No more conferences this month, please!

Some notes:

• Alcohol - the USA and Canada issue drink tickets at conferences. The UK issues bottles and cans (especially at poster sessions).
• Apple Macs (all sorts) and Asus Eee PCs seem to be the favourites with scientific conference delegates.
• You can really only get a decent cup of Tea in the UK.

Oh look. Another conference I’ll be at. Not until November though.

*wave* Hello new people if you’re still reading.

Right, I’m off to watch the eclipse.

August 1st, 2008. Solar Eclipse. Moon passing in front of the sun, sky darkening, a bit like August 1999, except it will not get as dark (no totality visible from anywhere in the UK).

The NASA animation below shows a tiny black dot (in reality ~200km oval) shooting across the face of the earth - somewhere where this passes over is where you need to be to see a totally blacked out sun. At the time of maximum eclipse in London only ~12% of the sun will be occluded by the moon,the further north you live, the more of the sun will be occluded.

Seen from London, the edge of the moon will make contact with the sun at 9:33 AM (BST), maximum eclipse occurs at 10:18 and the whole show is over at 11:05 BST. There isn’t another Solar Eclipse visible from the UK until March 20th 2015.

That’s not all for the sky shows in August though. The Perseids Meteor Shower takes place between the 11th and 13th of the month - pick somewhere with dark skies and look up, predictions indicate this will be a good show.
There is also a partial eclipse of the Moon on the 16th August 2008. That’s when the Moon goes dark.On that date the moon is fairly low in the London sky and rising. It is only around 10 degrees above the horizon at maximum eclipse, so might be a challenge to see anyting unless you can get high up with a good clear view to the south east.

If you do plan to watch the solar eclipse do it safely.

I think I’m all set for Canada now.  I’m off to ICOOMPA 2008, for five days of hardcore optics geekery and a few days exploring Alberta.  My talk is on Monday afternoon, so I can relax as soon as that’s over.

1. My superpower is the ability to detect minute quantities of cucumber from large distances. It is rarely of use to anyone.
2. I bake terrible cakes.
3. The last book I read was The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. I finished it on the train on the way home tonight.
4. My dog is named Pointless, I had a cat named mincemeat.
5. I plan to win an Ignoble Prize someday for my research.
6. I can do this:
   

I tag anyone else that wants to do this.

Summary - it’s good, but is it real? Could be many other things.