Astronomy Without Stars

The PhD thesis guide

This guide was written in the spring and summer 2016. I need to thank my PhD students Grainne Costigan, Paul Dawson, Donna Rodgers-Lee, Laura Rigon, Inna Bozhinova as well as my advisors Jochen Eislöffel and Joerg Isserstedt for implicitly teaching me everything that is in this document.

Dogwalking short of strike

The week has 168 hours. Subtracting for each day around twelve hours for sleeping, eating, and other essential…

The ten year anniversary

Exactly ten years ago I started my first and hopefully last faculty position. Or, as it is called in the UK…

The Thuringian Observatory: Episode 1

It seemed simple enough. On one side of the observatory we had grown-ups: scientists, the…

The art of proposal writing

Why am I reading this?

Astronomers use telescopes. But telescope time is a limited resource, that means, access to the telescopes is strictly regulated. The most common way to get access to the big machines is by asking for time through an…

The horror of hack days

It’s not that bad, by the way. It can be pretty good, to be honest. With the right people, in the right place, in the right environment, with lots of encouragement and open doors and good coffee, it can be incredibly fantastic. But there are reasons why I spend a lot of time avoiding…

The needles in the haystack

Introduction

I am interested in the testing for Covid-19. This is the part of the Covid-19 complexity that is similar to problems I know very well. I am an observational astronomer with twenty years of research experience. In all my work, I am…

Leaving Scotland by the pound

“Do you think this is going to be OK?”, I ask my new flatmate, after showing him my spare room. He looks…

Waiting for Christmas

JWST is the only game in town, at least for the rest of my career. The Juicy…