Hired Geremy Lague!

Lucky me, I have found some internal funding to employ Geremy Lague as a Research Assistant for this and next semester (and if I get the sshrc, more!). Geremy did his undergraduate work at the UofR in the Film Department, and is currently doing an Interdisciplinary Fine Arts degree working in film and print media. In short, his project involves the building of pre-cinematic devices as he inquires in to the social practices around visual communication.

We have been playing with the Arduino together (today, he helped to confirm that I did not zap my Uno when making the zooetrope), and I am happy that Rob will run us through some motors workshops in the next week or so, to bring us up to speed. At the moment, Geremy and I are looking in to various ways to visualize the ecliptic and zodiacal constellations, using mercator projection. Neither Sky Safari nor Starry Night provide mercator projections, but Stellarium does, so at the moment Geremy is screen grabbing Saturn centred within the mercator at midnight on the date of opposition for 2011-2040. It is so nice to have a graduate student to work with!!

That’s my update.

http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/

Eric B. posted this one:

http://www.company7.com/questar/graphics/3.5_50th_chart700497.jpg