Orbiting Frog

The Apollo astronauts narrowly avoided serious health problems, and even death due to exposure to radiation from the Sun.

If you’ve been following the recent series of posts about my data mining, then a) I apoligise and b) it just got better!

Just for fun, I took a list of molecules you can find in space and made a word matrix from it. The result shows the relationship between molecular species and…

I have been exploring the terms used in the astronomical literature (see previous post), and have turned my attention to terms that seem to correlate with each…

At .Astronomy 4 in Heidelberg, I began hacking on some natural language processing of the astronomical literature as part of my Hack Day project with Sarah…

Yesterday I toured the site of ITER, the nuclear fusion plant under construction near Cadarache, France.

Sigh.

In 2008, in the midst of my PhD, I ran a conference called .Astronomy.

[](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040623.html) In June 2012 people all over the world will watch the planet Venus transit across the Sun.

Wendy Sadler (of Science Made Simple fame) was asking, on Facebook, what explanations people usually gave for Olbers’ Paradox.

I will never forget trekking up Mount Sinai, in Egypt, to watch the sunrise.

The awesome second @milkywayproj paper, courtesy of @sarahkendrew and the science team.

[](http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/) On Saturday night (March 3rd) one of the most spectacular fireballs ever was seen over the UK.

Walking trough the park today we were caught by a heavy rain shower that literally came out of the clear blue sky.

[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/nitin-p/6932911587/) I returned last night from a trip to Norway to see the aurora.

The magnetic fields of the inner Solar System animated for your geomagnetic-storm-predicting needs.

I’m currently on a trip around the Northern part of Norway to try and see the Northern Lights.

I had a good discussion/argument with a colleague last week who thinks we should be trying to make remote attendance at conferences a reality.

This is a fantastic, scrollable Universe explorer written in Flash.

Ever considered the idea of sex in space?

I’m hoping to be there - you should be too :) Science Hack Day Chicago

It is very difficult for it to be ‘too cold for snow’.

If you live here in Oxford you can now explore the Solar System amongst the spires!

This past week has been busy thanks to some great media coverage for the Zooniverse, both online, on TV and at the big astronomy meeting in the USA last week…

On Saturday 21st January, we’re having a massive #BBCStargazing event in the department.

You can add all sorts of bizarre and specific ‘life events’ to Facebook with the new Timeline feature.

After a particularly awful few days of bus commuting, I have been considering the merits and pitfalls of my method of travel to work.

Today saw the launch of a website I have been working on for the past few months: Whale FM.

Cool.

The Herschel space observatory is brilliant for studying star formation.

Had a bit of fun this weekend creating these oh-so-factual images of the Sun and Planets.

On Planet Hunters Talk, they spotted the Tattooine planet Kepler-16 months ago - yay for citizen science!

The tagline for PaperRater is ‘open review, collaborative reading of scientific papers’.

An arXiv posting discussing the notion that Pluto could have rings.

Its almost a year since we moved to Witney, a few miles West of Oxford.

A-Level student Tim Buckman from Portsmouth Grammer School Has used Galaxy Zoo to find our own galaxy’s twin (see image below).

I’ve been at Science Online 2011 in London this weekend.

If you’ve been following the progress of my nephew Tal, there was big news from Saint Louis yesterday!

I have a bunch of satellite tracking scripts for Google Earth and Twitter, and the recent Space Shuttle launch prompted a lot of enquires about tracking…

With the final Space Shuttle launch last week, I’ve had a lot of interest lately about my satellite tracking scripts for Google Earth.

Yesterday saw my latest research paper posted on to the arXiv.

Margaret sez, > As part of the build-up to the release of the Green Lantern movie, a story has been unfolding online of a team of amateur UK astronomers who…

ChromoTone is a wonderful way to explore the meaning of astronomy in wavelengths beyond the optical.

Pencasts are interactive Flash videos of handwritten notes and audio captured by the Pulse Livescribe smartpen.

[ ](http://scuba2.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/moon850all.png) The Moon in the submillimetre The last weekend of March was a cloudy and wet(†) night and all…

](http://www.talsgoodfeet.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/solarsystemwalk.jpg) I’m organising a walking tour of Oxford with a difference.

Today, March 16th 2011, is my first Saturnian birthday.

I have blogged before about the fundraising effort to get my nephew, Taliesin, a life-changing operation for cerebral palsy. you can read all about Tal’s Good…

The iOS web app, LookUp has moved to http://lookup.orbitingfrog.com

There are several women astronauts.