OK, I struggled to think of what to write about for February, its usually a busy month as its when I'm undertaking my lecture course. However, I thought I'd mention the six nations, probably my favourite sporting event. For anyone that doesn't know, its an annual rugby tournament between, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and Italy. All teams play each other once, the team with the most points at the end wins; although the ideal is to win a 'grand slam' when you beat all the other teams. As an England fan (having grown up in London), I was slightly nervous going in, but the team had some good wins, and were officially 2nd. However, the top three (England, France, and Ireland) all finished with the same number of wins and losses. Fingers crossed for next year!

I've been holding off posting about astrophotography until I setup the blog, but its been so long I thought I should include something. In late 2024 I obtained aa 'hyperstar' attachment for my telescope (that I use in my backgarden). I'll post a more detailed blog about hyperstar in the future, but broadly it converts the system from a f/10 to a f/2 system, massively increasing the field-of-view. In January 2025 I released my first deep image with the hyperstar - The Heart Nebula (click on it for a better view).

The image was taken with some ultra-narrowband filters with Halpha in red (10 hours), OIII in blue (10 hours), and SII in yellow/orange (11 hours), plus some RGB for the stars (40 min). With this image I love zooming in and seeing all the intricate details, like the dust clouds, and the random planetary nebula.

Merry Christmas everyone! At the end of the year, I've realised I've been woeful at updating my website with news, activities, and developments. So in the next 12 days, my plan is to do the year in review, and make a post about each month. Then hopefully I want to develop a proper blog which I'll try and keep regularly updated. To start the ball rolling, I'll share a picture from Christmas day. The photo shows the massive feast I cooked for both my Mum and me. It all went very well (except possibly the yorkshire puddings), but far too much food... although we had it again for Boxing day! Also shout-out to Farmer's Pantry butchers in Penarth whose 'feast' was amazing value with some really good produce.

Today we had the news that BT Tower in London is being sold and being made into a hotel. My dad spent the vast majority of his long BT career based in the tower, was in the building when the IRA bomb went off, and I think he potentially was the last engineer based in the building. I luckily had a few opportunities to visit him, see the many floors of equipment, the TV switching centre below, and watch the almost total eclipse from the top. Here's a picture of my dad at his desk and an example of a 'standard' floor with racks of equipment.

After making some upgrades to my telescope, I've made my first colour image with my telescope! The image is of M81 a very nearby galaxy; it's an Sab class so has a fairly chunky bulge but nice spiral arms and dust lanes. I potentially overdid the colours, but as a first attempt from my suburban garden I'm pretty happy. I'm planning to start a blog to document this, keep an eye on this space.

I have just given my first talk at a Teaching & Learning conference! I was sharing my experience about the coursework I set my first year students where they have to do some practical observing. This was in a 'Pecha Kucha' format (which I'd never heard of before) where you have to give 20 slides each timed at 20 seconds - luckily all went well. It was also my first look at Cardiff Universities brand new and largest lecture theatre. Its a bit unusual in that it's really steep, but the screen is an amazing LED screen so the brightness and contrast is far better than traditional projectors. There was several speakers from physics who gave some great talks about the more creative assignments we set our students.

My PhD student, Gayathri Eknath, has been awarded a Bell Burnell Scholarship to fund her for the final year of her PhD. The Bell Burnell Scholarship is a great scheme to try and improve diversity in physics by providing funds for PhD students. Gayathri is a very motivated student and brought this fund to the attention of the department, and wrote her successfull application. Below is a link to a nice article/press release/interview with her on the IOP website.

Our department coffee room, officially called the 'rest frame' (yes we are a physics department...) has reopened. During the pandemic it was turned into a furniture store due to the University no longer renting 53 The Parade. Today a team of PhD students, postdocs, and a couple restored the room to its (almost) former glory. One of my favourite features of the room is its view out over the north of Cardiff looking up to the hills. Another to notice in the far corner is our PhD 'trophy' cabinet where the cork from the post-viva Champagne bottle is stored as a momento. Unfortunately, there's a bit of gap due to Covid, but hopefully we can start to fill it up now!

In another step towards 'normality' today was the return of the Annual Chaos Physics Ball. The ball is an event run by our undergraduate physics society (called Chaos), and is one of the few social events for both undgraduate students and staff. Great night had by all, and the dinner suit still fit!

My paper releasing the first sub-millimetre image from the ground has just been accepted to ApJS. The data is from the HASHTAG project (I am the UK PI), which images the entirety of Andromeda with SCUBA-2 at 450 and 850μm. Click the link below to go to the HASHTAG website where there is more infomation about the survey and the data products, or more information can be found on this sites HASHTAG page.

The European Space Agency decided to feature some images from my latest paper as their image of the week. The images are are from the latest data release from H-ATLAS, the largest-area survey undertaken with Herschel. The article focuses on the fact while Herschel images look noisy, each point on is a different galaxy (in fact there are so many we experience confusion as they all overlap).

I've just got back from another two weeks volunteering at my old secondary school's year 8 camp. One of the great things about camp is that it gives a chance for students from London to experience the outoors, leave all electronic gadgets behind and for some be away from home for the first time. The activities vary from canoeing, building a rope bridge over the river, to camps own olympics (with some very bizarre events). This year is camps 40th anniversary, and we've been using the same camp site in the new forest for all those years (to celebrate we took the above drone picture).

This week I've given an invited talk at the Copenhagen dust conference on using dust as a tracer input nearby galaxies. This conferences which looks at all aspects of cosmic dust from lab measurements to dust in the early Universe. The conference went very well, was extremly informative and had possibly the best conference 'feast' that I've seen (the wine didn't stop appearing!)

My PhD student Tom Williams has had his first paper accepted! The paper looks at the Schmidt-Kennicutt Law in M33 using new SCUBA-2 data. The paper is now available through MNRAS and the arxiv.

My paper describing the images for the second Herschel-ATLAS data release has been accepted! This marks the full release of the H-ATLAS data, the largest Herschel survey of the extragalactic sky. The maps cover an area approximately 660 square degrees, in the wavelength range 100 to 500µm. The paper can be accessed here.

I've received the brilliant news that HASHTAG, a new large program on the JCMT has been approved! With its ~275 hours the survey will observe the whole of Andromeda with SCUBA-2 at 450 and 850µm, as well CO(J=3-2) with HARP in selected regions. The project has a PI for each region, and I'm the UK PI.