SAM MORRELL

Astrophysics
Environmental Intelligence
Computer Science

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Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet: A tribute to Stephen Hawking

March 14, 2018

There are a couple of books I can honestly say inspired me to be an astronomer. In college, junior / senior year in high school for those in the USA, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do after I’d finished my A-levels. However, years of watching Star Trek and vivid memories of...

Building the Light Pollution Matrix

February 9, 2024

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of recording an episode of a Restoring Darkness podcast with Michael Colligan and Mark Baker. The topics of our conversation ranged from light pollution activism, the role of the lighting industry in solving light pollution, and how we at the Environment and Sustainability Institute and Departments of Physics...

Chirp has a New Home

October 7, 2023

At the end of 2019, I posted about a little app that my colleagues and the University of Birmingham and I had been working on called Chirp — a web and iOS app for keeping track of the latest gravitational wave alerts. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down LIGO, and Chirp, but now it’s coming back...

Outreach Talks

December 16, 2019

Upcoming Talks 22nd October 2022 – Plymouth Festival of Physics – What has Astronomy Ever Done for Me? Past Talks 11th June 2021 – Tiverton and Mid Devon Astronomy Society – Improving the Measurements of the Fundamental Properties of Stars 18th July 2019 – Kernow Astronomers I joined Kernow Astronomers on Thursday 19th July for...

Chirp – An App for Monitoring Gravitational Wave Alerts

November 1, 2019

I’m absolutely delighted to announce that a spare-time project I have been involved with for the best part of a year has finally been released. Enter Chirp – an app to help you monitor gravitational wave alerts. The app is being officially released to coincide with the start of O3b, the second part of the...

Talking ‘Big Data in Astronomy’ with Digital Taunton

July 13, 2019

On 27th June I got the pleasure of going to Taunton to do a talk about the crossover between technology and astronomy at the 5th Digital Taunton meetup. The natural topic is of course the way modern astronomy has embraced the use of ‘big data’ datasets and techniques. When I first put the fledgling version...

About Me

August 12, 2018

I am a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, currently applying my training in astrophysics to help better understand, and hopefully begin to solve, the pressing ecological crisis caused by artificial light at night (ALAN). I lead the development of our Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer model, whose outputs we correlate with measurements of animal...

Web Development for Physicists

February 17, 2018

I’m fortunate enough to be sitting at the intersection of two disparate fields which are rapidly hurtling towards each other. More than ever, it’s becoming important to publicise you and your research, whether you’re in academia or in the private sector. Sooner or later, this is likely going to mean you’re going to requiring some...

XRT-C Dish Mounting Video is Finally Here!

February 8, 2018

This one has been a long time coming. The XRT-C project has likely seemed a little bit quiet of late, but never fear, as there’s always stuff going on in the background, even if it is only me. Ever since the build day in April 2016, I’ve been working on a video of the day...

Dealing with Blank Lines Comments in Fortran READs

September 4, 2017

Just a quick little programming snippet today. When preparing data files, it’s often useful to include headers and comments in them, especially in the more complicated ones. Most data applications that you might be loading data into, such as maybe Python or MATLAB, have plenty of ability to filter out those comments, but what if...

Bodmin Moor – International Dark Sky Landscape

August 26, 2017

Some time ago, in mid-November last year the XRT-C project, the student radio telescope project based at Caradon observatory in Cornwall, as well as Space Exe, the student society at the University of Exeter that maintains and runs the former, were called upon to play a small part in something truly special; to support an...

My Plans for the Apple Watch

August 24, 2017

I have traditionally been a fan of Apple stuff, but lately I’ve found myself becoming less and less enamoured with their current offerings. Whether it be the lacklustre MacBook Pro, with zero USB-A connectors and complete lack of an SD card slot, or the omission of a 3.5mm audio jack on the latest iPhones, they...

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