Why I'm starting this?

Quite simple really. I mentioned to a friend of mine that there's no way that "a day in the life of a NASA astrophysicist" is really all that interesting. He begged to differ. And so was born "Astronomers do it with heavenly bodies". Cause we do*.

So, what about me then? I'm an astrophysicist/astronomer, originally from Britain, but currently living, working (and getting headaches) in the USA. I use Chandra (in Earth orbit, see where it is right now, by clicking here) and the SZA in California to investigate galaxy clusters and the evolution of our universe, and seem to spend most of my day either reading articles, writing articles, battling with code, or beating my head against the desk thanks to statistics. And sometimes, when I'm really lucky, I get to go to cool places under the guise of "conference", "meeting", or "observing trip". In my spare time (what little there is of it!), I cook, dance, and do a bunch of science outreach stuff with the local astronomical society/planetarium.

I guess this blog's going to be a mixture of "Oooh, looky, cool science", "huh, this is interesting", general musings on the nature of doing science today, and things like that. Together, with, of course, obligatory conference/meeting/observing trip photos.

*If you count "doing it" as "analyzing", that is.