observation log - animals

From time to time it happens here to meet some animals. Not very often since it is a half-desert, but it happens. Sometime it's cute springbook just behind your window



but sometimes not.

Observations log day #3

Yes, we had a little pause in writing on thins blog, but since I am 'observing' now in Sutherland, South Africa I may try to write something.

So I am here 3 days, here is summary of these 3 days:

- There are shop that sells electricity, I thought about buying a bucket of this, but I didn't have time to go into that shop. Exact sign was "Here we sell electricity"

- They drink decaff coffee in observatory. That's just weird.

- I asked a driver (transport from Cape Town to Sutherland) what should I do with my room key, since I am leaving. He said, very surprised: "WHO are you?!".

- I talked to another astronomer, just usual blablabla, what he's observing, how is the weather, he asked where am I from. I said "I'm from Poland" of course, and he replied "A ja jestem z Poznania". (for english-only speaking readers - it means that he was from Poland too).

- In a pub in Sutherland they know polish people, especially one lady.

- A bartender in Cape Town didn't believe me that it's possible to drink a shot of vodka (and only vodka), he heard of it but couldn't believe me. Then he gave me 3 shots to teach him.

The best bartender in the world! (the left one):




- Now I start to think I am coursed - a year ago, when I was here to observe during two weeks we had maybe 6 'good' nights. It's raining for two days now, and forecast says that it will be raining until Friday...

The picture is made toward the plateau, where is SALT and other domes. Not visible now...

We are the first

at least if you type "boring astronomers" in your browser:D

might not work in boring browsers...*

*FF, SF, OP, CH

year-end summary

As You probably are aware there is an end of the academic year now. Most of the scientific institutes connected with academic life make some summaries. E.g. our institute counted number of publications since 1997. Only publications to refereed journals are taken.
As You can see there is fast growth in last 3 years. Maybe it's improvement in a scientific level of workers, but there are also some voices that it's just when those huge consortiums (CTA, LIGO etc) began to write their publications. The other fact is that in those consortiums publications are made very slowly...

If You have similiar data, please, feel free to submit!

Que telescopio es polaco?

Opción 1.:




Opción 2.:




Opción 3.:

clock and Mr R.

Why Santa Claus is correlated with Aids?

Probably this in one of the most sirius post in this blog!

Ok, so, what "science" is all aboute? Well, partly about finding correlations. The other part is to discover if that correlation is real. For example people that are talking about "global warming" mostly forget about second part.

How dose it work? How can We find correlation betwean Santa Claus and Aids?
It's easy, You have to compare two curves. You can use google trends - it shows how often topics have been searched on Google over time.

ok, just try SANTA (claus) and AIDS



santa is blue, aids - red.
correlation - obvious!!!!!!

Why? Does that mean that people think of Santa Claus as filthy, immoral, obscene old man with aids?
No, so why there is correlation.

Let's start with comparing google trends curves for CHRISTMAS and SANTA:



natural,
next step is CHRISTMAS and SEX



christmas is red, sex blue. Correlation isn't so perfect, but We belive it exist.
Last step is:

SEX vs. AIDS



and that is why we have correlation SANTA (claus) - AIDS




so, do You belive and undarstand now?
YOU SHOULDN'T!!!! It's an illusion. There IS NO real correlation between SEX and AIDS.
The trick is, that 1 December is World AIDS Day.

Show some compassion to astronomers, almost all their work is finding correlations!

Ps.
Find out why there is anticorrelation with VODKA - POLAND !!!!!!!! XD

To prove how hard we are working we started on-line streaming from our workplace, OAUW.



Watch here!

sediment?

Very soon there will be another astronomers meeteing. This time it's OSAD - meeteing specially designed for PhD astronomers.

here is THE link

and exlusively for our most observant readers here is a very hot gossip: there will be a premiere of "In the land of evil Seeing"!

CLOAOtW

One of our readers sent to us another picture of cosmic latte obseravatory. This one is an Observatory of the University of Zielona Gora. The plague is spreading.

Thanks Bartek!!!

Comsic Latte Observatories All Over the World?

Did you see 1st November (2009) Astronomy Picture of a Day? link
This is it:

They say it's an average color of The Universe (named "cosmic latte"), but only this?
Some unanswered questions:

• Is this color also an average color of all observatories?
• Sholud we rename our project to "Comsic Latte Observatories All Over the World"?
• How long astronomers know this color?
• Is it some kind of conspiracy?
• Previous question can be reduced to: what is the very first astronomical observatory painted in that color?
  

"In the Land of evil Seeing" - second trailer

So, soon we will publish full movie (we need just to record audio track), but now, watch "the" trailer - the full one.

In the land of evil Seeing - trailer

Coming soon.

Try once more!

Has anybody seen differences between pictures on my last post? At least nobody wrote them in comments.

Now it's time for second part! Two cars are used by our observatory staff and students. Can you find any differences?



Answer: there is no valid car insurance for red arrow!

Is there a difference?

It's normal to see some animals when you're in the observatory, because usually observatories are built in isolated places. Can you found 10 differences between these photos taken in Ostrowik Observatory and Las Campanas Observatory?

ICYA - preparations & arrangements

ICYA, International Conference of Young Astronomers will be held in Krakow, but organizers are from different Polish cities, Krakow, Zielona Gora, Torun and Warsaw. So from time to time we have to arrange meetings of organizing committee.



This time it was in Krakow, so we had opportunity to check lecture hall and other conference devices. As can you see we had real hard-working time.

And the questions are:
Who the hell is paying for it?
What color of identifier should we have?
How to escape in case of conference failure... :p

http://www.icya2009.org/

Is it dark enough?

Astronomers tend to situate their telescopes in places where are no artificial light sources - they want to observe dark sky. One of such places is Las Campanas Observatory in Chile where twin 6.5 m Magellanic telescopes, 2.5 m Du Pont telescope, 1 m Swope telescope and of course 1.3 m Warsaw telescope operate. There are some smaller telescopes like ASAS or Pi of the Sky. It isn't true that we don't like physicists from our faculty, we just don't like the way they treat dark sky. Their telescope during observations looks like that:


Are you able to find any unnecessary light on that picture?
(Clue: there is one in camera casing)

Man on the Moon

Since last week I work in Warsaw Planetarium. This job is so boring, because I have to sit there on a chair and watch visitors if they're not doing anything nasty. Also, from time to time, I have a speech about what You can see on a nightsky now. Today I took a camera and made some very unique pictures of landing on the Moon. Here:

Psychological portrait of an astronomer or an astronaut

Few weeks ago, at the small pancake-party we discovered our psychological portraits. I present you my own, which is some kind of an ideal portrait, and I'm proud of it:D (not the best quality, but I'm testing bluetooth connection between Ubuntu 9.04 and my K510i).

Notice small dotted line, this is a zero-line of my profile. Scale is relative, my minimum is 1 and maximum is 8, so zero-line is about 3-4. Now, you can see all pros and cons of my character.

For an ideal astronomer/astronaut it is important to (my result in brackets):

• be keep watching at high level (7)
• be a loner at medium level (5)
• be non-usual at medium level (5)
• be rowdy at zero level (4)
• be changeable at low level (1)
• be dramatic at low level (2)
• be self-sure at medium or high level (5, ok, I have to work on it)
• be sensitive at zero level (3)
• be devoted at zero/medium level (5)
• be hard-working at high level (8)
• be a "comfortable" person at low level (2)
• be an autocratic person at low level (1)
• be offering at zero/medium level (5)
• be serious and medium/high level (6)

As you can see, I am almost an ideal astronomer;p

Our pancake-party finished at half of "La Dolce Vita" by F. Fellini. The half means here: 1h30m without any action. We gived up with the movie.

No more "La Dolce Vita"

ICYA - conference

The International Conference of Young Astronomers (ICYA) is a scientific meeting of undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students of astronomy and physics as well as more advanced astronomers. We, as young scientists, feel a big need to contribute our share to this year’s International Year of Astronomy 2009 and use this opportunity to establish global, annual conference for all scientists, researchers and advanced amateur astronomers who could meet in future and work together in projects which will develop modern astronomy.

For this reason we aim to arrange an international conference to broaden our minds and to discuss challenging issues of astronomy. Furthermore, and most important, the meeting gives a chance to get in touch with other young scientists, with whom we might cooperate in the future.

Our goal is to establish ICYA as a regular conference, held once a year in different countries, connecting young astronomers from all over the world. Let's make it happen!

This year ICYA is organised by the Polish Astronomical Society in collaboration with Polish universities (Jagiellonian University of Cracow, University of Warsaw, Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Nicolaus Copernicus University of Toruń, University of Zielona Góra, University of Szczecin and Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre of Polish Academy of Sciences) and hopefully will be supported by foreign universities and astronomical societies as well as international astronomical organizations.

The conference will take place in Cracow, Poland, September 7 – 13.

(I)CYA there!


http://www.icya2009.org/