Last night, the three brightest objects in the night sky converged, producing a triple-conjunction. I managed to get a half decent view between spells of cloud from my flat window...
So in these images you have the Moon, with Venus just to the bottom right and then just a bit higher and to the right Jupiter! Not bad for a 5 minute break in the cloud.
My week started off with my Monday evening astronomy class at the botanical gardens... we actually got to go observing! They have a few of the trees there lit up for Christmas, looks quite nice and its not too light polluting:
On Tuesday I took a quick trip out to the University Observatory to fix an issue with our imaging camera... all sorted. It was a lovely day, unlike today (I was intending to do some observing out there tonight):
I also went to the IoP public talk here at the University of Birmingham on Tuesday night (the talk was excellent and it was on the "Star of Bethlehem") and there was a lovely sunset beforehand:
Ok so maybe not a full week but I've not gotten around to sorting out the rest of the pics from the week as I've got a cold....
The Largest Astronomy Lesson in the World EVER! This event is aimed at being the biggest star party ever and to promote the start of the International Year of Astronomy. So if you have a telescope and fancy taking party get over to www.starlearner.com and register. The event is to take place over the Malvern Hills in Worcester, so you probably have to be fairly local for it (I'm not sure if I will manage to get there yet) with it taking place on the first good Saturday in January.... should be interesting and who knows a new Guinness World Records might be set!
Last night I got to see one of my favourite bands, [Anberlin], at the [Birmingham Barfly]. They were supported by Data Select Party and Furthest Drive Home. Data Select Party were really good and I think I will have to buy their CD - I probably should have last night but I wasn't really thinking when we left the venue.
Data Select Party Warming up the crowd.
Anberlin did a storming set. I very much enjoyed myself. I've not been to gig in a while and it was really good to be at a gig with a good atmosphere and not too many people along. The Barfly is much smaller than the Birmingham Academy and so you get a more intimate feeling. Anberlin seemed quite overwhelmed by the response of the crowd - to the point that they did 2 encores! I'm not sure I've ever seen that before (I guess I may have at a big festival, but I can't pinpoint a moment). I was worried at the start of the gig, the typical american band not being able to voaclise well live was going through my head... but after a couple of songs he really got into it and the sound engineers obviously noticed it and sorted it... either that or I just stopped bouncing... probably a bit of both. It was a great gig - if they are coming to a venue near you - go see them. If they are not and you haven't heard them, go listen. I personally like quite a range of their music but I think that their second album "Never Take Friendship Personal " is their best. Here are a couple of shot of them during the gig...
We walked back past St. Martins and the Bullring to the bus stop and I took a couple of shots of the Christmas lights in Birmingham, I really like the blue and white.
Last Saturday I got the chance to go down and watch the [University of Birmingham Lions] in action - this is the University's American football team. I've been meaning to go down and watch them play for a number of years now but never managed it. Well I decided that this year would be different and I actually got down to see them. It was a good game with the Birmingham Lions clear victors with a 29-0 win over the Bath Killer Bees. A full write-up of the match can be found on the [University Sport pages]. Some pictures can be found below... (not the best, it was a bit too low light level for my little camera)
The marching band:
The team's emerge:
Kick-off:
and the half-time show by the [Birmingham Pussycats ]
I love playing games. I also love playing around with linux... so what better than playing around with old games by getting them to work on Ubuntu? How about instead of just getting PC games working we try and get old console games working? Even better. Shame that lots of people have already been doing this. That's ok - I just get to use the end product, probably better in terms of the amount of time I would waste on this....
The first one I will mention is zsnes, a great little emulator for SNES games (well doh! it say it on the tin). Anyway, its simple to install in Ubuntu, just type: "sudo apt-get install zsnes" at the command line (or look the GUI repository software installer) - assuming you have the universe repositories setup. It works pretty well and I'd recommend taking a look [here] for further guidance.
Another emulator I have tried is DeSmuME - which is an emulator for the nintendo DS... to install "sudo apt-get install desmume".
Anyway, I'm going to go and have a play with those... and I'll post more back when I get chance but for a few excellent guides on lots of emulators I'd suggest you take a look at: linuxlinks.com and [thepemberton.com]
I've finally gotten around to sorting through the photos I took at this years University of Birmingham Vale Fireworks. This is a really nice free event that takes place every year in the student village around the Vale (the lake). Its always great fun and has a fun atmosphere, I've been to way too many now though.
The rides before the fireworks...
The wonderful fireworks (a few of my favourites - as you can guess I took quite a number...):
and the fun of the crowds afterwards... seems like a bit of riot (did I hear some start a chant about freeing Nelson Mandela?? :-p)
I took a couple of photos of the University campus over the last couple of days, its been pretty gorgeous....
tree and joe (the clocktower)..
the moon, bird and joe...
joe and the moon
Whilst I was testing out the setup (for spectroscopy) at the University of Birmingham observatory last week I got a few minutes to point the telescope at Jupiter. Now the problem with Jupiter with a large and very sensitive telescope is that it is rather bright, but I'm pleased to say that you can nicely see the Galilean satellites even if no detail is viewable on Jupiter...
Around this time last year I also took a quick snapshot of Neptune... which I'm very proud of but only just got around to posting it... (its the bright object in the centre)
One of my most used tasks in my daily life as an astronomer is [DS9], yes it has a geeky name, but its a darn solid piece of software. I recently decided that I wanted to use it on my Ubuntu machine at home (I quite often just use it over the network from my wok machine) and I have to say I was pleased to find it in the standard repositories, so a simple:
sudo apt-get install saods9
(at the commandline, of course) got it running and then a simple "ds9" from then onwards has me running it... great! 
This sounds really weird but it also appears to be correct. Researchers at the University of California have reported in Nature today that by opening a reel of tape in a vacuum they are able to take an x-ray image of a finger. But how? It appear that the radiation is released when tape is ripped from a surface. For more take a look at [www.sciam.com]
Back last Thursday we had a glorious sunset over the the campus here at the University of Birmingham, I tried to capture it but it was a lot more spectacular in person...
