I’m almost finished my work for the year and soon I can enjoy Christmas to the max! My enjoyment to this point has been interspersed with work preparing a poster and many hours on my literature review. Soon I can enjoy my Christmas turkeys!!

[Yes, I said turkeyS!!]

Evan

The slides for my talk on RRATs is now available on the Estrela Workshop website here. I don’t think it is stated in the talk but RRATs stands for Rotating RAdio Transients.
Does anyone out there know if nerves go away after you have given x amount of talks? Also what is the value of x?

Evan

Keywords: pulsars, RRATs, radio transients, neutron stars

This week is the 2nd Estrela* Workshop and it is here in Manchester (no nice trip to Europe for me this time …). The workshop involves talks by lecturers and students, a trip to Jodrell Bank (later today) and a chance to mix with the other students in the network throughout Europe.
The new student talks are tomorrow and I have decided to talk about RRATs – the things I have been reading about for the first month of my PhD. I think I have read as much as I can read about them until some new work (which i know to be in preparation) is published. So I will be moving on to the next few topics that I need to review for my literature review. It is probably useful to talk about RRATs as in writing the talk I have been able to collect my thoughts and ensure I understand what is going on.
I do not have much experience giving talks but I guess I must take every oppurtunity to give talks – apparently they get easier with experience …

* Estrela is a European Network of universities/institutes which JBCA is part of – it includes ASTRON, JIVE, MPIfR, IRA and Onsala also.

My first task as a PhDer is to attend the STFC Astronomy Summer School in Durham. In the past weeks the details have become clearer. I will be staying in Grey College which I am told by my girlfriend is (unfortunately) up Cardiac Hill (if you don’t know what this is you are better off). Ah well!

Also, the programme for the school has been finalised. Each day is jammed packed with talks and the evenings have many exciting activities arranged. These include dinner in Durham Castle as well as a river trip in Newcastle as well as the obligatory pub quiz! I will write about the talks once I’ve been! I am looking forward to this week and the chance to mingle with many people in the same boat as I am (i.e. lost, confusd and hoping they can do a PhD!).

I will be heading to Durham on Sunday (19th) directly from London where I am going next weekend to see Prince in concert which of course will be great!

As I have said I start my PhD in the coming weeks. I have been having a wander around my new city and university also. I even managed to find the building in which I will be based – the Alan Turing Building. This new building will be home to the astrophysicists from Jodrell Bank Observatory, the Photon Science Institute and the Mathematics dept. The astronomers are yet to move in – August 30th is the move date I’m told and I will be rporting for duty on the following Monday, the 3rd of September. The building is quite nice* but will no doubt be much nicer once all us astro folk move in(!).

* It even has showers – it beats NUIG and Cambridge’s fancy CMS in that respect then …

So the time is upon me: I am starting my PhD.

Technically I start on September 1st but before this I have a summer school to attend – the STFC Astronomy Summer School (STFC is the new name for PPARC – remember Swindon Town Football Club) which this year is held in Durham University. This is a week long course held annually about this time of year. There will be classes based on some of STFC’s ‘big questions‘ and most importantly a chance to meet and mix with my contemporaries across the UK. The school is attended by all UK students just commencing their PhDs in astronomy/astrophysics. I am no stranger to the hills of Durham and am looking forward to what will no doubt be a good week and a pleasant introduction to life as a researcher.
As i mentioned my PhD will then start officially from Sep. 1st. My first week will no doubt be a busy one! I will meet the other postgrads, find a desk, get my computer working, print a large stack of reading material and other such things and basically try and find my feet in my new university!
After this first week I will be heading to Bonn in Germany for a week long conference in Radio Astronomy. This looks set to be an even more hectic week(!) with many a crash course on all things radio astronomy (interferometry for dummies, aips for dummies, etc. …). Of course besides from the lectures and talks I will once more have the chance to mix with contemporaries! From looking at the participants list I can see that the crowd will be very international indeed with people from the UK, Ireland, Europe and the US in attendance as well as people from China, South Africa, Russia and plenty of places in between! Exciting stuff!
I will then return to Manchester (with a HUGE stack of work to do already no doubt!). I will then have the next 2 weeks to try and get on top of these things before I have two more conferences to attend (jumping in the deep end or what?!). In this time also, semester 1 lectures begin in the university and I will no doubt sit in on a few things. From my preliminary glances at courses online I can already see a few things that I will be interested to attend.
The next two conference will both be in Manchester (so no travel required!). The first is the ‘Modern Radio Universe’, aka MRU 2007. This conference is HUGE and is definitely a big deal with many important folk from around the globe giving talks/posters presentations/etc. The talks all look interesting and I am keen to hear about things like the Transient Radio Universe as well as the talks on Strong Field Tests of GR. I expect to be a bit lost in the midst of so many smart people but hopefully some of the genius that I will be around will rub off and I will learn as much as I can at this.
The next week sees the 2nd of the Manchester conferences. It is the 2nd meeting of the European network that my astronomy group is part of – ESTRELA. The first meeting was in January in Dwingeloo, in the Netherlands, where ASTRON and JIVE are based. At this I will meet others in this European network – both senior researchers and early stage researchers like myself. I am looking forward to this immensely as I will visiting some (all?) of the partner nodes in ESTRELA during my studies, and it will be nice to meet the people who I will be working with.
So all in all a hectic couple of months awaits me at the start of my PhD. I will be busy but I will be happy. I am excited about working in a field which interests me greatly.

Evan