UK

Last weekend I was part of the first UK Science Hack Day. Strangely it lasts a whole weekend, but the ‘day’ aspect refers to a 24 hour hack session. We were hosted by The Guardian newspaper in London (where many people also ended up sleeping there too!). The interesting aspect of the weekend was undoubtably the people; science academics who were keen on coding mixed with computer coders who were keen on science to work on joint projects.  read more »

Over the past year I have been working on a series of science video podcasts (or vodcasts), with Jon Yardley and Olivia Gomez. There are lots of vodcasts available in the world of science but I wanted to make some which were fun and accessibe but did not turn down the volume on the science. The idea of the Teapots from Space came into being as a vehicle for telling different scientific stories. The Teapots are like a cross between a sci-fi B-movie and Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Nothing is taken too seriously, but the science is all correct.  read more »

As part of Twitter Moonwatch  we have been working with our UK education partner Faulkes Telescope Project and the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (UK national node), to bring a competition to win an hour observing on Faulkes Telescope South .  read more »

Well, we’ve been at the summit for almost 10 hours and it’s been great so far.  Mark was installing a webcam on the outside of a building and we helped him out whilst the electrics and links with the 0.4m and the control software are being tested by Wayne and Jacob.  The enclosure just opened (wow, what a noise it made!) and it was truly awe-inspiring.  We got to take some pretty nice pictures too.  Now we’re off and we’ll be back early tomorrow.