If you nip along to the Royal Albert Hall (a tad tricky for my US readers I realise) you will find my mug adorning the walls, along with 43 other UK astronomers. We are all part of an exhibition called “Explorers of the Universe“, constructed by photographer Max Alexander. For a pleasant change, its not all the usual gaudy pictures and patronising astro-guff that we feed the Public, but instead a collection of rather quirky portraits of people who actually do this stuff. To those of us who are in it, it is clearly an enterprise of considerable taste and interest. Those of you who aren’t may of course feel free to point out what pompous twits we all now look.
If you don’t have the time to get to Kensington, you can see all the pictures at Max’s website. (Mine is in this section. Look for the skeleton hand. X-ray. Geddit ?). Some people look better than they do in real life, and some don’t. Steve Warren looks like he has just been shot by a 1967 vintage Dalek. Alan Watson did the lying-in-the-gutter thing and looks very cool, but probably needed to get his coat dry-cleaned. Carlos Frenk looks very mysterious, in a kind of 1970s album cover kind of way. Brian May looks like … Brian May.
Anyhoo. Now they know how many … oh do I have to finish that ?
Posted by andyxl 
The e-Astronomer 