A shot of a (relatively) quick sketch in progress on Sunday, done with a dipping ink pen, and then splashing on some watercolour. Mostly just knocking rust off the sketching machinery (haven’t used these tools in a long while), and relaxing for some moments between one thing and the next thing… Good to do.
-cvj
Jupiter (with some moons) and Saturn, 21st December 2020 (click for larger view)
But… while the viewing on the 21st (the peak of the conjunction) was perfect, seeing three of the Galilean moons, and the glorious rings of Saturn, very clearly, getting a decent through-the-lens photo was not so trouble-free. I was dissatisfied with the roughs of the photos I got that night, with lots of blurring and aberrations that I felt I should have been able to overcome. So I spent the next day taking the telescope entirely apart, checking everything, and trying to colimate it properly, and testing schemes for better vibration stabilisation of the camera. I was ready for another session of photographing the next night, but it was cloudy, with only about ten minutes where there was a view of the planets, and only then through a thick layer of cloud. The next two nights were even more cloudy. But Christmas day had lovely clear evening skies for a good long while, and so I took lots of photos. But they were all still not really very good – I expected that as I’d not solved the colimation problem properly, perhaps because of the damage from the fall – and while I reduced vibration a lot, my exposure times were poorly chosen, and I ended up with motion blurring on top of everything else.
So today I went back to the ones I took on Monday at the height of the conjunction and found that they were not as terrible as I’d thought originally, if I did a bit of rough selective filtering help in photoshop to adjust colour and exposure for the three main elements (the two planets, and the moons). I had to bring down the exposure on Jupiter as compared to Saturn, and then of course the moons disappeared, so I had to bring those up a bit. Then I had to remove (a little bit) some colour problems on Jupiter and the moons due to chromatic aberration.
So, subject to focusing and colimation difficulties with the telescope, this (at the top of the post) is my best offering of the conjunction on the night. I’m glad to have some kind of personal record of the lovely event.
-cvj
Well, I did what I said I’d try in the previous post. And it worked! I had a great time viewing the conjunction. I hope you did too if you found a moment and clear skies My photography was hampered by either poor stabilisation of the camera or a misalignment of the telescope (due to the fall?) so my photos were not very good. I will do some daytime experiments and then try again this evening. The fact is that if you missed it last night it will probably be just as good again tonight, and for some nights to comes, just as is it was on the nights leading up to the closest approach. Just because it is not in the news any more does not mean it is not still spectacular!
-cvj
Broken Telescope!
Well, there was a bit of a disaster a month ago that I neglected to tell you about. A day or few after the US election, there was a major freak windstorm, just for a short while. I remember joking that it was the winds of change coming through. But then I heard an almighty crash from above that shook the house. I went to the roof and the entire telescope and tripod had (despite being weighted down) blown over and had crashed to the ground! There was considerable damage. See photo montage above – click for larger view.
So I currently have no means to look at the conjunction close up! I’ve been testing the optics (miraculously the mirrors seem intact, but the main tube is quite dented, with the finder scope almost broken off) and it seems ok, but the legs have been torn/broken off the tripod, so I cannot support and point the instrument.
There may be hope though! Out of desperation I ordered a tripod two days ago that looks like it has legs that I can cannibalise to use on to the old assembly, and they are set to arrive soon, so we will see if I am lucky. Maybe I will be able to photograph the conjunction after all – if it is not too low in the sky to be seen from my vantage point.
-cvj
Andrea Ghez accepting the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics
I’ve met Andrea Ghez on an number of occasions (and communicated electronically on many more), usually because of our joint interest in making science accessible to the public through talks (where we first met during K C Cole’s excellent Categorically Not! series), TV shows (where we’ve sometimes connected behind the scenes, in the context of shows or films we’re both in, or thinking of being in), and so forth. All our interactions have been such a pleasure! For many years, one of my principal slides when talking about black holes is the little (< 1min) movie that her group made of the motion of stars they’d tracked over time to show them orbiting a dense massive object that we now know is a black hole. So I am just delighted to see her accept this prize.
Roger Penrose accepting the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics
Roger Penrose has been a key figure in my work, of course – so much of the precise language we discuss black holes with is due to him. I’m also SO pleased that I helped (earlier this Summer while co-advising (with Katie Mack) on a screenplay for a new show) get the Penrose process be a (named) integral part of a dramatic scenario to appear on your TV screens one day, I hope. But I should also mention that he played a part in the trajectory that my career took. He was (to my horror when I walked into the room because of his legend and stature in my mind) on the interview panel for the Lindemann fellowship that I (having indeed won it) used for my first postdoc, going off to the USA to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. What a nerve-wracking trial by fire that interview was!
Why was Penrose looming large in my mind as a graduate student? It wasn’t actually to do with Relativity and Black holes, as you might have guessed. It was to do with condensed matter physics. I’d spent a huge amount of my later undergraduate years obsessed with a (then) new discovery of a phase of matter called quasicrystals (see also here), and a key mathematical pattern people were interested at the time as a result was the Penrose tiling. I spent many many hours drawing two-dimensional Penrose tilings, and building out of cardboard portions of three-dimensional Penrose tilings. I lived and breathed Penrose tilings for years and never lost my love for (and obsession with) them (and the irrational number the golden mean) even when I turned my attention to particle physics, relativity and string theory for graduate school. So NOW you know why I was all of a shiver when Roger Penrose showed up on my interview committee for that Fellowship!
So anyway, it’s just great to see him accept the prize. I’ve met him only that one time (I think), but through his work, I’m simply a good-old-fashioned fan.
Congratulations to all the Nobel Prize winners this year, but the ones for Andrea and Roger have special meaning for me.
-cvj
A montage of some of my notebooks. Click to zoom in!
This is a quick montage of a selection of my notebooks over the last few years. As you may know, I often carry a little (usually black) notebook with me whenever out and about in the world (in normal circumstances at least). It is useful for jotting down or working through ideas, doing computations of research ideas, writing to-do lists, and -very importantly- it is an especially good means of reminding me to grab a moment to do a sketch. As a result, they’ve become a record of what I’ve been thinking about in certain periods, what I might have seen on the way to work (back when I was sketching faces on the subway), and also an interesting combination of marks on paper that I actually simply like just looking at.
On Thursday I’ll be taking part in a big event at the Getty Center/Museum (remotely) that is about art and science and the melding of the two (which in my mind are not in opposition as traditionally implied but in fact two facets of a more complete route to understanding and being in the world). I’ll be on a panel discussing some of these issues, and as part of our introductions of ourselves, we were asked to show a few slides of what “we’re about”. So one of my three slides will simply be this photo, which I think speaks for itself.
(For those of you who want more information on the notebooks I like to use, see here.)
-cvj
Los Angeles. Click for an expanded view.
The last post had a nice picture of the city that I enjoyed sharing with you. However, on Sunday I ran to the top of one of the highest points of the park and happened to take a much nicer photograph, showing more of the surrounds, and with warmer light. I’m sharing this one with you for sure. If you click on the image you’ll get a more detailed view. This was at about 4:15pm, in case you’re wondering.
Enjoy!
-cvj
It was a particularly crisp and clear afternoon in Los Angeles today. Usually one has to wait for some rain to come through to clear things up this much. But that hasn’t happened properly for sometime. Anyway it was great to be able to see all the way down to Long Beach where the tiny forms of the cranes down at the port were clearly visible, or all the way out over the ocean seeing it sparkle in the low late afternoon sunlight.
It might seem that I’m making a big deal out of something rather mundane but I would respectfully disagree. The fact is, Summertime here, and indeed well into the mid Fall, has increasingly (in the last few years and more) become a relentless pattern of dryness, wildfire smoke, heat, and essentially zero rain, so this sort of cool(er), clear weather is especially welcome when it arrives. It should be marked when it does.
This isn’t to say that there haven’t been other kinds of pleasure to be had from the weather recently. There have been some lovely misty days as well – in fact I think they have been the best markets of the transition from the summer/fall heat dryness to what I hope we will be seeing more of for some months.
-cvj
I found a few minutes to sketch a few days ago. Just a little bit of time. And it was one of those drawing episodes where – after three or four lines -things just fell nicely into place rapidly and I could see the way all the way to the end of the drawing, and it was fine. Like happens in a good chess game, incidentally. And like chess, that kind of moment rests on all those numerous other games/drawings that don’t work, that frustrate, enrage, make you laugh with how bad they are, etc. In other words, practice. I just so very much need to do this more, and so much more. To get back to the daily habit of just making sure that I drew something of the world, as practice, as meditation, as portal into the world, as portal for the world to enter me, as fun, and as preparation for a project.
So also yes, I am planning a new project, and pulling it off will require me to re-learn my drawing skills.
So let’s see how this goes. Maybe I’ll start with a goal of 15 minutes a day? Ok, deal.
–cvj
Food arrived at the table soon after, but I rather liked the setting and these decorations, so thought I’d share.
–cvj
Taking a little time to step aside and into the kitchen for Thanksgiving cooking! Here are some colourful steps in the prep of a pumpkin pie, including some pre-baking of the pie shell (covered in foil, weighted with beans).
-cvj
It is #BlackInPhysics week, and be sure to check out the various special activities at https://blackinphysics.org. It is a joy to see the faces and stories popping up on twitter under #BlackInPhysicsRollCall as physicists around the world introduce themselves. Join in! Share! Use it when people in your department tell you that they can’t find any black candidates for their job search. And check out various articles throughout the week appearing in Physics Today and Physics World, including an interview with some of the organisers here: Thank you organisers!!
Yesterday’s kitchen science experiment was this morning’s breakfast! In explaining to my young son about microorganisms that we live with (in our bodies, and as tools of transformation we deploy in various applications like cuisine) I suddenly remembered trying to make yogurt when I was myself very young (although not as young). So I had the idea – why not just make some!? Show as well as tell! What could be easier?
So the photomontage shows the steps, and the result:
First, sterilising (using boiling water) all the things we were going to use: the main container to go into the incubator (see below) for incubation, the measuring spoon, tongs, lid, measuring cup, and the pouring lip of the pan the milk will be heated in.
Second, warming a few cups of whole milk to 180 degrees (F). This will help remove various of the organisms that we *don’t* want to thrive in the incubation stage.
Third, cooling it down to about 110-115 degrees (F) with the aid of an ice bath. (Had to do this twice as I over-cooled the first time.)
Fourth, taking a few tablespoonfuls of live yogurt from a routine store-bought tub of plain. Mixing it with some of the milk, then adding it to the whole lot of milk and stirring it into the glass container.
Fifth. We needed to make an incubator where it could be left for at least 5 hours. The bacteria need a nice, still, warm environment to multiply and grow as they ferment the milk, turning it into yogurt. I decided upon a large lidded tupper-ware that was a bit larger than the glass container. I put the (open) glass milk+yogurt containing container inside. I filled the remaining outer space with hot water, covered the big tupper-ware with its lid, and then wrapped it all in some towels for insulation, and then put the whole thing into a microwave as a nice cosy enclosure, and shut the door. (Note: the microwave was not turned on!!)
Then we left the whole thing for 5 hours (actually maybe 5.5, but 5 is apparently the minimum), checked it (looked great!), left it for another 2 (it got a bit thicker), and then tasted it (thick and nice and tart-tasting!) and put it into the fridge.
Next morning: breakfast!
Best and tastiest science experiment for some time!
-cvj
My colleague Jack Feinberg is a USC treasure! He’s been building and shipping home physics lab kits to our students. There’s an article about it here.
USC Professor Jack Feinberg uses a physics kit to build circuits for an online class in electricity and magnetism. (Photo/Courtesy of Jack Feinberg)
–cvj
Because of a certain movie from earlier this Summer (which I have not yet got around to mentioning here on the blog), I’ve been doing a lot of interviews recently, so sorry in advance for my face showing up in all your media.
And I know many will sneer because many of them are to do with movies and little bit of science (sure, extra sneering when superheroes or time travel mentioned).
But sometimes this stuff enables valuable conversations to be had about other things too. (The less cynical will realize that this is, of course, the point).
This interview for Inverse was for a piece about careers (part of their “Rookie Year” series) and some have found it somewhat useful, so do please share with others who might find value in it.
Thanks.
-cvj
