomy4

Its been well over a week since I got back from dotastronomy 4, and the time has really flown by (both at the conference and since). This blog post is mostly a collection of links and reminders for myself about what I did at dotastronomy. If you also find it interesting that's great, but it is not a comprehensive review of dotastronomy so if you want that go somewhere else. 

Other people at the conference have written blog articles about their experiences (Sarah Kendrew, Astronomyblogger, OrbitingFrog, Astropixie).

In years to come I suspect what I will remember most about dotastronomy is the journey up to the Haus de Astronomie on the furnicular railway.

The second of the two trains. 

View down the track from near the top.

I enjoyed this blurry effect as we travelled through a tunnel.

We all had to remember (and exert willpower) to not "get off at the Schloss" (beautiful castle overlooking Heidelberg). 

The food was also interesting - I didn't realise there was so much meat in German food! ;) I enjoyed the visual presentation of this desert. 

 The theme of my dotastronomy this year seems to have been learning about visualisation techniques. I particularly enjoyed Noah and Julie's talk on the subject and I was annoyed to be in a different unconference session and missed their workshop. I'm planning to put more thought into the visualisations in future papers, and especially in the public talks I use. 

For my hack day I joined the project initiated by Sarah Kendrew with the idea of making visualisations of links between terms in astronomical papers. There is a website called Brainscanr which does this for medical research, and Sarah thought it could be interesting in astronomy too. Orbitingfrog also got involved, developing the tools to download the text from the arxiv, strip it of non-astronomical terms, and properly deal with plurals etc. What I did was work out ways to visualise this. I worked with Gephi to make network diagrams of the results. Using an input .cvs file with one paper per line, and each term in each (abstract of) each paper on that line, this tool can make a network diagram like this one which shows links between terms in abstracts which contain the words "dark energy". 

I also learned about using the Javascript tools at Rickshaw to make plots live in the browser. Finally I messed around with wordls which are always fun (if of dubious use). 

The results of our hack are online here. 

While I was doing this I also learned about Culturomics which lets you make plots of the frequency of any terms you like in arxiv papers. Useful. :) 

I also participated in Amanda Bauer (astropixie)'s project to make a "Science it's a Universal Thing" video (in reponse to the "Science it's a Girl Thing" debacle).

I love the video Amanda and Nicole made, and although I'm not sure it would be ideal to interest teenagers in science, it is well deserving of it's "Best Reminder of Why We Got into this in the First Place" hack day prize. 

I was an extra in "S**t Astronomers" say too - with some stupid questions in the "talk" that was a fun few minutes!

On the last day Phil Marshall and I ran an unconference session aimed at collating the collective wisdom at dotastronomy on the most effective ways for researchers to use Twitter (both to enhance their research/networking, and for science communication). This has been done before (e.g Pamela Gay et al. as part of Live Casting: Bringing Astronomy to the Masses in Real Time in 2008, and by Janet Vertesi in Tweeting Spacecraft in 2010) but we are still thinking about plan to write up our updated collective recommendations. 

Kelle Cruz's talk on changing the culture of professional astronomy has also really stuck in my mind. I'm not sure it's possible, but it's a lovely idea, and I often wish inparticular that junior scientists could be less stressed out. We all too often focus on job insecurity instead of our love of the work itself, and it was nice to have a reminder of the fruitlessness of that. I was also reminded of the tools and tips on the Astrobetter blog, which are an absolutely fantastic resource. 

Throughout the conference I pushed a wiki to collect recommendations and links from the dotastro community - which is filling up well. I also ran on there a survey of equipment and programming tools favoured by the group, which I presented to the conference using Prezi (one of the recommendations which I had not tried before). Following that I'd recommend running surveys with a Google Form (in Google Documents).

I have vague plans to collate the recommendations and links a bit better (and perhaps submit to the Astrobetter blog), and there are also other plans to document this years dotAstronomy (and the 3 that proceeded it) a bit better, so stay tuned on that.

Dotastronomy is a great conference, and a completely unique experience. As was the case last year in Oxford, I've returned home enthused and inspired and ready to get to work (a good thing given my last week!). For me dotastronomy is a chance to update my arsenal of skills, but more importantly to reconnect with the excitement of doing and communicating astronomy with a like minded group of people. 

Live Chat with Chris Lintott and Rob Simpson about Galaxy Zoo Science

Yesterday I was involved in a live chat with Chris Lintott and Rob Simpson from The Zooniverse. We used a Google+ hangout to video chat about recent Galaxy Zoo science (my paper) and also answer questions from members of the public on future plans for Galaxy Zoo.

You can view the whole chat (30 minutes) on The Zooniverse YouTube Channel.

 

The Zooniverse plans more of these events, so let us/them know what you liked about it and what didn't work.

School visit: The End of the World in 2012?

For the second part of my school visit a couple of weeks ago I spoke with the Springfield School Junior Cafe Scientifique group (an after school club) about "End of the World" myths surrounding 21st December 2012. I've previously written about my involvement with debunking 2012 myths online (2012 tag on this blog).

Image from the Movie 2012 which imagines what would happen if the myths were true. 

I started by showing a clip of the 2012 movie trailer.



Then I talked through the myths, the science behind them. This allowed me to cover basic things like the motion of the Sun across the sky, the solstices, precession, what the Milky Way looks like, but also talk about the life cycle of the Sun and other stars, the solar activity cycle, what the other planets look like in the sky (ie. if there were a massive planet about to hit Earth you'd be able to see it) and of course comets. You can use this theme to get a lot of astronomy in!

I used a couple more movies in my talk - one of the excellent clips made by Andrew Pontzen for BBC Stargazing LIVE which illustrates what our Galaxy looks like:




and this beautiful timelapse of the Milky Way over ALMA.



I also had fun with a "Keep Calm and Do Science" theme (aiming this at 14 year olds after all!).

(you can actually buy that T-shirt - nothing to do with me, and I haven't got one!).

So I was interested to notice the recent web meme for "Keep Calm, the Mayans were simply counting down to the Hobbit Movie!" (noticed it just yesterday so too late to include in the talk!).

I ended with what I throught was a great quote from this website which makes fun of all the end of the world myths

"People who have survived the end of the world of 2000 (or 2003) are 95% more likely than others to survive the end of the world in December 2012. (These figures are not  official)"

It turned out that the students coming to Cafe Sci weren't really at all worried, but hopefully I've now given them some ammunition to help explain it to others if necessary. Less good I think I worried them a bit about comet impacts. I talked about the NASA list of potentially hazardous objects - mentioning Apophis, which is the closest approach known about through 2178. It will pass at about the distance of the Moon (which I demoed with a scale model) in 2029. Now it turns out there is a computer game based on the idea that Apophis will actually hit (according to Wikipedia this is "Rage") so one of the kids knew a lot about Apophis. And following that they didn't seem very reassured by the vast distance to the Moon and the argument that it's very unlikely to hit us! I think if I did this again I might talk more about probability and how unlikely such things are. Problem is of course that a big comet will hit the Earth at some point - although clearly not in 2012.... , and probably not for hundreds if thousands of years.... but still.

Anyway if you want you can download the (ppt) slides I used from Dropbox.

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.

Pluto the Previous Planet

One of the outputs from dotAstronomy this year was the below music video by Amanda Bauer (@astropixie). Pluto the Previous Planet. 

Pluto, the previous planet from carolune on Vimeo.

Amanda describes where she got the idea for this song in her blog post about it: Pluto, the Previous Planet: A Song.  She's very clear, that she saw this song as a bit of fun, and has no interest in changing the IAU definition of what a planet is. I got involved as one of the "Trans Neptunian Objectors" (looking a bit lost in the chorus line), and expressed my concern over the interpretation of the second to last verse by refusing to "boo" (I really don't care if Pluto is defined as a planet or not). :)

 Actually I think Amanda and Carolina did a very nice job anyway, making a website: "Pluto the Previous Planet" to go along with the video. It gives Pluto a voice (summary - we don't need to worry, he's happy enough as a dwarf planet) and includes some educational material about the redefinition. A well deserved Hack Day Best Artistic Project Prize!

I have yet to meet an actual astronomer who cares about this issue, but obviously some people do. The comments to Amanda's blog post have gotten a little heated and Stuart Lowe has already talked about that in his blog post: Plurality of Planets. Universe Today covered the story: "New Hit Single: “Pluto the Previous Planet”, and to date it's had just over 4000 views. Hmmm.

Perhaps Markus (the director) was right, and we should have spent a bit more time practicing! All I can say is I can't wait to get the tune out of my head. I've been humming it all week:

Pluto the previous planet, had a very shiny nose....... 

no wait that's not right..... aargh!

Just noticed that one of the Pencasts was done by Amanda on the Pluto song. Check it out:

Pluto

brought to you by Livescribe

(Link to it on the Livescribe website)

SDSS Telescope Getting Ready to Observe (on YouTube)

In most of my research, I use data taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In the last few months I have been particularly focussed on looking at the morphologies of galaxies which are being observed as part of the ongoing Baryon Oscillation Sky Survey (or BOSS). This survey is in the process of taking spectra (to measure redshifts) of 1.5 million distant galaxies. I've just been looking at a small fraction of them which have high resolution images taken by the Hubble Space Telecope. I promise a post about that work once I submit the paper. :)

Anyway, the BOSS collaboration had a science meeting in New Mexico last week. Unfortunately I couldn't go. I phoned in to give a talk about my work, which was great, but I was still disappointed to not be physically present because the meeting included a trip to visit the actual telescope used to take all the SDSS data (both the images and spectra).

 I love telescope, particularly as the sun sets and they prepare to observe. Usually they are so peaceful and full of hope at that time of night. Who knows what they'll discover as they work hard during the darkness.

So you can imagine, I was delighted to learn that a video had been taken of the visit, and put up on YouTube. You can see lots of scientists getting in the way of the telescope operators as they prepare the telescope for a night's observing (so not as peaceful as normal!). It's all set to nice classical music, and ending with a beautiful sunset.



Watch out for the "BOSS plates" going in. These are big metal plates (a couple of metres across) which have holes drilled in them. Fibres are connected to each hole, and the plate carefully lined, so the light from a single galaxy goes down each hole. That's how SDSS can take so many spectra - hundreds are taken at once using this method.

Also watch out for the building moving off the telescope. Instead of a classic dome with an opening, or even a building with a removable roof, the SDSS telescope is covered during the day by a building which is rolled completely off the telescope at night.

To learn more about SDSS3 and BOSS you can follow the SDSS3 Blog.

Science Busking for Science Week

Rita Tojeiro from ICG. 

As part of Science Week festitivites at Portsmouth, I helped with Science Busking in the main local shopping street (Commercial Road) last Wednesday.

It was written about in the local paper: "Scientists Busk It". Rita hates the picture they took (right), so I hope she'll forgive me for including it. I think she looks very nice, and it shows off the lovely electric motor she made for the event. Also in the linked article I want to point out that they got the science slightly wrong -- as the person in the comments correctly says, we were pumping air out of the wine bottle to make the marshmallows expand. My job was sticking the skewer into balloons, which I then gave out to kids.


The Portsmouth University Creative and Cultural Industries Department feaured the event in their weekly news bulletin, avalailable on Vimeo:

06. CCi Live_18-03-11 from CCi Live on Vimeo.

Beautiful Saturn

Just had to put this here. It's so beautiful:

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

Taken from one of my favourite Astronomy websites - APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). This is their explanation:

What would it look like to approach Saturn in a spaceship? One doesn't have to just imagine -- the Cassini spacecraft did just this in 2004, recording thousands of images along the way, and thousands more since entering orbit. Recently, some of these images have been digitally tweaked, cropped, and compiled into the above inspiring video which is part of a larger developing IMAX movie project named Outside In. In the last sequence, Saturn looms increasingly large on approach as cloudy Titan swoops below. With Saturn whirling around in the background, Cassini is next depicted flying over Mimas, with large Herschel Crater clearly visible. Saturn's majestic rings then take over the show as Cassini crosses Saturn's thin ring plane. Dark shadows of the ring appear on Saturn itself. Finally, the enigmatic ice-geyser moon Enceladus appears in the distance and then is approached just as the video clip ends.

Credit & Copyright: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA, S. Van Vuuren et al.;
Music: Adagio for Strings (NY Philharmonic)

Beautiful Galaxies on the BBC Big Screen

As part of National Science and Engineering Week, 11-20th March 2011 in the UK I was involved in the production of a series of 5 short videos called “From the Earth to the Edge of the Universe” which were made as a collaboration between Creative Technologies and the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth. They are going on the BBC Big Screens, apparently right across the UK and continuing up until the 2012 Olympics.

Karen - From Earth To The Edge Of The Universe from CCi Live on Vimeo.

My segment is all about galaxy morphologies. I talk (briefly) about Galaxy Zoo and show the HST image of Hanny’s Voorwerp. I also describe some of the main morphological features of galaxies, and what I like about them.

You can watch all 5 videos here

I also blogged about this for Galaxy Zoo.