Krioma.net

The new PHP forum is still working well, which is good. I am slowly adding new features and making sure everything is work well, which it is - shocking!

I went bowling today with Astrosoc which was lots of fun. I managed a high score of 115, not too bad but not my normal 160+. It was very busy at the bowling alley at Broadway Plaza, Five Ways.

Today (1st Feb) also marks a year since the Columbia Shuttle disaster. Lots has been said on this and hopefully progress has been made. I am not qualified to comment on the progress of the investigation but I do believe that the only way forward is to build a new 'space plane' so that the shuttles can be phased out. It will be a shame when they do though, as they are great.

Having fun with crontab!

Yes another day and yet another task to do with my forum. Today to get crontab to backup my site, lots of fun. Better get back to it.

Supernova blast bonanza in nearby galaxy:

Credit: ESA, NASA and P. Anders (Gottingen University Galaxy Evolution Group, Germany)

This image is just beautiful - reminds me why I do what I do. One day I will get to take these images and then play around with them in IRAF.

Also the well-known extrasolar planet HD 209458b, provisionally nicknamed 'Osiris' has had Oxygen and Carbon found in it's atmosphere! See here for more info.

This news fits in quite well with my group project at the moment!

The debate continues, is there life on Mars? Well the way Beagle was taken out before it got to play that Blur track I reckon there is. I bet they all had their baseball bats ready to smack it apart as it landed! :-)

On to more serious issues of this, new research has come out to suggest that the meteorite ALH84001 (see below) is actually proof of life on Mars! See here.

On a more personal note, I have had a busy day - working very hard on my group studies, I might actually start to understand what we are doing soon!

Tonight was Astrosoc and we had a fantastic talk of Prof. Cruise (Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham), he did a talk titled "Gravity - massive problem". Lots of fun. I have not had lectures off him since the 1st year and he is such a great speaker and a very nice guy. Nice to have him back.

Fun with Virgin Trains

Well I am in Maidenhead with Alex's family. It is nice down here - good to get away even if it just so I can run around in London at Astrofest. I am sure I will enjoy it though - I better after the 1 hour delayed train and putting up with a very full and hot train. Not the worst treatment I have recieved from Virgin but it is still not great. Just for once I would like to see one on time, actually I did over the summer it was very strange.

I got home quite early in the afternoon, but haven't had chance to do much. I decided to go observing tonight got some good stuff done, saw the cloud belts of Jupiter and Saturn - wonderful as ever.

I had fun this weekend it was good but tiring at Astrofest. I will definitely try and get down their again next year - hopefully not having to carry so many publications back with me , actually I did not have too many but still it was tiring. I had a great day in London in fact. It was actually the fist time I had traveled into London on my own. I have to say the tube is idiot proof - no way I was going to get lost. It was lots of fun and really quite quick - could do with one in Birmingham. The only problem I have with it is how filthy it is.

Well today was a strange day. I have made lots of progress, finally getting my lab report complete and I also had a bit of a come down to Earth as I only got 29% on the General Physics exam I had last week. Maybe I needed it - time to do some work. This is possibly the worst grade I have ever achieved, but then again it was multiple choice and I do notoriously bad on those at the best of times. Well I guess I will learn from my mistakes.

On another thought, Blunkett announces 'British FBI', what a joke! I don't want to be like the USA. Well it is time for the media to get their pens out and give the government publicity for an unnecessary and costly program that will just basically merge the existing forces - what is needed in government is someone who realises that to save money you do not spend it on stupid things! More money for the police, not for stupid publicity stunts.

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3471195.stm

Today I found both my lectures really interesting, I normally find Dr Raychaudhury's interesting anyways but today along with my ISM course they were both brilliant - maybe because I put lots of effort into it for once, after I got my general physics exam result back I think I need to put the effort in.

Tonight I have been busy coming up with a talk on Mars that I am going to give as a stop gap solution to Astrosoc guest speaker being ill this week, it should be good - but I am slightly concerned since it will be the first talk I have used power point for - should be ok.

I also got my lab report (all 32pages) bound today - it looks so professional - am really pleased with it, hopefully I will get a good mark for it.

I also noticed that I haven't posted a nice picture for a few days, so take a look at this:

Credit: NASA

Probably the most brilliant and beautiful objects, the Earth. In comparison to the rest of the Universe the Earth is by far the most beautiful and outstanding object I know. It is a shame what we are doing to it.

This is very old but I thought "what the heck!" when I saw it.

And I was searching the image section of google for the Prodigy's logo.

Today I got Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf, I have meant to buy this for ages (I have downloaded most of the tracks in the past) but damn this album is good. I would recommended it to anyone.

M64: The Sleeping Beauty Galaxy

Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), S. Smartt (IoA) & D. Richstone (U. Michigan) et al.

M64 is the famous Black Eye galaxy, sometimes also called the "Sleeping Beauty galaxy". The conspicuous dark structure is a prominent dust feature obscuring the stars behind. This feature also enables one to determine, or at least estimate, which of the galaxy's sides is nearer and which more remote; in case of M64, it seems that the southern side is nearer to us.

How beautiful is this? Now this is one of the reasons I love astronomy, the absolute fantastic beauty of objects.

Today I had two lectures, the second one finished at 12 but I still managed to sit around the coffee lounge of physics until 6pm when I went for dinner before Astrosoc. I have made some porgress today, not enough but some. I will try and work hard over the weekend.

Also as we approach Valentines day a beautiful picture has been released by the Spitzer telescope.

See: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0402/12spitzerrose/ for more info.

I decided yesterday that I should put Linux on my desktop computer so I can dual boot it with Windows. That's when everything decided to start going wrong. I didn't anticipate any problems as I already dual boot between Mandrake Linux 9.2 and Microsoft Windows XP already and so thought this would not be a problem. Guess what it was. Long story short for some reason after the Boot loader had worked and I had been in both operating systems it decided to stop working. After 5 reinstallations of Linux and a few restore the windows boot loader attempts I managed to edit one of the files and got it to work, fun!

Apart from that unexpectedd fun, it is good to have Linux on my PC, makes some of my Uni work much easier - but I will not get rid of Window, it is too useful. It is simple, well not that simple - it seems it as I know the insides and out on how to do things quite well now and I can not play any games in Linux, until I get WINE to work.

On the subject of Linux vs Windows I have come across some good cartoons:

© blumentopf

Well maybe not entirely that, I did spend too long playing on games than I should have - not enough revision done for tomorrows exam, but hey I just can't do it. So instead of getting stressed I did some questions with good breaks in between.

As for website design I have got up and running http://www.venustransit.co.uk - a domain I have brought but is being used for the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society's Venus Transit 2004 activities. It looks good - now need to put some actual content on it, I know what I will be doing when I should be revising!

Something that has interested me today is the discovery of the oldest known galaxy. It is estimated to be 13 billion light years away, at a time of only 750 million years after the big bang (5% of the current age of the Universe).

For the full press release see: http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/08/text/

Today I had yet another general physics exam, it seemed to go well, even though they had not got a working clock - fun when you haven't got a watch on you. I think I have done better than the measly 29% I got in the last one but am far from confident.

Apart from that I have had a good day, working hard and chatting is always fun.

Next week both the AUT (Association of University Teachers) and the NUS (National Union of Students), of which I am a member, will be striking.

The AUT are striking about variable pay, they have also not had a pay increase in a while. These people are the most intelligent people in the country who have invested years and thousands of pounds in their education and what are they left with? - crap pay. They are payed much less than most professionals and for the job they do, teaching University students - not an easy one. This is a highly skilled job a surely they should be on equivalent salaries to other professionals. From AUT data it would seem that the bottom end of the salary lectures are earning about £20,000 - which in comparison to the money that these high qualified individuals could get in industry is pittance.

I wholeheartedly support their campaign.(click on the image for more info)

For the NUS we are going to strike against the further education bill that has recently been passed.

Don't think I will be getting much work done next Tuesday and Wednesday.

The best band around at the moment the Darkness have dominated the Brit awards, great! Is this the return of "proper" music to the Brits, it beats that crap Busted and other manufactured music.

See the following articles about the Brits:

The Darkness dominate Brit Awards

The Darkness take on the world

Brits get glitz but few surprises

It does seem the Americans are very concerned about their terrorism. They even have a website called Ready.gov, so that you are READY in case of a terrorist attack.

I found this quite interesting if not funny in parts, so as this diagram:

Surely anyone with any sense would know this!

Recent results from the Chandra and XMM Newton telescopes indicate that a star that they have observed is being ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. This is the first observational proof of the well excepted theory. It is always good that theory is proven occasionally, you don't want it to happen all the time as you don't want to give the theorists a big head.

Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/MPE/S.Komossa et al.; Optical: ESO/MPE/S.Komossa

For more see: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0402/18starblackhole/

Last night at Astrosoc we finally managed to get a clear night. Great! Did some good observing. However the highlight of the night was that we were able to take astronomical images using our electronic eyepiece. It was lots of fun and something that the society has been planning to do for the past two years, but haven't! Another first for Astrosoc under our belt this year - great!

Earlier this week I managed to get the electronic eyepiece to work again, don't exactly know what was going wrong but after a little bit of playing around it started working. I then spoke to my fired Matt who works at Maplin about how to capture the images on to a laptop and he suggested I could get a USB video capture card. The conversation then went onto how he had an old one we could use in his old computer, so he brought it along and we managed to get it to work last night, lots of fun.

It was quite windy and so was hard to get any decent results as we could not magnify the image very much as the objects were bouncing around a lot.

Below are a few of the pictures including possibly the best one:

Saturn:

Jupiter:

For more of the images taken last night see http://students.bugs.bham.ac.uk/astrosoc/pictures/eyepiece.htm

Today I went into town to go shopping with my parents and gosh it was so cold! Luckily it is cloudy because I think I would freeze to the roof if I was observing!

Today thanks to my mother I got my hands on Sonic Heroes, the first Sonic game on the XBOX, now playing Sonic takes me back and from what I have played of it, it seems pretty good.

Last night (and tonight, but haven't put them online yet) I went observing and managed to get, with the help of my friend Eleanor (in fact she did the hard work) some quite interesting images of the Moon.

For more see http://students.bugs.bham.ac.uk/astrosoc/pictures/eyepiece220204.htm

Hopefully we can only get better and better with the pictures.

On another note I have had a nightmare of a day with my Uni work, I spent 6hours on the questions today! Think I did them ok, but took way too long - am shattered!

Something about this makes me laugh! <insert Pac Man eating noise>

Courtesy: http://www.britastro.org/picture/arc04/index07.html

By Peter Carson.

NGC 281 "the Pac Man nebula" in Cassiopeia RA 0h52m Dec +56d38m

A 30 minute exposure on Kodak Elitechrome 200 film, at the f5.4 prime focus of a 100mm Televue refractor, autoguided using an ST4, on a G11 Losmandy mount. The photograph was taken in late last year.

The slide was scanned and slightly contrast stretched with Adobe Photoshop. North is to the left of the image.

Last night I went along with Eleanor, Steve and Barry to the Uni observatory to show a group of Brownies around. The weather was not great, it was not bad, but not the best. We also could not get the main camera to work but well the Brownies did not seem to mind. We used Eleanor's telescope to show them a few objects in the sky such as Saturn. We also showed them a few constellations around the sky which they all enjoyed.

It was good to be back at the observatory and was lots of fun. Was shattered when I got home though!

Me and Steve looking confused!

The brilliant telescope:

The object shows a similar orbit to Pluto and is thought to be half the size of Pluto!

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3506329.stm so does this mean that Pluto's classifiaction as a planet should be re considered. If this object is put down to being a Kuiper belt object then surely Pluto should be!

Interesting question: is Pluto a planet or not? - we may finally have an answer.

What resembles the head and torso of a human and will be attached outside the International Space Station! No it is not some strange human symbolism or some modern art. It is actually an experiment to study the levels of radiation experienced by spacewalkers.

For more information see: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMBM02PGQD_index_0.html

Yes I have a cold, well yesterday was worse than now. Trying to run a meeting when you can not hear is never fun and yesterday - well that made the 30 minute meeting I had planned spread out to an hour. At least we got the stuff sorted.

Astrosoc went well last night, was lots of fun - we had a great talk of a post doc from our Uni - Dr Ian Robinson on "Solar Flares and Platform Shoes" it was quite funny and had lots of cool movies of the sun in it.

And of course lots of wonderful pictures of the sun, like this:

Firstly if you are a student of the University of Birmingham then please vote in the forthcoming Guild elections (4th March), you may feel no matter what you do it will not actually change Guild policy - you could be correct, but if you do not do anything then of course nothing will change.

Secondly, lets fight variable fees!

Thirdly and this goes for everyone, use your local MP. These people are important. How do you expect you to get your opinion over if you do not use them. Since I am a student I always find it difficult to find who I should use, I generally go for my home MP. However recently I have found how good my local MP in Selly Oak is good for web based stuff - which I like.

See: http://www.lynnejones.org.uk

What a sight, the sunset on Earth is a beautiful thing - something which takes away the science about what is going on and inserts the "wow" factor, but on Mars "WOW". The scenery is not as good and it is not a great image but "WOW" anyways.

For more info see: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040226status.html

a movie of this can be seen at: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/movies/spirit/10-jb-1-sunset.mov

Well according to this test I am:

I think this may describe me quite well, to a point.

Take the quiz for yourself at: Quizilla (click on the link to do it)

Four months before its scheduled arrival at Saturn, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft sent this brilliant image back to the Earth, it is expected to do this on a weekly basis as it approaches the gas giant.

What a beautiful photo!

For more on Cassini see: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

The NASA press release can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_137.html