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I've been at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston this week, and there's been a lot going on here, including a great session on the Science from Galaxy Zoo, which I plan to write about soon, but I wanted today to mention the release of the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) which has been getting some press today.  The 2MRS shown in an all-sky projection with galaxies colour coded by their distance from us (from purple to red as the distance increases). The projection puts the plane of our Galaxy along the middle - and we can't see through that, so there's no galaxies there. Credit: Tom Jarrett (IPAC).  This was a project I worked on during my first postdoctoral position (2005-2008) working with John Huchra. This is really John's survey, and Lucas Macri (another former mentee of John's) and myself have been really delighted to be able to finish it off and release it to the public in memory of John. You can now download the data from the Smithsonian Astr...

I'm interviewed on the May 2011 Extra edition of the Jodcast . I talk both about the LOFAR project and Galaxy Zoo. Enjoy. :) LOFAR-UK blog about it . Galaxy Zoo blog about it . (this post makes me think I have too many blogs, and talked to too many people at NAM! Still one more NAM interview about LOFAR to come out!).

One of the things I've been working on recently is the final publication of the 2MASS Redshift Survey  (2MRS). This is the largest complete map of the local universe (ie. it looks at as much of the sky as is possible - about 95% when you consider our Galaxy blocks some of it), and represents the culmination of decades of work on redshift surveys by John Huchra (1948-2010). I worked with John on the 2MRS as a postdoc for 3 years (2005-2008) and myself and Lucas Macri (a former student of John's) have been working on finalizing the 2MRS and publishing it in John's name (based largely on text he wrote in various unpublished descriptions of the survey). We plan to release the data very soon. As part of this whole effort I'm going to be speaking in a special session at the upcoming American Astronomical Society meeting (#AAS218) in Boston, MA about "John and the 2MRS". For my presentation I've been looking for pictures of John observing to get redshifts, and wi...

I'm a bit behind, but I wanted to point out two papers I was involved in from the Galaxy Zoo project which have recently come out on the arXiV. Both were blogged about on the Galaxy Zoo blog (in both cases by the first author, and in both cases I was the second author). Ben Hoyle: GZoo2 Bar Paper Accepted in MNRAS Lucy Fortson: Galaxy Zoo and Zooinverse Review Article posted today on arXiv This last ones use the above  Hubble Tuning Fork I made using Galaxy Zoo style SDSS images of galaxies.

Today over on the LOFAR-UK blog I posted the below pencast in which I describe the LOFAR low band antennas. LOFAR LBA Pencast brought to you by Livescribe This is using the new pencast pen I bought after trying  one out at dotastro . Now having gone through the whole process I'm still impressed. Watch out for more pencasts. :)

I discussed LOFAR and LOFAR-UK with Andrew Pontzen on the special National Astronomy Meeting edition of the Astronomy podcast for the Naked Scientists . MP3 of just my LOFAR segment. Link to the whole podcast  (including a transcript).