@skyglowberlin@vis.social
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

skyglowberlin

@skyglowberlin@vis.social

Light at night researcher at #GFZ Potsdam and Ruhr Uni Bochum. #CitizenScience #LightPollution

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JohnBarentine, to space
@JohnBarentine@astrodon.social avatar

New NASA cost-benefit of tracking/mitigating orbital debris finds that propulsive deorbiting and improved tracking of large debris have the best C-B ratio, while tracking of cm-size debris and removing mm-sized debris is less beneficial.

https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/otps/nasa-study-provides-new-look-at-orbital-debris-potential-solutions/

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@JohnBarentine "The study simulates how the orbital debris environment will evolve over 30 years."

That's a good start, but if I was evaluating it I'd want to know whether that end date has a large or small impact on the results. We're still going to want to have satellites in 40, 50, 100 years...

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@JohnBarentine The idea that we can guess now how many satellites will be launching per year in 2054 is kind of silly, but you could use the current spray of Starlinks as a baseline.

My concern is that the numbers at the end may be very different from the start.

An alternative would be to assess what is cost effective in a steady state configuration, where you're required to end the 30 year cycle with the same amount of junk you started with. (1/2)

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@JohnBarentine That might be "not possible with current technology". But if that's the case, then what we're currently doing is not sustainable...

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@JohnBarentine Well sure, I think that's likely the case. But it doesn't make much sense to look at what's most cost effective over a 30 year time scale and pretend that we're not going to use space after that.

I hope that they also include "not launching unnecessary satellites" on the list of things they test...

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@JohnBarentine I didn't think it was an "all at once" kind of thing. We've had collisions and unintentional explosions and 🤦🏽‍♂️ intentional explosions already. Each event moves us rightward up the curve. Surely a long-term policy has to assume a baseline number of such events?

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@JohnBarentine I hadn't heard or read that we were "one major event away" from an uncontrolled debris-generating cascade. I thought it was supposed to be a slower process than that?

vicgrinberg, to random
@vicgrinberg@mastodon.social avatar

The new hummus place in the city is as good as everyone said it was. Also suuuper friendly - since I was there with a colleague with a rather unhappy kid...

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@vicgrinberg What's it called? Next time I'm visiting Leiden I'd love to come check it out!

billyjoebowers, (edited ) to random
@billyjoebowers@mastodon.online avatar

In the early 2000s I had a few conversations with friends, saying there seemed to be more rich people, stupid rich people, who bought stupid things, and that we should start producing stupid expensive crap targeted at rich people.

Never followed through, because it sounds kind of soul sucking, but probably should have given it a shot.

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@billyjoebowers @uastronomer Check this out: https://www.cc.com/video/hp9jyy/the-colbert-report-colbert-platinum-title-000-dishes

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@billyjoebowers @uastronomer "sorry not viewable from your location 😢 "

It was an old "Colbert Report" where he went to NYC and ate three $1000 meals.

Another reason that extreme wealth inequality is stupid: there is no upper limit on what a haircut can cost.

vicgrinberg, (edited ) to random
@vicgrinberg@mastodon.social avatar

How far did astronomers travel world-wide for conferences in 2019 in total? More than 300 times to the Moon & back! Or, to put it in astronomical units: more than 1.5 AU, so to the Sun and halfway back!

▶️ https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae143

A 🧵 summarizing our paper "Astronomy’s climate emissions: Global travel to scientific meetings in 2019" - published today, lead by Andrea Gokus (who also wrote the draft for this thread) and @knud, with many people, among them @leo & me, contributing:

1/6

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@vicgrinberg Fun fact: the study's lead author Andrea Gokus was a citizen scientist in our Nachtlichter project, and co-led the campaign in Erlangen.

Our successful collaboration was conducted entirely online - I've never actually met Andrea in person.

skyglowberlin, to random
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

This week, I was at the Lighting Urban Community International annual meeting, in Montpellier, France. It was a fantastic experience to sit in a room full of people who work professionally on lighting, and hear speaker after speaker talk about everything their communities are doing to combat .

A lighting industry guy sitting next to me remarked after the first day "This meeting made me realize we're going to have to prepare new marketing materials".

A thread with highlights (1/)

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

In France, over 10,000 communities turn off their streetlights late at night (typically from 11-6 or 12-5), and Montpellier and surrounding towns are no exception.

In response to a question about the possible dangers of crime, a (male) representative of the city said (I'm summarizing) that in order to fix the problem of violence in the city, we should address the actual cause (asshole men), rather than put up lights.


(2/)

skyglowberlin, to random
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

Apparently some (ESL?) teachers are still instructing their students to start letters in English with "Dear Sirs".

This is a terrible idea, and you should never use it.

If you use it when you are applying for a job, you are signalling to the hiring committee that you don't expect women to be in management positions.

Here's a great Quora response to the question of if it's fine to use in an email (let alone a letter): https://www.quora.com/Is-it-correct-to-write-Dear-Sirs-when-you-are-sending-email-to-many-while-writing-a-professional-email

skyglowberlin, to Energy
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

In response to the energy crisis, Copenhagen dimmed the lighting in the city. A mobile ethnographic study among 22 female citizens asked them about their experience of the change. A total of zero had noticed that the lighting had changed. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/1320/1/012015/pdf

No one knows how bright anything is. There is tremendous flexibility to reduce and waste, simply by dimming streetlights. If you're concerned about a , dimming is one of the easiest steps to take.

skyglowberlin, to random
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

This is a really nice and important new paper by Chris Elvidge and collaborators about how common flickering lights are in our night environment: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/15/4/438

Flickering lights are really common, as you can see in this gif I made of photos I took of a soccer field and the surrounding area in Germany.

In case there are any students looking for a thesis out there, this is an area of research that has had very little work done so far. (1/)

Animated gif showing a football field and the surrounding area where many lights are flickering off and on.

skyglowberlin, to random
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

Automatic weather stations cannot detect damage in real time. The National Weather Service in Austria therefore designed a two way communication system to e.g. disseminate warnings about hail and then receive feedback in real time about how much hail fell so far.

This allows a real time feedback loop during warning periods.

Thomas Krennert,

skyglowberlin, to random
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

Ok, this is awesome. For audience questions at , the organizers have a soft cube with a microphone built in on one side, and when someone wants to ask a question they toss the cube into the audience and get the audience to throw it further to the person asking the question.

It works shockingly well. It's fast, it somehow doesn't make noise while thrown, and the quality of the mic is good.

skyglowberlin, to random
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

At , every poster presenter is being given a bottle of wine, and all of the participants are being given empty glasses. What an awesome idea for encouraging participation in the poster sessions!

(The wine was donated from the BOKU university horticulturalists, who vinify it as part of their work.)

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

(They're also giving the poster presenters a bottle of orange juice, for those who prefer non-alcoholic drinks.)

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@kristinHenry I was not at all involved in the organization, but in case I ever use this approach, I appreciate your feedback - sparkling cider is a great idea.

There are lots of reasons why someone might not want to drink wine, and (while I wouldn't make it myself) there is a reasonable argument to be made that conference organizers shouldn't offer alcohol at all.

But I think this approach is much better than just a bar or free drinks during a poster session.

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@kristinHenry Oh lord, that's annoying. I'm personally not a fan of doing poster presentations, because I often end up leaving the poster tube someplace (e.g. on the train).

skyglowberlin, to random
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

Trying to deal with both local and UTC times in astropy was so difficult today, that I eventually just gave up and resurrected and modified an old perl script to do the calculation I wanted.

Time zones combined with the DST change are such a pain in the ass to work with.

BerLinguistin, to academia
@BerLinguistin@mas.to avatar

When reflecting on my PhD work, I miss the focus on ONE project. Post PhD life often feels scattered, with lots of (side) projects, supervision of very different topics, data from here and there, etc. I certainly do not miss the uncertainty & I am grateful to work on new things!

But I do feel that we would benefit from doing less. It's a weird thing—as you advance your career, it feels like the job never really gets easier but only fuller. Thoughts, anyone?

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@BerLinguistin A while ago (ok twitter long ago), I did a poll asking if you felt you were doing "one thing poorly", "lots of things poorly", "one thing well", or "lots of things well".

I'm usually in the "lots of things poorly" camp, personally. My deepest sympathies go to the "one thing poorly" camp, I'm extremely jealous of the "one thing well" group, and I assume there's probably a special place in hell for the small fraction of people who answered "lots of things well".

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@vicgrinberg @BerLinguistin And then there are those things that you are in principle doing, but you're not actually doing, because you don't want to, and when you finally force yourself to do it, sometimes after months, it takes about two hours...

markmccaughrean, (edited ) to random
@markmccaughrean@mastodon.social avatar

An unexpected “tribute” at my leaving do at ESTEC this evening that I’m sure comes with a degree of ribbing that’s entirely deserved 🤷‍♂️🤪

It’s people that design, build, & operate space missions & do the science which opens our eyes to the universe, & I’ve had the privilege to work with many amazing scientists, engineers, managers, administrators, & communicators over the past 15 years.

I shall miss my friends & colleagues here deeply, but very much hope we stay in close touch 🙇‍♂️

skyglowberlin,
@skyglowberlin@vis.social avatar

@markmccaughrean If I could magically retire tomorrow, I wouldn't stop doing scientist work. I would just drop all of the annoying parts and focus on the fun parts. So that's my wish for you 😀

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