The satellite that I was using to study the Moon now fully deserves the word "was", being as it is dead. I forget what the final analysis was - radiation damage to key systems I think - but with the short mission and low solar activity, there isn't as much coverage as I'd have liked, and it reduces the chance I can find a decent geological study to ( Read more... )

I was back at my parents last week for my sister's graduation, at which I tried to make myself useful by taking the photos. A bit of playing around with photoshop made them a bit better, and allowed me to photoshop a duck onto her mortarboard. Well, why not? She got a 2:1 in Maths, from York, and I'm proud as hell ( Read more... )

You know those street artists that have a cart full of props, and do tricks and magic that boggles the mind, and then ask for money? Physics busking is like that, except the "tricks" all involve physics, science and optical illusions, and instead of taking payment afterwards we give understanding. It's aimed mostly at younger audiences- people do ( Read more... )

I've got an Eizo 21 inch CRT monitor sitting on my floor- it weighs a bloody tonne and it's as big as a truck. Anyone want it? I got it free from a workmate but it's so heavy that it'd crush my desk flat if I put it on top- it's free to a good home. I'll keep it a week or so before taking it apart and playing with the electronics/ electrocuting ( Read more... )

Thanks to damn Tiscali my internet’s down at home so I’m writing this in work (in word, so it doesn’t look like I’m skiving). Work continues on- all quiet on the solar front, except for a few nice flares early this morning which hopefully we caught on camera.

Talking about cameras (neat link Jimmy) I just bought one! Still waiting for it to be ( Read more... )

I think I was just drunk enough to enjoy Teeth last night- can't remember when I've laughed more at a film involoving penile dismemberment.

The research continues on. The satellite that I'll be handling the data from is in orbit around the moon- my instrument turns on and works, and if the bloody sun starts producing some x-rays we should be good to ( Read more... )

Aber Amnesty are currently trying to bring justice to columbia by playing lots of drums outside my window. Is it working?

I'm about a month into my PhD now. As I mentioned, my project is on making geological maps of the moon (properly it's making elemental abundance maps- as in the percentage weight of each element, mapped out for the whole lunar surface). Of course being only a month in I'm mainly background reading, but I've started reading/doing more relavent ( Read more... )

I have it! Woo!

Blogging from the summer school kind of went out of the window- I really didn't have time! The lectures were interesting, even though the "relavent" one turned out to be all about metorites. They at least showed a picture of the moon on the slideshow though, at which point everyone I'd been whinging to about the lack of lunar stuff turned around ( Read more... )