[Astronomy] NAM2013

This week has been a busy one for astronomy here in St Andrews. Not because of any goings on at work, but because there's been a big conference in town! Several hundred astronomers descended on our little corner of Fife for the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting (NAM). The 2013 edition (dubbed 'St NAMdrews' by some witty folk) finished off yesterday, and it's been an enjoyable week.

For a start, the weather has mostly behaved itself. Tuesday was rather wet and wild, but the rest of the week has alternated between lovely sunshine but a little hot, and a bit overcast but pleasantly cooler. Which was great, as it meant that the visitors could enjoy the town at its finest, and everyone I spoke to said how lovely a place it was. We were probably helped by the fact that we were in the middle of town, using the Younger Hall, the various schools around St Salvator's quad, the Upper and Lower college halls, and the marquee from the graduation ball. There was a Chemistry conference going on on the North Haugh, but I think we actually got a better deal out of it.

Then there were the social events. On Tuesday night there was a whisky tasting, which involved a 45 minute talk on the history of whisky followed by a marquee full of astronomers being set loose on 40 full bottles of whisky, with the ability to help themselves and no measures. I'm amazed that there was only one horrendously drunk person, but maybe everyone else just hid it well. Seriously though, it was a lot of fun, and gave me a new appreciation for whisky. That was followed by the traditional NAM football tournament on the Wednesday night. We had three St Andrews teams entered; an all-girls team, and two teams mixed between the astronomy and Solar physics groups. The other two teams were knocked out in the group stages, but my team made it to the final only to lose to Edinburgh in a gruelling match. It was my first showing at the football, and I'm itching to play again next year.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the whisky tasting. I've never really drunk whisky before, but it 

was really rather nice. (Credit: whiskyintelligence.com)

Then on Thursday we had the conference dinner. Amazingly it was held at the Old Course, and there were a lot of people (particularly from the department) who were disappointed that it was fully booked before they registered. The food was exquisite, as I expected, and the ceilidh afterwards was one of the funniest I've been too in a long time. Astronomers just cannot dance, particularly when free wine is thrown into the mix!

I suppose I should talk about the science as well. The Monday was a bit quite from my point of view, and there wasn't a lot happening on Wednesday afternoon. But Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday made up for that. On Tuesday I spent all day in the science outreach sessions, and learnt a lot about the different outreach going on around the country. I even picked up a few ideas to pass on to the planetarium and open night teams before I leave St Andrews. Thursday and Friday were the planet days, including a talk by yours truly on Thursday afternoon which went pretty well. The rest of the talks were very interesting indeed, giving me a couple of pointers for future research directions. Friday was all about planetary atmospheres, and there were some very exciting new results announced. One of my old housemates from Warwick was giving a talk in that session, and it was good to have a chance to catch up with him.

The plenary sessions were all in the Younger Hall, which was all dressed up still from graduation

the week before. They were poorly attended I though, which was a shame. (Credit: @UnofficalNAM on Twitter)

So perhaps not the most scientifically useful meeting, but from a networking and catching up with people point of view it was very good. But now it's time to knuckle down and get on with this thesis I'm supposed to be writing!