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As a graduate student answering questions for the Cornell University Astronomy Department "Ask an Astronomer" site  I innocently picked up a question "What's going to happen on December 21st 2012?" to look into. A small Google search later and I entered a strange world of apocalyspe, misrepresented science and lots and lots of nonesense about what the Mayans may have believed. Anyway I answered the question to the best of my ability at the time, and didn't think much of it. To date, almost 2 million people have read that answer, and it's led to numerous other questions about 21st December 2012, including a radio appearance on Montel Across America on the topic. I did what I assume will be my last interview on the topic earlier this week, now appearing in the Southport High School Journal for 21st December 2012. Here's my final answers (note aimed to be read by a US High School audience)! I am a bit surprised to have no real plans to celebrate the (...

This weekend I travelled to Dubai to give a Keynote speech at a workshop on women's leadership being run by Liza Howe-Walsh and Sarah Turnball of the UoP Business School. This trip was part of Liza and Sarah's research project into the different barriers women face upon entering science fields both in the UK and the Arab world (read about their project in this UoP News Item ). I gave a talk about my research looking at galaxies, with a section in the middle about the contribution of women both to the research, and to my career in astronomy. I also gave a slide show of all the amazing things I've got to do because of being an astronomer which was fun for me (and I hope them!). It was a very interesting experience, and I hope worthwhile both for us and for the Emirate women who participated. Liza and Sarah will be following up with them in the coming months and years so I'll be very interested to see what happens. Some snapshots... First a group shot with me, Sarah, Liza ...

The Zooniverse has an advent calendar again this year. I think it's great. :) The treat behind the door last Friday was a Live Chat with the Galaxy Zoo science team . You can watch us all in action below.

Just a quick post to point out these awesome paper models put out by Canon (yes - the printer people - I guess this encourages you to use more printer ink or something!). I made one weekend (with some success) the solar system model. It's not to scale at all, which is a bit annoying, but it's sort of nice. Mobile solar system by Canon. If you don't that, how about a model of a Subaru telescope, the structure of the Sun, a sundial, or a moving model illustrating the difference between the Copernican and Ptolemic models of the solar system ? Copernican and Ptolemic Solar System models Perfect Christmas holiday activity for older children I would say. My two are still a bit young though. :) Just a comment that the title of this post was a reference to my post " Astronomy for Young Children - Colour the Solar System ", which is actually my most read article on this blog!

On the front cover of a recent ESO newsletter in our coffee room is this image. ALMA Observations of R Sculptoris. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) This is an ALMA observation of a nearby red giant (or asymptotic giant branch) star R Sculptoris . The structure you can see is gas clouds around the star -  the result of its outer atmosphere expanding and blowing off during a "thermal pulse" in this advanced stage of the star's life cycle.  This is really useful for astronomers to constrain how much mass stars loose during these stages (which helps us to weigh galaxies from measuring the amount of starlight they give off).  What's neat is that this is what our Sun will probably start doing one day (in about 4-5 billion years from now or so). And to put it in scale, the material "puffed" off to make that structure, was more than a thousand times the mass of the Earth.....  For some reason I missed this when it was first released, but no worries - Phil Plait wrote an...

Last Thursday I attended the 2012 WISE Award Ceremony at the IET in London. I had been shortlisted for the WISE Excellence Award (for women at an early career stage in STEM who show both a commitment to their chosen profession and a dedication to encouraging girls and young women in STEM careers). I didn't win -  Jia-Yan Gu , a Researcher at BT was the very worthy winner - although I was delighted to have been shortlisted, and was the only academic scientist on the list. A news item about my shortlisting is on the ICG website and the Women in SET at Portsmouth blog . The award ceremony was attended by HRH The Princess Royal, who I briefly met following the ceremony.   All of the photos from the event are online here  and below I picked out a selection of the ones with me - either in the audience (I'm towards the top right) or in a group meeting HRH.