Been another hectic week of mixed activities at the RAS. Start off by continuing on with my EU project work , apparently leaving a multinational organistion is quite confusing. Started reaching some conclusions on that front with the UK’s relation with the EU. On the rest of the policy front, I started and finished drafting the targeted MP letters for the RAS, and then was given the task of compiling a list of MPs with relevant interest.
Doing a little research work for the library, I helped catalogue some books to move to the reserve collection. Who knew that there used to be dictionaries of famous people, which contained their families and addresses?
At the end of the week I started a research task trying to find who had gifted an 18th century Arabic celestial globe to the RAS, which involved sifting through old records the society maintains.
I also attended a couple meetings with the acting executive director over a PhD careers event in Manchester and the working comms group of the UKSA which gave me some good insight about the external work it does with government organisations and companies. It covered events such as new scientist live and press work for the Cassini Grand Finale. (RIP Cassini ! )
On Saturday, I helped the RAS with their Open House event, as part of the Open House London Weekend. This involved showing people the library, which was used to display the archives, and answering the public’s questions on astronomy, which got quite technical, with questions like “Where is the centre of the universe”?
(Pretty picture on the right shows some cool things, the big picture showing Cassini’s map of the moon. On the left there is a “log” from the “tree” where the “apple” “fell on “Newton’s” head.)