Michael Merrifield

Finally the skies cleared. Only for twenty minutes, but just long enough to make sure my telescope still works. Will definitely be back for a longer look at the Cone Nebula if the skies ever clear again! 🔭

But on the whole I like to keep processing to a minimum, and stick to “real” pictures.

I know the theory!

Macro photography is fun, but the minuscule depth of field is a challenge!

Always enjoy the optics of raindrops in photography. The blossom tree used to be named after my son, since it came into flower coincident with our bringing him home as a newborn. Now it flowers a couple of weeks earlier.

Caught an old episode of Minder (S6 E2), with a very young Peter Capaldi.

Dame Carole Jordan – first female president of the RAS – 1941-2026 We are saddened to hear of the death of Professor Dame Carole Jordan – the first female president of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) – who has passed away a...

Carole was my astronomy tutor in my undergraduate days. To my shame, I never understood her exam questions on stellar chromospheres.

www.ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space

A powerful set of arguments against letting space engineers treat Low-Earth Orbit like the Wild West. 🔭🧪

spacenews.com/the-future-o...

Two falls, two submissions, or a knockout…

Squirrel wrestling is proving a useful distraction from the world.

But at least I now know why our daffs are so squished.

Yes — you can see the spiral staircase through the door in the first picture.

Garden camera catching moments of violence.

Brushing up on editing garden camera videos of our exotic local wildlife.

Sadly I suspect little mourned by the astronomy community if this is the best deal she was able to negotiate with UKRI.

And here was me thinking she wrote it. So naive…

Also disturbing how closely her exact words mirror those used by Ian Chapman in his open letter, suggesting she is just following a UKRI script rather than speaking for STFC.

I think he takes advice…

Ian Chapman back-pedalled mightily on this between his first open letter (www.ukri.org/news/open-le...) and his second one (www.ukri.org/news/ukri-ce...):

Perhaps strangely, the Astronomer Royal is nothing to do with the RAS.

I think she is (not very clearly) repeating the UKRI CEO’s recent line that the majority of cost savings will be borne internally *at UKRI level*, not by STFC.

Perhaps we could ask the Astronomer Royal to explain to the STFC CEO why threatening a 30% cut in astronomy research funding to pay physicists’ electricity bills is a really stupid idea. 🧪🔭

(www.theguardian.com/science/2026...)

There is a point at which what constitutes professional behaviour switches state.

Good to see that STFC’s CEO is arguing that cost increases should be borne across all research portfolios, not just those that happen to be funded by STFC.

She is arguing for that, right?…. Right?

🧪

(www.theguardian.com/science/2026...)

Garden camera last night: just passing through!

It is a gem.

That’s… a lot of data!

Nottingham in the early Spring sunshine.

The 1904 book I was looking at had some interesting things to say about that, too.

Never forget that The Left Lion thinks of itself as The Right Lion.

Something endlessly fascinating about old physics books. This from 1904 was struggling with the nature of atoms and the aether. How far we have come in only a little over a century.