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Like everybody else out here in the real world, I take a certain pleasure in Cambridge being made to look stupid. But I do worry that their incompetence will have far more impact on higher education in the UK outside their financial and intellectual bastion than on them.

Today's #BirdOfTheDay is #BestOfJuly so here’s a slightly bemused-looking long-tailed tit from July 2023. 🪶

I almost forgot, while I was waiting for it to get fully dark last night, I had a look at the globular cluster Messier 92. (If you want to see me looking implausibly young, I was in a video about it in 2012: youtu.be/hjaGzXz6dWw) 🧪🔭

Garden camera update: nothing saved except this pigeon vignette (pigeonette?):

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Clouds & lots of Moon last night, but an hour clearish to take a look at part of IC 1318, to admire the dark shapes that young stars’ winds & UV radiation carve in dark clouds, seen against the red glow of the emission that they excite in the leftover gas from which they formed. 🔭🧪

Today’s #BirdOfTheDay theme is #OverTheRainbow, so here’s a gannet looking up 🪶

Garden camera update: nice to be back on the late-night commute.

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Today's #BirdOfTheDay theme is #EgretsAndHerons, so here is one of each 🪶

A free choice today for #BirdOfTheDay, so here’s one of my all-time favourites from my travel adventures, an affectionate pair of blue-footed boobies on North Seymour Island. 🪶

Me waxing lyrical on this year’s Kavli Prize in Astronomy, and the science of the Milky Way star streams behind it, for Sixty Symbols. 🔭🧪 youtu.be/dRlYJXtJSac

Streams of Stars - Sixty SymbolsYouTube video by Sixty Symbolsyoutu.be

Light with a wavelength of 500.7nm is a beautiful shade of green. The question is how one makes it. The answer is not alchemy but astrophysics.🧪🔭

Purest Green BlackadderALT: Purest Green Blackadderstatic.klipy.com

I love old astronomy books. Here they are in 1902 struggling with the identification of my favourite emission line, the 500.7nm emission from oxygen. It is a forbidden transition, so not seen in normal lab spectra; here it is speculated to be from an unknown element, “nebulum.” 🧪🔭

Contrast in Nottingham this afternoon: the joyful chaos of the beach at the Market Square and, a hundred yards away, the peaceful sanctuary of Bromley House Library.

Today's #BirdOfTheDay theme is #MultiColour, so here is a grumpy little goldfinch. 🪶

I am all for saving Jodrell Bank, but please don’t lose sight of the fact that it is simply the most visible manifestation of a much bigger problem, which isn’t solved if someone magically finds the money to keep it going, simply to shut people up. 🔭🧪

Today’s alt #BirdOfTheDay theme is #WeatheringTheElements, so here’s a wood pigeon that has just been caught out in a downpour (remember them?) 🪶

So, UKRI have once again committed the error of trying to save a minimal amount of money by closing the only astronomical facility many people have heard of, giving the perfect poster child for anyone campaigning against cuts to astronomy. 🔭🧪 x.com/astromikemer...

Michael Merrifield (@AstroMikeMerri) on XSo, UKRI have once again committed the error of trying to save a minimal amount of money by closing the only astronomical facility many people have heard of, giving the perfect poster child for anyone...x.com

Garden camera update: 🦊.

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Today’s #BirdOfTheDay alt theme is #RedBeaks, so here’s a swamp hen up close. 🪶

Cracking cricket match at Trent Bridge.