And so another N.A.M. has ended – I am writing this on the long train journey home. Luckily I booked my seat long before Eyjafjallajokull started to stir, and ground all the planes (unlike many that could not make it, or get back). The N.A.M. was at Glasgow University, close to the centre of the city, the university is an ancient one with many pretty old buildings that look like they belong in a work of fiction.
My main reason for coming to the N.A.M. was the launch of the SuperWASP public archive. I have been working on this for around a year now, and on Monday it was officially let loose on the public. This first data release has 14 billion data points and over 3.5 million images now available to be queried and downloaded. The general consensus among the people I spoke to about it was that it will be a very useful resource. The trouble I am having is that it is rather difficult to get people excited about an astronomical data base, and then getting them to tell their friends!
As ever with N.A.M.s there was a wide range of sessions to go to, one that I particularly enjoyed was the software astronomy session. In it the chair introduced the term astroinformaticsto me as a way of describing what it is that I do – a much sexier title than archive scientist me thinks 
As you would expect there were a few people rather irate at the open forum which had representatives from the funding councils. One poor guy told us how he had his three year post-doc ended one year in, with one months notice, due to the current funding issues. Needless to say, this is precisely why more and more of my friends are moving abroad.
Besides the conference I did get to do some other stuff – mainly revolving around drinking of some description. The conference dinner was in the Kelvingrive museum, which was pretty cool. And so it is that I am heading back to Leicester with a bottle of double matured lagavulin in my case, and a head full of new ideas…
After a hearty home cooked breakfast supplied by the Allenspark Lodge, Zoe and I ventured out on our first trip to RMNP. We went in through the Beaver Meadows entrance. We started out at Bear Lake ranger station and took the Bear Lake Trailhead. It started out really easy – a concrete path up to Nymph Lake. We stopped here to have lunch amongst the wildlife including a boisterous chipmunk that was trying to get in to Zoe’s backpack, a blue jay and another grey fluffy bird that tried to beg for food. The lake itself was partly frozen over still.
We ventured on and got to Dream Lake which was completely picturesque! Again the lake was partly frozen, and the mountains were in the background. Here we deviated from the path the majority of people were taking. We decided to tackle the snowy and seriously icy trail up to Lake Haiyaha – native American for “Big Rocks”. En route we got some scenic views of Glacier Gorge and Longs Peak. The “Big Rocks” refer to a massive boulder field you have to scrabble over to get to views of the lake.
After a short stop at Haiyaha Lake we began the descent back to Bear Lake – there were some moments where I was ice skating down the trail!!!!
Hiking stats:
Lake Haiyaha Trail – 4.2 miles there and back.
Bear Lake elevation: 9,475 ft / 2888 m
Lake Haiyaha elevation: 10,220 ft / 3115 m
High point of hike: 10,240 ft / 3121 m
After the hike we head into downtown Estes Park to have a look at tourist tat! We found a nice mexican restaurant to eat in – although portion sizes were ridiculous! My fajitas could have fed three people!!!!! We headed back to Allenspark Lodge for a dip in the hot tub after dinner and I was out like a light! I didn’t even hear Zoe get up the next morning to go for her run!
Today was the last day of the conference, after which we headed to the west of Boulder and up to NCAR (National Centre for Atmospheric Research) which is the sister organisation of NCAS (National Centre of Atmospheric Science – to which Zoe belongs). NCAR is situated perched up on top of a large hill overlooking the entirety of Boulder. In fact from the viewpoint at NCAR we could even see Denver cos of the clear sky.
NCAR has a visitor centre with lots of interactive outreach toys in it [i will upload some pictures soon either here on on the photos page!]. After learning all about properties of the atmosphere we walked the NCAR weather trail which was a gentle stroll with information points telling us about weather and atmospheric conditions of the region.
After our walk we headed north towards Rocky Mountain National Park and stopped off at Allenspark Lodge, Allenspark. It is a breathtakingly beautiful cozy log lodge. Apparnetly it was built approx 75 years ago from reclaimed wood after a nearby forest fire (by American standards it is probably classed as a historical building!!!). The owners are extremely welcoming and make you feel quite at home. The lodge is fairly large, there are three floors, a hot tub, dining room/kitchen with complimentary tea/coffee/hot chocolate, a cozy living room with a fire and a stove and a tv/games room. I have never stayed anywhere so homely before and would highly recommend it to anyone!
We headed out to the Baldpate Inn for dinner. The Baldpate Inn is named after the book ” 7 keys to Baldpate” written by Earl Derr Biggers. It is about some people that each think they hold the key to the mythical Baldpate Inn. The original owners built the building in 1917 and named it after the book, the film was just out too. They planned to give each guest a key as a souvenir of their stay at the Inn. This proved too costly for them, in the end guests started leaving their own keys as a memento! There are tens of thousands of keys in the collection now, including things like the key to Hitler’s writing desk, the key to the gate of Sherwood forest etc. Each key has been donated with a message or letter from the sender.
o Zoe and I were up at the crack of dawn (well I woke up at about 6am cos I couldn’t sleep!). We had to head down to NOAA to be “vetted and approved” entry into this government facility. NOAA stands for National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (It’s basically the NASA of the atmospheric/oceanographic worlds!!!!). It is set in the foothills of the Rockies and the view from NOAA is beautiful. They even have an observatory up there!
I was really ill today – Zoe infected me with her lurgi! I was truly suffering by the afternoon and felt quite conscious about coughing through everyone’s talks! As far as the meeting went – I learned lots about what some of the dominant research groups in the field are doing.Zoe and I both gave our talks and got some feedback and ideas on what to do next. The conference dinner was held at Dushanbe Teahouse which was beautiful! they serve about 40 odd teas there including one from Newara Eliya!
Thursday was pretty heavy going at the conference, not entirely convinced i understood all of it. I did learn some new stats methods though, that i shall try out. On Thursday I finally managed to find a swimming outfit and went for 1/2 hour swim in the pool at the hotel. The pool was a bit weird though – it was really warm, like the temperature of a hot tub [I actually started to sweat whilst i was swimming some lengths!]
So my colleague (Zoe) and I flew out to Denver on Monday for an Ozone Trend workshop at NOAA in Boulder. We were lucky cos we managed to nab bulkhead seats so had oodles of room on the plane (quite ironic bearing in mind we aren’t the tallest of people!!!). It was daylight for the whole duration of the flight so it was a little difficult to snooze on the plane. We arrived in Denver at sunset and had the fun and games of hiring an automatic car (with Zoe only having driven one once and me never having driven one before!). The 40 min drive from Denver to Boulder was “interesting”, but I am glad that I downloaded the CoPilot Live from the iphone app store before i came out here – it meant I didn’t need to read a map in the dark and get travel sick!!!
By the time we arrived at the Boulder Outlook Hotel
it was really late and we were shattered. The hotel itself is lovely, we have a massive room and there is a pool, sauna, climbing wall and video game room! Interestingly the hotel has a “zero waste” policy so almost everything is recycled.
On Tuesday after a much need rest Zoe and I decided to walk the boulder Creek Path. Having lived in Milton Keynes it is like an uber wide redway that follows Boulder Creek from the town centre right up into the mountains. Its very popular with joggers/cyclists. We walked to Pearl Street (the pedestrianised shopping zone), which apparently is really famous for being so different to typical US shopping town centres. To us though, it was like a typical British high street. After having a look at all the outdoors shops and CRAZY Halloween stores(!) we ended popped into the Walnut Brewery where we sampled some local beer! After this we went up back on Boulder Creek path and followed it to Settlers Park. From there we took the Red Rocks Trail and got up a bit higher. We headed back to the hotel by sunset. All in all it was probably about a 10 mile round walk.
My overall impression of Boulder is that it is extremely different to other US cities/towns I’ve been to. Everywhere is very pro recycling and green (lots of solar panels on roofs etc) there are pedestrianised areas and yo ACTUALLY see people using them(!), cycle paths, footpaths, hiking paths etc and more importantly the waitresses/waiters don’t harass you all the time with the really fake banter (I refer back to Tuscon where the the staff at breakfast told Cat she had a lovely English accent (she is Portuguese!)).
So I am in La Palma doing my astronomy thing. Or rather not doing my astronomy thing because of the weather 
I am supposed to be using an instrument called FIES on the NOT to do radial velocity measurements with some of the folk from Queens to look for exoplanets, but alas it is too cold.
(The rest of my photos are on the photos page.)
Last night we observed until about 1:30 when it got cloudy, and when I say cloudy what I mean is the clouds descended and we were in them. Then tonight we got as far as opening the dome when it got too humid again, so we had to stop. Ordinarily when the humidity drops you can start observing again, but the temperature here is cold, very cold, so everything is freezing. We had to drive down from the telescope to the residence, and we had the support astronomer drive with us – as the roads were frozen. His advice to us when driving down was not to wear our seatbelts so we could jump out of the car if we start sliding towards the cliff edge. Hmmm. Oh well we made it down anyway and am now sitting in the residence. The temperature is rising now though, so we may end up going back to the telescope tonight….
My journey here was fairly uneventful, I came via Madrid (and didn’t lose my luggage), then Tenerife. The only thing that did phase me somewhat was when I saw the tiny little plane that goes from Tenerife to La Palma, it was a tiny little two propellar engine jobbie. Ho hum, it got me here I suppose.
Tomorrow I go back down the mountain in the afternoon, but my flight back doesn’t leave until Sunday, so I have to spend a night in that four star hotel with the indoor waterfall and heated swimming pool.
It’s a tough life this astronomy malarkey.
I had an interview for a position at Leicester University today, and guess what, I got it
The position is an archive scientist, working with the LEDAS stuff and the superwasp stuff. The LEDAS side is looking after the hardware and software of the X-ray archive server at Leicester, so lots of web interface stuff to huge X-ray databases The superwasp stuff is along similar lines; looking after the hardware and software of the archive. This is fast becoming one of the biggest astronomical databases in the World, so lots of things for me to break. Then there is the research side too, I get to do independent research too!
So all in all it really is an awesome job for me, since I do the web stuff as a hobby this is kind of merging of my job and my hobby
They said I can start at the beginning of November, so by then I need to have finished decorating the house and sold it. Then I can go and move up to Leicester. Oh yeah, and I need to finish that minor task also known as my thesis….
So today Olly and I went to Farnborough International Airshow to represent the Schome Space Experiment team in a nationally run competition for high school students to design an experiment to go on board a satellite! Unfortunately none of the Schome students could go, but they did prepare a poster for the BNSC “Space for Inspiration” exhibit at the airshow.
Olly and I presented the Schome space experiment poster to Ian Pearson MP (Minister of Science and Innovation) and other invited guests. Olly and I actually got mistaken for High School students by some of the people there!!!! It might have had something to do with the “bothered” T-shirt Olly was wearing!!!!! LOL! We had a chance to spy on the other entries (and entrants!) and even Buzz Aldrin made an appearance to chat to people. Olly and I also received three book prizes presented by Ian Pearson MP to the Schome Team for getting through to the final.
After presenting the poster Olly and I went for a wonder to look at various things from the Airbus A380 taking off, to acrobatic fighter jets. We filmed everything but editing the podcast is taking ages…. i will get around to posting a link to it at some point. All in all a tiring day!
Well I have been back from the S.A.A.O. for a few days (when I say back I mean in Cape Town), so I thought I would let you all know how it went.
Firstly it is beautiful up there, the sunsets are amazing and, as you would expect from an astronomical facility, all the telescopes are cool looking too! Have a look at the pics. I even went to see SuperWasp this time.
I was using the 1.9m with a new polarimeter that Steve Potter is commissioning, this meant that there were plenty of bugs to play with. I got to have lots of fun figuring out why stuff wasn’t working and if the stuff we thought was working really was.
For most of the week I was in charge of the telescope and Steve looked after the instrument. This was cool ‘cos the telescope is operated from a control panel directly underneath it (instead of from the control room like most modern domes). So I got to see the whole thing move as I pressed the prettily lit buttons
We lost three nights of our seven, two for cloud and one for humidity. It’s so incredibly frustrating losing a night because of humidity, you can see the stars perfectly but you can’t open the dome as water condenses on the telescope
About half way through the week Steve found a spider in his room. I kinda wish he hadn’t showed it to me, it was big and hairy. So every night from then on when I got in (even if I was really tired) I would shake the bed down, what a girl.
It wasn’t until the trip back to Cape Town that it was pointed out that the nearest doctor was about two hours away, and the nearest hospital three! I think it’s probably best I didn’t know that really, since I am sure that subconsciously I would have made myself walk off a gantry or something.
So I eventually managed to find some internet to connect to the world!
My trip got off to a rather hectic start, the bus to Heathrow thought it would be fun to break down before it picked us up from Milton Keynes. Of course this meant that when a replacement bus turned up it was getting rather late. Then the new bus decided that it would go to Luton, now Luton airport I don’t mind so much, but for some very odd reason the driver went to the town centre first, in rush hour. Then, because we were obviously ahead of schedule, we went via Hemal Hempstead, sigh. So by the time we got to the airport I had less than an hour to get on the plane…..
Now the bus drops you at the central bus station at Heathrow, turns out terminal 4 is a train ride away from there, sigh. On the train I jumped, it didn’t matter how much I was willing the train to move, it didn’t (note to self: improve Jedi mind skills to train moving level). Eventually it left, then when I arrived the running began…..
I ran to the bag drop point (having eagerly checked-in online), then I waited. And then I waited some more. Eventually got to the front, now as much as I love to laugh about my passport picture with people, there’s a time and a place, and when I have less than 30 minutes to catch a plane it is not one of those times, admittedly it is one of those places. But definitely not the time.
So bag checked I began what must have looked like a scene from a bad film where some lunatic runs across the airport, weaving in and out of the crowd, jumping bags and the like (I wonder if I could ask B.A.A. for a copy of the C.C.T.V.). I got to the security gate and amazingly there was only a few people in front, still, gonna be cutting it close.
Through the security gate, of course it beeps, even though there is nothing metallic on me (I am sure I have been tagged in some kind of dastardly secret service plot – one day I shall do it naked. Just to prove a point you understand). And then to run to the gate, carrying my belongings in my now rather sweaty arms. I look at my watch as I run, and I have minutes left, I’m gonna make it!
I get to the gate and the woman said: “Are you going to Cape Town?”, “Yes, pant pant”, I said, half expecting her to say the gate closed early, “Well it’s been delayed by half an hour” she said. “Pfffffffffffff”, I replied with my utmost disdain. So I had got all sweaty and done exercise for no reason! Still it meant that I could buy a plug adapter and get the correct currency (Euros wasn’t it?).
As you might expect, the B.A. webpage that let me pick a row with more leg room lied, and I was stuck with my knees banging the chair in front. Being an overnight flight meant that I would get absolutely no sleep (I never do on planes). So when I arrived ten hours later I was shattered. Of course it was too early to check into my hotel, so I had to go and sit somewhere for a few hours. But I got to my room eventually, and that’s where I am now.
I head up to the observatory on Tuesday morning, so until then I am an Englishman abroad, now where’s that midday sun? I need some to get on with some lobsterification……