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#906548 02/05/16 03:44 PM
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I'm in Kensington, London for two days of European Astrofest - motto: The Universe under one roof.

Some really superb presentations today, and encountered a number of friends. The final talk today was Brian May (Queen guitarist and astrophysicist) who showed a set of stereoscopic astronomy images. Very cool.

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Two interesting talks from a member of the New Horizons team and a great talk bout the Rosetta Mission from its Mission Scientist, a singular individual!

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Astrofest 2016 was treated to presentations by both Brian May and Matt Taylor.

Last year Rosetta's chief scientist Matt Taylor was given an award at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods event. He is doubly a rock fan - he has landed a probe on a big space rock and he's a keen heavy metal fan. Rock musician/astrophysicist Brian May presented the award, saying
Quote:
He and his team hurled a large piece of metal and silicon 300 million miles into space and landed a small pod on a comet. It’s something so incredibly difficult and unusual. Ten years ago they launched this thing…they didn’t even speak to it because it had to rest and then they just hoped that when it switched itself on it would be in the right place. It was in the right place.

The Rosetta mission is something that has never been done before. Last November it caught up with the comet it had been pursuing for ten years. This guy, Dr Matt Taylor, was in control of the whole thing.

Both May and Taylor have doctorates from Imperial College, London.

Oh, and one of Matt's tattoos is of Rosetta . (He didn't show it off during is Astrofest talk.)

#906814 02/10/16 09:03 PM
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It's great to have access to “the Universe under one roof”. When European Astrofest comes to the Kensington Conference Centre in London, it saves many light years of travel. Here are some highlights of the 2016 event.

European Astrofest 2016

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In my account of Astrofest I mentioned that two speakers had told us about detection of gravitational waves. In fact, for a month or so there have been rumors that the waves had been detected by LIGO in the USA, and that's what would be announced in a press conference on February 11.

It's been announced - and widely covered in all the media. Here's a little animation that shows briefly what gravitational waves are and how they're detected. It's not highly technical, so have a look if you want to know what the fuss is about.

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Megan Argo talked about finding out different information by observing in different wavelengths, radio waves being the longest, X-rays very short. Colder objects are usually best seen in long wavelengths, hotter ones in shorter wavelengths. We see the cold dust between the stars at relatively long wavelengths, but very hot galactic centers give out X-rays. 

Here are 5 images of our galactic neighbor Andromeda Galaxy. The Planck Mission explains:
Quote:
At radio wavelengths we measure the gas in the outskirts of the galaxy, while at infrared wavelengths we measure the dust between the spiral arms. The stars making up the spiral arms and central bulge are seen at visible wavelengths, while in the ultraviolet we see just the brighter, hotter younger stars along the edges of the spiral arms.  The X-ray image shows only the most energetic regions of the galaxy, particularly near the centre.


(Image credits: Radio:WSRT/R. Braun; Infrared:NASA/Spitzer/K. Gordon; Visible: Robert Gendler; Ultraviolet: NASA/GALEX; X-ray: ESA/XMM/W. Pietsch)

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Matt Taylor, who gave a super talk at Astrofest about his work on the Rosetta mission has an asteroid named for him. How cool is that.


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