Krioma.net

I'm not one for stupidly lighting up buildings - I'm an astronomer and light pollution annoys me more than lots of things. The other night, in a one off event (I hope!), the University campus was quite nicely lit up. The clocktower and Aston Webb building were the central focus of this. I have a feeling it was an event dinner being held in the Aston Webb building for the European Athletics championship being held in Birmingham... anyway I got a couple of decent photos...

Aston Webb building...

UoB on clocktower

Clocktower and tree lit up...

Moon and Aston Webb

Glare of lights...

Tonight the Moon disappeared into the shadow of the Earth.... I decided that it would be cool to see if but even cooler if I actually got a few photos, and I did.. yay!

The Moon rises...

The eclipse begins...

At totality the Moon turns a deep red due to light being refracted around the Earth's atmosphere.. coooool!

This is due to refractor of light from the Sun in the Earth's atmosphere.

As the eclipse ends the Moon shows its true power again..

My telescope and the Moon

PPS Ball 2007

Last night was the [Poynting Physical Society's] Annual Spring Ball. This is the big social event of the year here in the School of Physics and Astronomy and the University of Birmingham. This year it took place the home of Warwickshire Country Cricket Club, Edgbaston. It is a nice place for a ball, in fact the first PPS ball I went to back in 2002 was there(!), with a large dance floor. Large dance floor = me dancing like an idiot. Oh well, nothing new there then. I managed to take quite a few photos but here are a few select ones (more will appear on the PPS website when I get chance)....

Welcome...

me and Lizzie...

Tom being daft..

Adam and Maz..

me and Rich..

Tom dishes out the champers...

The otherday, well Friday, I was on the BBC Asian Network Breakfast show to talk about the Lunar Eclipse that was going to happen at the weekend (It happened last night see my pics [here]). I was only on for about a minute as we were caught short due to another item, I don't mind it is always fun to try and promote astronomy. I am not sure I was entirely happy talking next to an astrologer but I do have a lot more respect for people who do it for reglious reasons like the Hindu chap who spoke after me. If you aren't doing it for financial reasons then it isn't so bad. I'm not saying that I won't try and convince people that astrology is a pile of... but at least he has more of a reason behind it. Anyway if you want you can catch the whole 3 minutes of fun... [here] (thanks again to mediafire.com)

The last time I was on the radio was a bit longer and if you fancy hearing me and Dr Somak Raychaudhury have a general chat about astronomy on the BBC WM Radio station take a look [here]

This is possibly the best vid I have seen on youtube in a while...

NASA's Pluto probe - Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has sent back some quite stunning images of Io.

The image shows clearly the 290km plume from the volcano Tvashtar near Io's north pole. Wow! This is clearest image ever taken of this activity. The plasam ejected by Io goes on to cause enhanced auroral activity. Also, the much smaller, symmetrical plume (60km tall) from the Prometheus volcano can be seen at a 9 o'clock direction. Cool.

For more see: [Spaceflightnow.com]

I don't know how I haven't come across this before but I didn't until yesterday. Uncyclopedia is basically the piss take of Wikipedia and is full of useless (and pretty funny) stuff. It can be found at [uncyclopedia.org].

A couple of funny quotes off their so far..

"Jesus, attempted to break Newtons third law, accidently creating Japan and other nuisances. Was seen on the set of Star Gate in 1989 lifting up the skirt of director George Lucas -- May lead to an upcoming episode."

In fact the whole star gate article is pretty funn [star gate]

"Windows Apocalypse - At the end of the universe, Microsoft will release an operating system that has no errors. That is why many people think that the universe will never end."

About David Cameron (leader of UK Conservative Party)..

"I was educated at a small school called Eton where I achieved reasonable grades, but these were good enough to study at my local university in Oxford. I may or may not have led a very quiet life at university. We probably shouldn't dwell on that fact. The same goes for my time at Eton. Nothing particularly interesting happened in my private life before politics (a private life which I'm perfectly entitled to, by the way) and nobody really cares about it anyway. I don't even know why I brought it up."

I took some images of the Uni campus yesterday, I think they came out quite nicely...

Quite a few of the clocktower...

now a slight break for some flowers..

Another one of the clocktower, if you zoom in you can see a bird flying over the face..

The Sun about aston webb..

The other night we went out for one of my close friends 21st birthday party... it all started well with the bowling. Bowling is always good fun.. and I think Ran got a bit excited..

We then went off to Old Orleans on Broad St. This is one of my favourite places on Broad St to eat. Well not any more. There service was appaling. This worst I have ever had. They took well over 2 hours to bring out meals with some 30minutes apart. It was like watching a really bad episode of Hells Kitchen. They were just awful. The waiter was a best rude, especially when he was seemingly trying to blame me for the tables being slightly separated - causing the tower of food to fall over me *I moved quickly and didn't get the hot sizzling stuff on me* when he put it down.. argh! Anyway apart from the shite service I had fun.

Food time... maybe...

Now I want one of these...

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator - Click here for more home videos

More info at [http://www.duke.edu/~jwc13/beerlauncher.html]

" The whole world reacted with horror to 2006's images of ice floes bloodied with the carcasses of hundreds of thousands of baby seals whose skins have been ripped from their backs. Unless caring individuals speak out and demand the seal hunt's end, that gruesome scene will be repeated again later this month.

The Canadian government has given the go-ahead for hunters to bludgeon to death 335,000 baby harp seals this year. To stop this atrocity, we must generate an international outcry against the Canadian government for sanctioning it.

We need to collect 50,000 signatures on PETA's international petition to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper before the hunt begins. It's time for Canada to erase this stain on its reputation and call off the slaughter immediately."

More at: [peta.org]

Last weekend me and Lizzie celebrated one year together by taking a short trip down to London. It was a nice few days away and also lots of fun...

On the Sat we went to the Science Museum were I had my pic taken next to an F1 car.. sssh, I don't think we were allowed to take this but we didn't notice this till after, woops.

I also got to start off some vibrations...

On the Sunday we travelled down to the London Eye but it was a bit busy so we just took a walk up the river.

The eye had red noses added:

Lizzie doesn't seem to impressed with my constant taking of photos, I'm obviously happy:

Lizzie takes photos of Big Ben

We visited St Paul's Cathedral on the Sunday before we left...

On Friday I travelled up to Liverpool to give a talk to Liverpool Astronomical Society. I spoke about extrasolar planets (full title being "Extrasolar Planets and their Aurora"). I have to say I very much enjoyed it and it was a pleasure to speak at the oldest Astronomical Society in the UK (and the world, I think). I felt it went down well and I hope I was clear with my explanations, though I know I can be "hand-wavy" on occasion. I love giving talks about astronomy.

Anyway since I was in Liverpool I went to meet my good friend Katherine, who incidentally put me up overnight..

On Sat morning she gave me a tour of Liverpool, which I very much enjoyed... now come the pics, which are much better than my boring text.

The Roman Catholic Cathedral at night (where I gave the talk, not in main room - I would have been scared if it had been!):

Radio City Tower:

My fast food place (yeah, right! ):

St Luke's Church that was destroyed by air raids in the second world war:

outside the Anglican Cathedral:

inside the Anglican Cathedral:

Liverpool University:

Panic At The Disco - Karma Police (live in denver)
Legion of Doom - Crazy As She Goes (Mash Up).mp3
Arctic Monkeys vs The Killers - Scumbody Told Me
Cobra Starship - Bring It (Snakes On A Plane)
Twisted Sister - I Wanna Rock
+44 - Lycanthrope
Paramore - Emergency
Editors - French Disko
Boston - More Than a Feeling
Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby

Oh yes I was on the radio again yesterday! This time to do some promotion for the talk we had at the University of Birmingham last night. Oh out of interest this was a talk by Prof Ian Morison of Jodrell Bank Observatory. He was talking about the possibilities and the quest for the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence. Anyway, I gave my 2pence worth on this subject earlier in the day.. on the radio, ekk.

Oh here is the link to the file (thanks to filewind!)... [BBC WM: me on Aliens]

For my friend Kym's 21st birthday party we went out to Nando's, followed by cocktails, Flares and then a house party.. gosh that girl got it all .

Here are a couple of photos that really stick out from the night....

Lizzie with hat...

Kym turning nice a quickly so I get a face full of hair..

Adam, well being Adam...

It's above you...

Me and Tom with the 'fro's...

Maz and Adam giving us a light show on the dancefloor..

Whilst out the other day I got the chance to take a lovely shot of the crescent Moon with Venus.. you possibly need to look at the larger versions to full appreciate that Venus is on these images..

Fancy having an online planetarium program that allows you to search for object, see the normal map and the SDSS map with astrophotos for most objects? If so take a look at [www.wikisky.org] .. and no its not a google tool, but it does remind me of google maps. Really cool.

I managed to take an image of the Moon with my digital camera in projection on my scope. I'm sure if my mount was a bit better I would have gotten a much better image, maybe time to invest.

Anyway here we go...

Ever wanted to know what emergencies are going on world wide? Well you can with... [hisz.rsoe.hu/]... its rather interesting but also a little scary

Last night was the University of Birmingham Guild Awards 2007. These took place in the decked out Deb hall (it had a massive star cloth which looked well cool!). It was a good night (once a few sillness' at the start were sorted). Of course I am going to be happy as I won an award! YAY!

I was awarded the "Ross Barlow Memorial Prize for outstanding individual student" which means alot. I have been invovled in Guild societies (abliet mostly astrosoc) for 6 years and I feel I have put in a huge amount of time - enjoyed every second. The Guild means a lot to me, though I do moan about it most of the time! I'm not sure exactly what to say on this, I'm not saying I don't like attention but I am used to being the person who does lots of organisation and isn't always in the spotlight.

I found Ben Whitehouse's (Project and Event Support Co-ordinator.) words on facebook quite fitting...:

"My other favourite memory will be watching the various groups and individuals who won look slightly surprised as they punched the air. I even got a little teary as I watched Sam George accept his award for outstanding individual student. It's been two years since I met Ross Barlow briefly at my first event at the guild of students. It was the student group awards on the Tuesday of my first week at work. I was very new and very unaware of just how passionate our groups could get. Ross clearly loved volunteering for various groups and got a kick out of being involved. Ruth described Ross as having a dry sense of humour... I caught just a little of that on the night. Ross died in a hang gliding accident later that week."

More about the event: [redbrick]

And now some pics... me and Lizzie having fun..

Me and Kym,

Adam and Maz perform for Ballroom dancing..