Silly me. Agreed to chat to an old friend on Radio Nottingham this morning, failing to remember that the BBC folk all listen to each other’s interviews, so now on Five Live this evening to talk about meteor showers. So much for retirement…
But the butterflies were a little more obliging.
The birds were somewhat shy. 🪶
Off for a stroll in one of my favourite spots at this time of year, Ploughman’s Wood. Not the most dramatic display of bluebells, but definitely the prettiest.
I remember it well.
Turns out, compared to the market, I am a share-trading genius…
“Did someone mention squirrel porn?”
Surely extra credit for going for a ride in the rain.
A beautiful Moon-free night to go after a rather special faint target. This pair of galaxies, NGC 4676A and B, aka The Mice, is one of those dramatic collisions that throw stars out in vast tidal tails. But it is also what set me along the road to becoming an astronomer. 🔭🧪 1/5
Garden camera update. This morning provided an SD card full of squirrel porn. No video today.
Not at my best pre-dawn!
Then on to check out the street food in the Market Square. Still looking for a nice bit of squirrel though. (IYKYK)
Excitement in Nottingham today at rare access to the restored medieval Long Stairs, last traversable in 1933. Though sadly only this afternoon and only halfway down (since the rest is lost and in someone’s back garden!).
Occasionally even more exotic wildlife drops in!
I suspect it is the camera’s IR light source reflecting off a dangling thread of cobweb.
Garden camera catches a passing fox pausing on his way.
I really can trace my career as an astronomer, and, I suppose, my whole life (since my career directed the places I ended up living) to that one moment where I was putting off starting work. And to the dramatic appearance of this pair of colliding galaxies. 5/5
…by making what we’d now call an N-body simulation, using less computing power than in a modern microwave oven!
One of their examples was The Mice.
I was fascinated that we could understand something so vast and remote using relatively straightforward calculations. 4/5
To put off getting on with whatever dull calculation I was supposed to be doing, I leafed through it and found this article, describing the Toomre brothers’ groundbreaking 1972 work, where they first showed how such tidal tails are gravitationally torn out from galaxies… 3/5
Unlike many astronomers, it was not a lifelong ambition for me. When I was an undergraduate, I really only started studying it because I thought it’d be an easy option! One day I was catching up on work in the university observatory’s library when I happened on this book. 2/5
A beautiful Moon-free night to go after a rather special faint target. This pair of galaxies, NGC 4676A and B, aka The Mice, is one of those dramatic collisions that throw stars out in vast tidal tails. But it is also what set me along the road to becoming an astronomer. 🔭🧪 1/5
Quite a lot of extinction to deal with from here.
Now if it would only get dark…
Watched a programme about the Korean War, about which, to my shame, I know little. The most extreme among a whole raft of craziness was General MacArthur’s plan to shovel cobalt into a radioactive barrier to cut off the peninsular from any possible future invasion from China.
Not an object I ever wrote a paper about!
The object that is responsible for my becoming a professional astronomer… (OK, that’s more of a teaser than a clue!)
The perfect metaphor for lazy xenophobia cosplaying religion.
Weatherman says very clear tonight. Plus no Moon. Definitely time for a challenging target! 🔭
Fanboy moment!
@johnshuttleworth.bsky.social
Woodthorpe Meadow putting on a great display of bluebells.
