SAM MORRELL

Astrophysics
Environmental Intelligence
Computer Science

Searching for: sky

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

What I’ve Been Listening To – June 2016

July 1, 2016

Well, what a bleak month it has been. From widespread mass shootings across the entire globe to the UK being brought into political and socioeconomic turmoil, this is a month I’m glad to be finished with. However, it’s not all bad. We managed to get away on a nice weekend trip to Cornwall, from which...

What I’ve Been Listening To – May 2016

June 1, 2016

Good day all. Phew, well here I am, back on the blog wagon. This post should be appearing here on time, which makes a change from the tardiness of the previous two. What a varied month it’s been. Only this past weekend its gone from clear blue skies as far as the eye can see,...

What I’ve Been Listening To – November 2015

December 1, 2015

And so it’s that time of year again. The nights rapidly draw in after making the exasperated jaunt back from British Summer Time to good ol’ GMT. The fog lies thick over the city as the temperature make it’s downward meander to sub-zero degrees celsius. The feeling of autumn, and indeed shortly after the crisp...

My Research

May 26, 2015

My research interests span astrophysics and environmental intelligence. My astrophysics research currently focusses on better measuring the characteristics of stars from large, cutting-edge photometric and astrometric datasets. I also apply this knowledge to the analysis of datasets for a large variety of environmental sources, from satellite observations to measurements of animal beahviour, to better understand...

#InternationalWomensDay

March 8, 2015

You may have noticed that today, Sunday 8th March 2015, is International Womens Day. This sounded like an ideal time to write about some exceptional scientists whom I greatly admire; who just also so happen to be women. Rosalind Franklin The Woman Who Discovered the Structure of DNA The discovery of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) is the...

6EQUJ5 – Decoding the Wow! Signal

December 11, 2014

Nothing quite spikes human interest like a good old fashioned mystery, and the the events at a radio telescope in Delaware, Ohio in 1977 could qualify as just that. The voluntary radio astronomer on duty, Dr. Jerry Ehman, noticed a signal that has gone down in history as one of the great puzzlers of the...

Dust in the Ointment

October 18, 2014

It’s nice every now and then to have a slight reminder why your work is valuable. At the moment I’m part of a research team, working in the astrophysics department at the University of Exeter,  that are studying dust. I know exactly what you’re thinking, how interesting can dust be? The truth is that interstellar...

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