Emeritus professor of astronomy at the University of Nottingham. All my own views. Here for interest, so anyone who doesn’t interest me gets blocked.

Nottingham
Joined June 2011
Time to update my pinned post, just because this selfie makes me very happy. (Monku View Point on @hermisland, 26 July 2022 at 11PM. 2s exposure on @SonyAlpha 6600 with Samyang 12mm f2 lens, pushed to ISO 10000, just reprocessed with @Lightroom’s amazing AI noise reduction.)
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Garden camera update: early morning fox patrol.
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Today I found myself contemplating the sensitive randomness of human history, and how many people would not be here if it weren’t for local engineer, Thomas Hawksley, whose memorial I happened to walk past in Arnot Hill Park on a stroll today. 1/3
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When cholera struck the UK in 1848, Nottingham was almost unaffected. The reason was that Hawksley had set up the country’s first large-scale constant pressure water supply here in 1831, using a steam engine to pump a head of water up to a reservoir, ensuring a clean supply. 2/3
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How many long-term local residents would not be here today if their great-great-great-grandparents had been victims of that cholera epidemic? 3/3
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How perfect a metaphor could you ask for? (washingtonpost.com/national-…)
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Garden camera update: the exotic view of a bespoke astronomical hoodie.
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Progress in scientific research draws on both conformists and iconoclasts. astromikemerri.substack.com/…
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“I don’t have a clue what I am doing, but I’m doing it anyway.” (arxiv.org/abs/2610.28575)
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Maybe I should’ve listened to the weather forecast…
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Garden camera update: checking out the hardware up close.
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Not often that a nuthatch is willing to eat not standing on his head.
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Nice to see an old friend back in the garden.
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Any Reform supporter chanting the mantra that it is only a few bad apples has really missed the point of that proverb.
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Who doesn’t love a pink white dwarf? (academic.oup.com/rasti/artic…)
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My wife’s birthday present to me was for me to spend a day turning a piece of sea glass from the Scilly Isles into a pendant for her. Wait a minute…
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