The Conversation: Gaia mission: five insights astronomers could glean from its latest data
I wrote an article for The Conversation about the recent Gaia Data Release 3 (along with Andrew Norton) summarising my favourite highlights from the new data:
Posts by Category
Writing
The Conversation: Astronomers think they’ve just spotted an ‘invisible’ black hole for the first time
The Conversation has published an article by me and Andrew Norton on the probable recent discovery by gravitational microlensing of the first isolated, quies...
How to find invisible black holes
I wrote an article about our recently-launched Black Hole Hunters project for the Open University’s OpenLearn web site:
Popular Astronomy Article on Learning to Code
I’m a little late in posting this, but I recently wrote an article for Popular Astronomy. It’s for the Young Stargazers section, and in it I encourage studen...
Astrobites Guest Post on LIGO’s Second Neutron Star Merger
I wrote a guest post on Astrobites, about LIGO’s 2019 detection of a neutron star merger with a single detector:
The Solar System Has a Lot of Water
I wrote about the various places you can find water in the solar system on Three Alpha:
Why You Should Use Docker in Your Research
I gave a talk at the Wetton Workshop in Oxford in June, and then wrote a blog version of that for the Zooniverse blog:
Not All Gravitational Waves Start With a Bang
A post about the different types of gravitational waves and where they come from, on my new blog, Three Alpha:
Stargazing Live 2017 Recap
I wrote a summary of our experience at Stargazing Live this year – the first time we’ve managed to run a BBC Stargazing Live event at the Zooniverse with no ...
Opposing the Snoopers’ Charter
I wrote a post on the Valcato blog outlining why, as a company, we oppose the Snoopers’ Charter and support our clients’ right to encrypt their communication...
Research
SEPnet student-led conference: The Imitation Game
This week was the SEPnet student-led conference, The Imitation Game, at The Open University.
SuperWASP: Black Hole Hunters at REINFORCE
Last week I gave an update on the Black Hole Hunters project to the REINFORCE workshop, Fostering citizens’ role in the advance of ground-breaking research i...
VeSPA: Data Release 1.0 on Zenodo and AAS Research Notes
I recently added VeSPA data release 1 to Zenodo:
VeSPA: The Variable Star Photometry Archive
The new SuperWASP.org is now live. It contains a section called VeSPA: The Variable Star Photometry Archive which I’ve spent the last few months building. Th...
OU Upgrade Talk
As part of the Open University’s first year “upgrade” process (i.e. their probation process) I gave an internal talk about what I’ve been working on. This in...
SuperWASP Variable Stars: Classifying Light Curves Using Citizen Science
There’s a new SuperWASP paper up on the Arxiv, SuperWASP Variable Stars: Classifying Light Curves Using Citizen Science, written by my fellow student, Heidi ...
STFC Introductory Course in Astronomy for New Research Students
I gave a student lightning talk at this week’s STFC Introductory Course, titled An Interactive Catalogue of Variable Stars, where I gave a brief overview of ...
Media
Black Hole Hunters at the National Astronomy Meeting 2022
Last week I attended NAM 2022 at the University of Warwick. I presented my poster, Black Hole Hunters: A citizen science search for black hole self-lensing. ...
British Science Week: Astronomy needs you!
I hosted a discussion and Q&A about Black Hole Hunters, citizen science, and the “big data” revolution in astronomy, as part of British Science Week. We ...
Astronomy on Tap Jena
I recorded an interview with Astronomy on Tap Jena where I talked about my work on SuperWASP Variable Stars and Black Hole Hunters, as well as my unusual car...
Code
VeSPA: The Variable Star Photometry Archive
The new SuperWASP.org is now live. It contains a section called VeSPA: The Variable Star Photometry Archive which I’ve spent the last few months building. Th...
Web App Health Checks in Docker
Over at The Zooniverse we’ve been migrating most of our apps to run under Docker. I won’t bother explaining all the benefits of Docker, but we’ve found it to...