The Man with No Time

Something that we've been talking about a little bit at work recently is "why do we study exoplanets?'"It's an interesting question, and one to which different people give different answers. Everyone has their own motivation after all, and it's been fun to hear what people say. Ultimately though I, and apparently several other members of my group, think that many exoplanet researchers are lying to themselves and each other. Not to cause harm or detriment, but because we think that 'admitting' the real reason will make other astronomers sneer at us, or sideline our careers. It's not hard to see how that comes about; there's an attitude in professional astronomy that we should be in it for the love of the job itself, and that we should be heavily invested (often emotionally) in our particular topic. Leaving aside the rather pertinent point that that whilst a postdoc or PhD student that is, to some extent, dictated by what your boss/supervis...

I recently signed up to be a part of the "Explore Your Universe" science outreach project. Outreach is something that I've been doing a reasonable amount of during my PhD, mostly in the form of the planetarium shows that I've been organising. But I've been considering outreach and science communication as a possible career alternative, and therefore looking for ways to broaden the outreach that I'm getting involved in. The 'Explore Your Universe' logo. I'm really looking forward to getting involved in this exciting project. (Credit: exploreyouruniverse.org) "Explore Your Universe"  is an interesting looking project from the UK Association of Science and Discovery Centres  that is basically a way to encourage research scientists to engage with the public in a friendly setting. The idea is that scientists, like me, sign up to the scheme and are assigned to a specific centre. There will be 'meet an expert' days at which...

This weekend saw the second big outing for the Planetarium show this summer. After our successat the Royal Highland Show we were invited by the Forestry Commission for Scotland to be a part of their marquee at the Edinburgh MELA . The MELA is a festival celebrating cultural diversity, in a variety of forms: music; dance, and food. The days were slightly shorter than at the Highland Show, only from 12:00 to 6:00, and the MELA only runs for two days over the weekend, so it was going to be a bit shorter than our last big event.

The week after I got back from Le Mans I was straight back into an incredibly busy week. Not working on my PhD, but doing outreach with the Planetarium team. We were invited, for the first time, to take part in the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston. I, of course, jumped at the chance to reach a much wider audience, but didn't realise just what I was letting myself in for! The poster that was drawn for us by the marquee's resident artist. (Credit: David Brown)

A few things have been going on in my working life that I thought I'd quickly comment on before the slightly meatier posts that I've got planned for later in the week. I've finally finished the first draft of my third academic publication, and handed it to my supervisor at the end of last week. That's a big piece of work done, as it means that if everything goes wrong I already have enough work for my thesis. I'm still, however, planning to go back to my original area of research (tides in exoplanet systems) and try to get a fourth paper pushed out by Easter next year. I've already started looking back at what I did previously to try to figure out where I can improve my method, and I've got some ideas for things to try out. Obviously I'll need to do make some changes to this third paper once my supervisor hands it back to me, but I'm hoping that those won't be too substantial. On the subject of my thesis, I've actually started writi...

Today I received some news by email that has made me very excited. I've been awarded the Cormack Postgraduate Prize, which means that I'll be receiving a cheque for £400! The prize is awarded annually by the Royal Society of Edinburgh , specifically the Robert Cormack Bequest Committee (who also organise an annual, 1 day conference to showcase Scottish research in astronomy). It is given out to reward outstanding contribution to Scottish astronomical research, and is awarded for the best paper accepted for publication between February of the year preceding the award, and January of the same year. The postgraduate nominated must be the lead author of the paper. Obviously I'm very honoured to receive the award, which given the timeframe must be for my first paper on tidal interactions in hot Jupiter systems. I certainly didn't enter for it, so my supervisor must have done so for me. It's things like this that really keep me going with my research. The fact that...

I thought I'd start my series of posts on where my time goes by talking about what is supposed to be my main occupation, and what I do for a living: Astronomy.