Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean. Shorter, more focused posts specialising in astronomy and data visualisation.

Wednesday, 27 September 2017

ALMA All-Hands 2017

Last year's ALMA all-hands meeting was in Lisbon and the conference freebie was a USB fan. This year it's in the Netherlands and we get an umbrella, a coaster and some waffles. Plus I won a free drink by getting all the quiz answers deliberately wrong :

Expand the following acronyms :
AQUA : ALMA QUality Alcohol (actually ALMA QUality Assurance)
APA : Annoyingly Precise Acronym (actually AQUA Pipeline Agent)
DRM : Dangerous Robotic Monkey (actually Data Reduction Manager)
OSF : Observatory Supports Farmyards (I would have gone for "fornication" but wasn't sure how the crowd would react; actually Observing Support Facility)
DARED : Deadly ALMA Really Extreme Database (actually... nope, I've already forgotten)
DPTT : Don't Produce This Tool (see above).


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Friday, 8 September 2017

Dramatic instructions

I'm reviewing a paper for the first time. One of the instructions is a tad dramatic for my liking :

7. If qualified historians wish to use your report, we will ask you or your heirs. If you wish us to destroy your report, then please inform us.
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Giants in the deep

Here's a fun little paper  about hunting the gassiest galaxies in the Universe. I have to admit that FAST is delivering some very impres...

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