Booo Hooo is what I say

More office archaeology. My voting card from the Prague IAU, used for booting out Pluto #astronomy

@dougjohnstone.bsky.social is interviewing me at the Portobello book festival, Sunday Oct 5th 1030. Talking about Losing The Sky #astronomy Get tickets at the website portobellobookfestival.com

Inspiring conversation between Sally Magnusson and Tim Berners-Lee @timbl.bsky.social at Assembly Rooms tonight. Closed with "practice creativity, practice collaboration, practice compassion". Maybe TBL should make that a T-shirt and include it with his book "This is for Everyone"

Waiting for TBL

Curmudgeon Time. I hate the fact that my Apple devices now always have to be in a chosen "focus". You can't choose "no focus". I created a new one called "none" just for a larf but it's not the same.

Terry Riley Keyboard Study on guitar… lovely m.youtube.com/watch?v=daDB...

I love these toothpaste tabs. No plastic www.bambuliving.co.uk/shop/p/tooth...

I *think* my exhibition is still there..

From the ROE archives.. paper by Henderson dated Jan 3 1839 reporting the discovery of parallax, given to Captain Smyth. Henderson’s handwriting! #astronomy Take that, Friedrich Bessel

classical.music.apple.com/gb/album/564... Loving this album. Starting to think that jazz and rock have reached sterile dead ends, and the creative torch has passed back to “classical”

this is why the "oh, everything is gonna be ok after the midterms/next presidential elections" ppl are blowing my mind. what are you even saying, the destroyed satellites aren't going to un-destroy themselves and NASA doesn't have any spares lying around futurism.com/white-house-...

Office archaeology part 687: polaroid finding charts as of 1980s. Top half is plot of positions of bright stars at Schmidt plate real scale. Print this on transparent sheet. Overlay on plate. Take zoomed in polaroid. Stick on card with extra info. Take box full of hundreds to telescope…

Richard Green on light pollution ... clear accurate article #astronomy theconversation.com/light-pollut...

Next up on the office archaeology dig… in the Olde Days we used to send each other postcards requesting preprints of papers.. here is a small selection of what is finally going in the bin…

One of the more unnusual pieces of office archaeology… somehow I ended up with a film copy of an old BBC Horizon programme… from the 90s I think?

@ngc3314.bsky.social Honestly, the rubbish I have somehow failed to throw away for years…

You know, if enough of us say on the internet that it's important to wash your cybertruck with saltwater and lemon juice to preserve the finish, eventually ChatGPT will start telling cybertruck owners that.

The Nelson Monument has been uncovered after a brush and scrub up. The historic Time Ball dating back to 1853 will once again be dropping at precisely 1pm to allow sailors to set their ships' chronometers. @edinburghwh.bsky.social

Ice House, Doocharry, Donegal. Ice packed in here would last three years and was used to preserve salmon. The Marquis of Conyngham claimed rights to *all* salmon caught in the Gweebarra Estuary until 1906 when the villagers of Doocharry started a legal challenge which they eventually won.

They are darker but bigger

In 1982, as I started my RGO Fellowship, email was so exciting I kept and printed my entire first year’s worth. Mostly party invites… Note DecNet addresses, not TCP/IP. Email outside the UK Starlink network was still very tricky

🥳 It's #RubinFirstLook day and the Universe sure is beautiful! Here's the evidence backing up my BBC Radio 4 Today assertion that Rubin's Trifid nebula image looks just like a jellyfish! You are welcome 🤗🔭 Join the watch party online today at 16:00 UK time! 🎥: www.youtube.com/live/Zv22_Am...

My latest “Expert Voices” piece for Science combines the excitement of the dawn of the Rubin Era with nervousness at the increasing degradation of the Space Environment #astronomy www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Office archaeology getting further back in time... Leicester 1976. This stack of cards, if fed into a Cyber 72, produces a line printer picture of Snoopy

To add to the recent news about imminent UKIRT demolition: over a decade ago it left UK ownership, and I took part in a ceremony to hand it over #astronomy

postgraduate gripe meeting 1999. As well as requests for keyboards to be cleaned, more terminals and so, food was high on the list

@astroroyalscot.bsky.social If you want a good local example of how untrue things spread, try this wonderful thread about the Salisbury Arms and Conan Doyle

Constellation satellites brightnesses are exceeding the CPS limit, and often the visual limit. Starlinks *have* gotten dimmer per unit area... but also bigger ... arxiv.org/abs/2507.00107

Anybody got a picture of Annie Walker? Possibly first British professional astronomer, later moved to Oz. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

End of an era. Bye bye UKIRT. www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2025/06/27/h...

On the train south after yesterday’s Rubinfest, and look what I found long forgotten in the pocket of my smart jacket - the LSST spectacle wiping cloth, from some long ago All Hands Meeting #astronomy

Did several Rubin related interviews yesterday, but was pleased with this one, as I got seven minutes of airtime rather than two! US public radio is so good, but in danger theworld.org/segments/202...

Gosh .. not sure what is the right emoji to pick!

Re-upping this story about how the wondrous new Vera Rubin Observatory was spy-proofed by shadowy operatives and such: bsky.app/profile/ross...

I must try my Seestar on this. I wonder how long it will take? I suppose my Bortle 6 sky doesn’t help much

Try “turn on asteroids” in the Rubin skyviewer.app/explorer it makes things even more awesome. This is what sky is really like. Everwhere. Every Day.

Aha! It turns out the Rubin skyviewer app is built using Aladin Lite, from @cdsportal.bsky.social Vive La France!

Tell you what, planetarium domes are the correct way to see the @vrubinobs.bsky.social images for the first time. LOOK AT THAT.

Three Rubin media interviews and an event at Dynamic Earth planetarium .. phew. But the images are gorgeous. Explore for yourself using the app! skyviewer.app

Dinner in 2002 at Lancaster House at to celebrate UK accession to ESO. Even the French people at my table were impressed by the wine

Slightly more recent archaeology. In 2008 we were making a case to PPARC for UK participation in LSST. “Official first light date is early 2015, but we believe Oct 2016 is more realistic”. Cough. But now it’s real!!!! #astronomy

Want to set eyes on the @vrubinobs.bsky.social First Look images in good company? There are public Watch Parties taking place around the UK and all over the world. Check out your nearest event rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-f... 🔭

oops www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

Next up from the depths of the office, a variety of treatises by earnest cranks. The oldest and best is this, which purports to be a psychic communication from Nikola Tesla. There is about thirty pages of this BTW

Continuing office archaeology: my 1981 RGO Fellowship conditions stipulated that I may be “required to work on board ships afloat, submarines submerged, or aircraft in flight”. Perhaps the submarine bit was anticipating neutrino astronomy

Funny what you find when doing office archaeology. It seems in 1999 the Evening News rated me one of the 500 most influential people in Edinburgh. Apparently I claimed my hobbies included racing goldfish and lying to publishers

Bought a new backpack, but found the interior hole in the old one had been hiding a remarkable collection of treasures! I have spared you the ancient hairy Mentos