Searching for: planet

The Fluid Mechanics of Planetary Atmospheres

February 16, 2015

In my last post I went over a really powerful bit of physics called fluid mechanics, which describes the flow of fluid through a system. The main equation in this framework is the momentum equation; the Navier-Stokes equation.This equation is nye on impossible to solve analytically in it’s full grotesque glory, so in the last post I discussed some of...

Radiative Transfer in Planetary Atmospheres: An Overview

January 1, 2015

A little while ago I got carried away on a little post which discussed a really cool little bit of physics called radiative transfer. As I said then, radiative transfer is a technique that you can use to study how energy, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, moves through material. In that post, which you can...

The Great Conjunction 2020

December 7, 2020

It should no great surprise that 2020 has been a difficult year in academia. The inability to travel has made maintaining collaborations problematic, and the inability to carry out the majority of teaching in-person, despite being the catalyst for much innovation in the higher education space, has made traditional lecturing all but impossible. An unfortunate...

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...

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...

We Discovered an FUor

December 20, 2018

We discovered a very rare kind of star – in fact there are only 25 stars of its type known to exist. The fact that we found it is amazing, but the way we found it was even more interesting. We caught it red handed during an FUor outburst – a period of intense flaring...

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...

Boldly Going for 50 Years

September 8, 2016

It’s very much not an overstatement to say that I adore Star Trek. Today is a very special for someone who claims this level of adoration for the franchise as it is exactly 50 years old today. Back on September 8th 1966 the first ever episode of Star Trek, The Man Trap, hit the screens...

Beginning with BibTeX – Making Referencing in LaTex as Easy as Pi

August 14, 2016

[mathjax] It’s no secret that physicists love using LaTeX to write papers. This has many practical advantages, such as the ability to completely unlink your content from the formatting, very flexible layout tools and a veritable smorgasbord of packages to do everything from change the colour of your text to allow you to programmatically create plots...

Redesigning XRT-C

July 17, 2016

As some who read this may know I’m involved, well currently the project lead, on the Exeter Radio Telescope at Caradon (XRT-C) project. The idea behind this project is great; to build a professional grade, 4.5m radio telescope in the Cornish country side that can be used by students across the UK. Up until now,...