July Jodcasts Now Up

I am back in the UK after a couple of weeks in Ireland. As has become customary i will plug the latest Jodcast – i was away for the last one so just so ye all know – both July editions of the show are now online!

click here.

Me as a Simpson

This is me as a simpson! (bigger image if you click on it)

You can make your own Simpsons image at the website for the Simpsons Movie – enjoy!

Evan

galaxies, Galaxies …

Nice APOD today, and on theme of the new Galaxy Zoo Project too! Check it out.

Evan

Galaxy Zoo

A brilliant new project has been launched online – it is called Galaxy Zoo. The idea is simple and means that you (yes you!) can do some astronomy! Basically, the astronomical instruments of today produce HUGE amouts of data and there is a lot to analyse. Also, computer programs we might write to identify and classify new galaxies in these vast amounts of data will not quite identify everything. The best way to do this would be to actually have people look at the images and classify the galaxies. This of course is much slower but now Galaxy Zoo will make such (never before seen!) data available on their website for people to help with this work! This from the website frontpage …

Why do we need you?
The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognising patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you.

There is a test and some tutorials to do so that you get to know the types of galaxies. This is really quite simple and quick to learn. It really is fun so if you are feeling bored and are on the net go to Galaxy Zoo and fight the boredom by looking at cool astronomy pictures of galaxies nobody has ever seen before …

July Jodcast

The July Jodcast is now up – click here to listen. It features the latest astro news, an interview with Dr. Scott Fisher, who discusses the Gemini Observatory. They also discuss the Jodrell Moon Bounce and give the night sky for the coming weeks.

xkcd

xkcd is a web-comic with new entries on mondays, wednesdays and fridays. It concerns “romance, sarcasm, math and language”* in the words of the site’s author. It is certainly weird and contains a lot of stuff you might not get if you have not had experience with computers or basically if you are not a scientist/interested in science more than the average person. There are a number of long running and recurring themes (eg. the author seems to have an irrational fear of velociraptors!). Every so often it does produce some absolute gems though so I recommend for a look.

* math = american way of saying maths

June Extra Jodcast Now Up

click here.

June Jodcast Now Up

The latest episode is up and includes an excellent interview with Prof. Jocelyn Bell-Burnell CBE, FRS FRAS, the discoverer of pulsars some 40 years ago. She has some interesting stories about the discovery and the trouble she had with little green men …

click here

How Many Rice Crispies?

Did you know that it would take 600 billion rice crispies to fill up the Lovell Telescope – that’s 24 million boxes! This is a good example of weird things astronomers think about in their spare time … and another reason to listen to the Jodcast!

The Jodcast

I highly recommend the Jodrell Bank Observatory’s Pod-cast aka “The Jodcast“. There are episodes every month or slightly more often depending on how much astro news there is and is a very good listen!