I’m back

…after a fashion anyway. I still have plenty of writing to do, so I haven’t the faintest idea how much I’ll be adding over the next week or so. Star-Names-wise I plan to skip on to Delphinus before rolling back to Apus and moving on again. It’s also feasible that William Hutton’s diary of his trip across Hadrian’s Wall will appear instead of me on an irregular basis. He might not as I’m looking around as I type and note I’ve mislaid the book again.

There are things of my own I’d like to write up but it’s still a matter of finding time. For instance I think that Steven Mithen’s new book on Neanderthals is brilliant. There’s an awful lot in it that I disagree with, but nevertheless it is an excellent book. Cornelius Holtorf’s new book, which I’ve finally managed to get after epic efforts, also looks like it’ll be seriously thought-provoking. I’ve just realised that’s a rather ambiguous description, so I’ll add ‘in a good way’.

I’ve also been reading a lot about memes, but that’s going to take a lot of sorting out before my thoughts are even vaguely coherent. As an example of where I am now, I’m really not sure that memes exist, but I don’t think that matters either. I’m pretty certain there was never a ‘Bronze Age’ in Europe, but that doesn’t stop it from being a useful analytical tool, and perhaps memes are an approach rather than specific objects too.

Art-wise I’ve realised I’ve done next to nothing this academic year, apart from the AIA poster. I would like to produce constellation pictures with the Hubble data to illustrate Star Names, but Hubble looks at very small portions of the sky and constellations are very large. There’s also the problem of converting the data into pretty pictures. Below are the raw images for M42 and my first attempt. I’ll write something up on how to do it yourself, hopefully soon.

M42 Infra-red view on the left, Red view on the right.

M42 Re-processed via Photoshop and Fireworks.