Welcome

Welcome to Krioma.net. If you would like to view any of my previous articles then please see the blog page. This also has a handy search tool. Please note that this page is updated regularly and should automatically refresh but this is not always the case. Also, you can now [follow me on twitter].

Recent Blog Entries:

ALMA at the SSE imaging Category: Astronomy Computing alma sse
We've been working on a bunch of things for the upcoming ALMA Summer Science Exhibition stand including a hands on ALMA simulator. I've just finished adding our "Send to twitter" function with a bit of windows based commandline wizardy - I'm actually very pleased with it. So here is a bi...

How to make an image in radio astronomy Category: Astronomy Computing computing fft python SKA
In a rather simplistic viewpoint: you get uv data from your array (bottom right); you convolve it with a point spread function (top right) to get a nicely uniformly gridded data set (top left) and then you take the FFT of it to get a pretty image (bottom left). Of course that's a gross under-estima...

Astronomy Events in May Category: Astronomy FAS
Want to know what local astronomy events are going on this month? The [Federation of Astronomical Societies] have a great list of events that are taking place all over the UK. There are some 50 or so activites that range from talks on advanced imaging techniques to solar observing. Of course I know ...

M52: a cluster of stars Category: Astronomy Photos messier
M52 is an open cluster in the Cassiopeia constellation. This is a good binocular target and you will see some 200 or so stars belonging to the cluster:...

Data interpolation in python Category: Computing python
Quite often in my day to day work I end up having to flag out bad data. In many cases this just creates a gap and normally this is fine just to throw away. There are occasions however, such as when creating the bandpass of reciever that its still quite useful to have some idea as to what is going on...

M36: an open cluster in Auriga Category: Astronomy Photos
M36 is an open cluster in Auriga - its a good binocular target and is some 4,000 light years away from the Earth. If this star cluster were as close as the Pleiades are then it would look very similar from the Earth....

Rugby at Wembley Category: General Me Sport rugby
I have to say I really enjoyed going down to London to watch the Saracens lose to the Harlequins on Saturday. At first watching rugby being played at Wembley sounded very strange to me, but once you are there you realise what a magnificant stadium it is. Its the first time I've been there since the ...

Concatinating measurement sets in CASA Category: Astronomy Computing casa python
Combining data from different spectral windows or different days is quite useful. Quite often I will image these seperately and then combine in the image domain. It is useful, however, to be able to combine these into one measurement set, its just easier to keep track of the files - and time based f...

Globular cluster, M3 Category: Astronomy
I occasionally use the Bradford Robotic Telescope for remote imaging... here is an image of the Ring Nebula, M3 a globular cluster in the constellation Canes Venatici:...

SSH Keys and multi machine processing Category: Computing bash ssh
A lot of my processing can be parallelised effectively by just splitting up the data and running on many machines. To accomplish this I use SSH keys so I can start jobs over the network from one bash script. Works nicely and is quite effective - the only downside is normally having to send data over...

M57: the ring nebula Category: Astronomy Photos messier nebula
A short image of the Ring Nebula out at Wast Hills. It is a rather prominent planetary nebula well worth a look through a telescope:...

Talk bingo generator Category: Astronomy Computing General Me astrosoc code html php talks
During my [talk on Saturday at the University of Birmingham] I played talk bingo. The idea is that as I give the talk the younger members of the audience can be entertained by playing a game that requires them to pay attention. Whenever I give a talk I tend to use a subset of words (and indeed this ...

M34: an open cluster in Perseus. Category: Astronomy Photos messier
M34 is an open cluster in Perseus which can be seen by the naked eye.. but you will need properly dark skies, so that means well away from urban areas. Its a nice binocular object though, even from light polluted city streets....

Setting up a Virtual Webserver Category: Computing webserver
This is a quick guide on how to setup a webserver in a virtual machine. This is based on using Virtualbox and Ubuntu, so it might not work with all version of linux and though the install instructions inside the virtual machine will work with any virtualisation tool the rest of the info, of course, ...

Highlights of Mumbai Category: General Me Photos india mumbai
I've still got lots to write about our time in India, it went way too fast but was lots of fun. We spent a couple of days in Mumbai after my time at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics was over. It was a good few days. Overall I found Mumbai quite a dirty place, much dirty than Pune and there...