I love revising.

If anyone has read any of my previous posts, you will notice that my general opinion towards revision is negative. Previously, it just felt so tedious and pointless. However, a few good marks later and I am feeling the most positive I have in a long while. It's either because of it going so well, or that my daily reading session is really helping to reduce stress levels. I did a bit of internet research and it suggested two main ways to help control stress levels - exercise and reading. I decided to start with the second option, as I am yet to come across a form of exercise that I don't hate. 

After that brilliantly short post, I must return to the books. I do intend to write a blog post later in the month, if I do find something interesting to write about. It is highly unlikely though.

I love my physics folder, even if it does currently looks worryingly empty.

Where does my time go?

I really do want to become a regular blogger, but I find it so hard to fit into my life. It's so busy! In between college, work and my poor attempt at maintaining a social life, I just don't get the time. 

First of all, so I can get it out of the way and never discuss it again - exam results. They were unfortunately rather poor and I definitely need better if I want to get AAB and go to Cardiff. I was hoping for better than ABCD, but there is nothing I can do now, other than resit and promise myself they'll go better this time. This way of thinking is the only way I can get through the next few manic months. I would like to emphasise manic, because I only have 2 months and 9 days officially left at college! This terrifies me.

Secondly, I still haven't discussed how great Astrofest was (what is the world coming to?!). I met Sir Patrick Moore, Brian May and many more. I bumped into John Timmons (Peak2Valley instruments) and couldn't resist chatting with Pete Lawrence. The day was almost as good as the Peak Star Party, but not quite. The conference aspects were fascinating. I really enjoyed the talk by Lucie Green about the current projects observing the Sun. Also, I feel like I have to mention Simon Singh passing a high voltage through a pickle, it was a strange event to witness. It was brilliant. 

This was a really special moment for me, I didn't know what to say to Patrick Moore. It's the quietest I have been in a very long time. Also, to the lovely person that took this picture for me (whoever you are), thank you so much. 

Who is that guy in the background? He appears to be posing for this photo also. 

Talking of astronomy and all things related, I have been taking a few pictures lately. They're nothing special and they've been taken with a very normal and boring digital camera. I do enjoy my Moon pictures though, my Physics teachers thought they were quite good too. 

 This is the (badly, hence the sky looks navy blue) edited photo I took in my back garden. I thought the plane (left of the image) looked cool. Orion looked beautiful that night.  

 Using the afocal imaging technique, I took this with my Samsung ES65 through my 130mm Skywatcher Newtonian reflector. Not bad for my first attempt at the technique. 

 This is just a zoomed and cropped version of the above image. I want to name the craters, but I am having serious issues trying to locate them on my rubbish Moon map. I like the detail highlighted by this phase of the Moon and I will take a few more as the phase changes. 

This is sadly my view of Venus. It doesn't photograph well with my camera or look very nice in my telescope. 

It took me a few shots to image Jupiter. I was quite impressed (even if the image isn't visually pleasing) with my efforts. I think it's the fact that I, with very little knowledge of cameras, can take a picture of something so far away.  

I love this image. It's not even particularly good, I just like how interesting the Moon looks. Just above my neighbour's house (the house on the left) you can see Mars! My poor camera even managed to pick out a few stars in the constellation on Leo. 

 During my ISS stalking phase (that will resume again in April), I took this of the darkest location within 1 mile of my house. It was a poor night for viewing the ISS because of all the clouds. It caused the Moon to look green in my image also. 

For now, that will be enough of my astro imaging attempts. However I'm not done with pictures for this blog post. 

I feel like I should discuss something which has recently taken over all of my life - my Electronics project. I currently spend about half of my total time in college in C3.1 and it is getting on my nerves. My project is some weird audio game thing that has taken me a very long time to build, which is surprising considering how small it is. It is finally finished!

 The finished masterpiece. I think I spent too long trying to make the wires look neat. 

This is an oscilloscope captured image of my input signal (yellow) being distorted (blue). I may have jumped around for several minutes after seeing this. 

Okay. Now I am done with images and sadly this blog post. I think I might try and spend another hour on my Electronics report before sleeping as it is due in on the 27th. I hate deadlines. I do realise that I normally finish my post with an image, but I think I have already included too many.

I'll try not to leave it so long between blog posts next time.

It's been a while...

I know I said in my last post that I'd be back on the 26th, but I have been seriously busy. So now I'm going to make up for it with an extra long post; well as long as I can make it in 15 minutes, I don't want to miss Eastenders.

First topic of this post - exams. If I had to rate how well they went on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being absolutely dreadful, I would rate them like this:

• Core 3 - 5 (I forgot a Core 1 formula, who does that?!?
• Mechanics 1 - 3 (I may have started crying near the end because it was impossible)
• Physics 4 - 6 (I think I spent too long on Section A and had to rush Section B :( )
• Electronics 4 - 8 (I don't think I have got an A* like I wanted, but I've hopefully got my A)

To be honest, I don't think I have gotten the grades I need for university, which is a minor setback, BUT I still have my exams in May and June. It's not over yet. After that, I finally decided to go and experience a real night out. I went out, didn't worry about spending too much money and got in at 2.30am. It was so much fun. On the other hand, Electronics the next day was painful. 

Oh I have 5 minutes before Eastenders, so I'm going to quickly end this post here and write a longer one after. I haven't even mentioned Astrofest yet (until now).

Best episode ever.

February, please hurry up?

Revision makes me want to hide away in my wardrobe until February. It is that bad!

Okay, I am exaggerating a little; but there are some days when it doesn't seem to be worth the hassle. It's so stressful and I just seem to be getting nowhere. However, there are some days when everything makes sense and I even get stuff right. Those are my favourite days and usually occur after several cups of black coffee.

If tons of revision wasn't bad enough, I now have the worst cold. I don't appreciate this. So now, instead of crawling back into bed and putting on Doctor Who, I have to do a Mechanics paper. To say I'm not impressed would be an understatement.

My only happy news for this blog post is that my Saturday Astrofest conference tickets are booked (sessions 3&4)! For anyone that hasn't heard of Astrofest, it's a two day exhibition that hosts a variety of stands, ranging from the Society for Popular Astronomy to Peak2Valley Instruments. There are also lots of interesting people speaking. I'm probably looking forward to hearing Hanny van Arkel speak the most, but only because she is probably one of the luckiest people to ever go on Galaxy Zoo. I am actually really excited! Even if I do have to go on my own. It's a present from me to myself for completing my exams. Go me!

Seeing as I've now ran out of coffee, this seems like a reasonable place to stop typing and start revising. Goodbye until January the 26th.

This episode of the Big Bang Theory is one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen.
ps, if anyone noticed my HUGE error, it was more a typo then lack of knowledge.

Christmas is over, let the exams begin!

As the new year approaches, it's about now that I just start to panic about exams. They're just so stressful and I never know where to focus my revision. This block of exams are so awkwardly placed too!
My exams:

• 20th of January - Core 3 Maths
• 23rd of January - Maths Mechanics
• 24th of January - Physics 4
• 25th of January - Electronics 4

From the above, I believe it's obvious to see that they're a bit close together. Therefore I am rather confused and what revision I should do when. I do have a revision schedule, which I stick to, but I'm always worried that I am not doing enough. Also, in addition to all my work shifts, I don't really have much free time. I cannot wait for them to be over!

Anyway, enough of my terribly boring exam related blog posts, it's time to crack on with some Physics. At least revising for Physics is fun!

This is a lovely picture of Comey Lovejoy off the ESO website!

It's CHRISTMAS!!

Well nearly. I'm ridiculously excited! It's like I'm 9 years old all over again. I'm now sat watching 2009's Doctor Who Christmas special, you know...the one with Wilf and David Tennant. It's one of my favourite Christmas specials, because it contains all of my favourite characters (well almost).  I think putting on Doctor Who has caused my younger sister to go to bed; so now i'm just sat, on my own, drinking wine and tracking Santa online. It's amazing what you can do on the internet. You can: track Santa, email Santa and probably lots of other stuff that I haven't even heard of yet.

Today was traumatic. Yesterday I went to work, felt really ill and got sent home. This led to me spending the majority of the day sleeping and consequently led to me forgetting to set my alarm for work the next day. So, when my alarm goes off at quarter to 9, I thought it was 7am. Getting ready for work in under 15 minutes was stupidly hard. I was extremely impressed with myself when I managed to arrive at work by 9.05! My boss was less impressed, but I didn't even mind. Trying to serve customers when you've been awake for 15 minutes is tough. Apart from that, my shift was lovely. I genuinely love working Christmas Eve, easily the best shift of the year!

Excuse the poor picture quality, but this is the coolest Secret Santa present ever. It's me and Matt Smith!

In conclusion to this short blog post, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

UCAS, star parties and a flight to remember!

Yes. It's officially been two months since my last post. I'm a bit embarrassed, but if I said it had been the busiest two months of my life so far, then I wouldn't be lying.

Main updates include:

• UCAS offers
• S197 module results
• An aurora flight
• Work experience
• Star Party

So, I should probably start with the most interesting. UCAS offers. For any of you that actually read this, my last blog post stated (I think) that I had sent off my UCAS. 2 months on and I have received all 5 offers. I'm sorry, but if someone had told me on the last results day that getting a C in maths was not the end of my university aspirations, I wouldn't have believed them. Now I'm holding 5 offers, 4 of those offers are at 1994/Russell Group universities, and I don't know where to go. Who knew I'd be so spoilt for choice? Leeds, Cardiff and Sussex all want AAB (with an AB in maths and physics). Aberystwyth and Kent have made me a lower offer, one that I can't remember right now - oops! I think my top two choices are Cardiff and Leeds. I've got until the 9th of May to make a decision, so I'm trying to push it to the back of my mind until after the January exams.

Now for some really happy news. Mid December was an approximation of when I should have received my S197 module results by. I am very pleased to announce that I PASSED! This morning I received a letter stating how well I had done on Section A, which was 20 multiple choice questions. I only got 4 wrong, so I am quite happy with that. On Section B, which involved longer written answers, I scored:  3 'Well Achieved', 4 'Achieved' and 1 'Just Achieved'. This is on a scale of 5 levels, with 'Well Achieved 'being the best and 'Not Achieved' being the worst. There is another level between 'Just Achieved' and 'Not Achieved' but I can't remember. A normal pass is 'Just Achieved'. The Open University has such a complex grading system.

Next on the list of news was my aurora flight. To give a rough idea of the sights I got to see on this flight, see some of the pictures taken by the famous Astrophotographer and Sky at Night Presenter Pete Lawrence here. It was genuinely once of the best experiences of my life. For anyone wanting to go see the Northern Lights, a flight is a fantastic way. Even if the aurora puts on a poor show, the clarity of the night sky and millions of stars on view is enough to amaze anyone. I would not get away with posting about the aurora flight without mentioning Nigel Bradbury. The combination of his passion and knowledge of the sky made sure that the in-flight commentary was brilliant. I would give anything to be back on that flight.

I should quickly mention that it would have made more sense to mention the star party before the aurora flight, but I'm not a fan of putting things in chronological order. To quickly summarise what a star party is (you wouldn't believe the amount of times I have been asked 'what is a star party?'), it's where lots of astronomers gather in some form of fields/farm/outdoor area. They camp, bring astronomical gear and geek out all weekend. For my first star party, I wanted to attend a smaller one - just to get me used to it. I decided to attend the Peak Star Party held at Shallow Grange Farm. It exceeded all of my expectations.

It all kicked off Friday night. My friends (Matt, Hannah and Bryn) and I arrived about an hour before it got dark. Consequently, this led to the 10 man tent being partially set up in the dark. By the time we had eventually set everything up, we were greeted by beautiful night sky in all its glory. I'M JOKING. After staying up until 12am, I decided to let the clouds win and my poor tired self rest. The skies cleared early on Saturday morning and I was most definitely asleep.

Saturday lunch indicated the start of the lectures. This was of course after I decided to bang my head on a very expensive telescope and caused it to bleed (my head, not the telescope). If my memory serves me correct; we had a Dark Skies presentation by John Tanner, a Astronomy in the Peaks style lecture by Dr Daniel Brown of Nottingham University and the day was finished off by a spectacular lecture by Prof. Ian Morrison. After cooking a poor meal, I decided to get out and be social with the many pleasant people who decided to attend the Star Party. If I started to list all the spectacular sights I was treated to through the kindness of many astronomers letting me look through their equipment, I would be here all day. My favourite sights were finally being able to see the Sun and all its wonderful sunspots, M13 a globular cluster and locating M31 for the first time. It's not even hard to locate, I'm just a bit useless.

I spent the majority of Sunday morning putting down Marquees, not that I minded helping of course. It did however cause me to miss the first lecture! It was okay though, because I think I managed to make a lasting impression on several main hosts of the star party. Once I actually managed to attend the Sunday lectures, it was lovely. The first (well, second of the day) presentation was given by Nigel Bradbury on aurora flights. It was really interesting and I really enjoyed it, even if I was late (once again, sorry). The final lecture of the Star Party was on Pulsars, not quasars, and was given by Prof. Andrew Lyne. I dragged along my fellow campers and found it inspiring.

Not that they will read it, but I really would like to thank James Pels and many other people who organised such a fantastic event for making my first star party so special. The Peak Star Party 2012 has been confirmed according to here, so I expect everyone reading to attend if they can!

I did intend to write about my work experience, but there simply isn't enough time. I've got to go get ready for the busiest weekend in retail of the year (apparently). GOGOGO!

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy. Image Credits to NASA.