A babbling brook

We were on the way to California's wine country via a small country road and took a break to watch the water. I wish I'd packed a picnic...

On the boardwalk

A few more shots from Moonstone Beach including a reworked panorama although I'm still not happy with it. Have to learn to take off the polarizer when doing panoramas, it really makes the sky look weird...

On the boardwalk

On the beach

On the rocks (shaken, not stirred)

Back on the boardwalk

A postcard from Cambria

This small coastal town in central California is turning out to be my "special place"! I can't wait to get back there. Beautiful scenery, friendly people and pretty much crime-free. A place to relax with your loved one and leave stress behind for a few days. Just a few miles inland are a gazillion wineries if that takes your fancy. Twenty miles north along the Pacific Coast Highway takes you up high and into the most stunning coastal scenery you can imagine or just potter around in Cambria and enjoy the beach, food, wine and wonderful company!

Just steps from the beach

Moonstone Beach, Cambria, California.

Quite a lot of stars

UKIRT made the news overnight. A press release was made at the National Astronomy Meeting in the UK entitled "Milky Way image reveals detail of a billion stars" which has led to dozens of news items around the world including this one at the BBC which was the number one most-read article for a while and is still the most shared as I write this. This is just one result of the work we have been doing for the last seven years (UKIDSS) and in this case shared with the VISTA survey which is doing an infrared survey of the southern hemisphere.

The picture above is just a tiny fraction of the sky covered in the image. You can play around with the entire billion-star image yourself by going to the online interactive tool hosted by the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. It was images similar to this that first attracted me to astronomy although back in those days they were optical rather than infrared! Still, just gazing at pictures of thousands of stars and nebulae as a little kid made me wonder just exactly what was out there and here I am, er, just a few years later, still wondering!

To put things in context, even though a billion stars sounds a rather large number, it's still just a fraction of the stars in our own Galaxy in which we believe there are 200 to 400 billion stars. Add to that there are probably about 200 billion galaxies in the universe you hopefully start to appreciate what an enormous place we live in and that we are literally a tiny and likely insignificant speck of dust in the grand scheme.

Incidentally I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that the UKIDSS consortium was recently awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Group Award. In another twist of fate, and one completely unexpected, the consortium agreed with the RAS to have a few individually named certificates made to "core" members of the project. The list includes some people who work at the UKIRT or worked there until recently: Andy Adamson, Luca Rizzi and Watson Varricatt. They all thoroughly deserve the award and certificate. Apparently I'm getting one as well although I'm not sure why, but I get to pick it up in May when I next visit Edinburgh. That'll be something nice to look forward to!

Moonstone Beach

Moonstone Beach, Cambria, California.

Just got back from a long trip to the UK and California. Wonderful time but very tired. I've a few photos to work on but the above was done on a broken laptop during our stay in Cambria last week - not too bad I think! Best viewed by clicking on it to get the larger version.

Typical temperate typha

Or Bulrushes if you didn't want to look it up! Taken at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on Sunday.

Beautiful England...

...or the countryside I really miss.

My wonderful host, June, took me off into the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District on Saturday. The forecast was for clouds but it turned into the most beautiful day and I got to see the English countryside again.

Hawaii is beautiful, but I think England and the rest of the UK has some things going for it. In my younger days I think I might have hiked up that hill and then would then have seen somewhere just as stunning to hike to again...

10 points to whoever...

...can guess what this is. Clue - it's from a Boston hotel room and no, I've never seen one either before today.

Jet lag beckons...

Another long trip is ahead; half work, half vacation. I miss working at the summit of Mauna Kea and taking pictures up there but a benefit of the position I now hold is a little more travel, especially back to the island where I grew up. To be honest I don't enjoy the actual travel because most of it involves US domestic airlines which quite frankly suck more than a tuned-up vacuum cleaner but being in other places is something I've always enjoyed.

So, it's:



and onto:



and if you can't guess which city/university I mean, this might help:



Then it's back to:



and then some quality vacation time in:



The camera's coming with me. I hope to have some nice shots when I get back!