The Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science will be kicking off its public stargazing event series tonight. Like the recently launched MAAS public science lectures series, the stargazing series will also be regular events and will be held at least once a month.

Tonight's stargazing event will mainly focus on Jupiter and its Moons as the planet will start setting early in the evening in a few weeks and will not be easily visible in the waking hours of the night for the next several months. Jupiter is a beautiful planet to look at with the telescopes we have at hand; the equatorial bands are visible brightly and, depending on the time, around 3-5 of its 64 moons can also be visible.

Venue: Masveringe Park, Male' (infront of Jade Bistro, next to the Hulhule ferry departures) (map)
Time: 8pm - 10pm, 27 January 2012
Attendance: Free, open to all

If you haven't seen Jupiter up close and personal through a telescope, then do come and join us. See you there!

The events and activities at Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science took a break towards the end of 2011 with the start of school holidays and us taking a break. We are switching back on for the new year this coming week with a brand new monthly "Public science lectures" series.

This coming Wednesday, MAAS will be hosting a lecture by Dr. Ibrahim Mustafa, titled "Thalassemia Beyond Mutations: A Novel Approach to Treat Thalassemia". The lecture will cover the research on the novel treatment he investigated while reading for his PhD, which you may have read a bit about from local news recently. The lecture will also, as I understand it, cover the how's and why's of Thalassemia which the public might be interested in furthering their understanding. This event might be of special interest to those who deal with Thalassemia in one capacity or the other.

When: 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM, 18 January 2012
Where: Main auditorium, Faculty of Management and Computing, Sosun Magu.

As ever, the event is open to all and free to attend. We will accommodate as many people as the lecture auditorium can hold.

Special thanks goes to Cafe' Alfresco for their kind generosity in helping make this event possible.

Happy new year to all!

For me, 2011 was a very mellow year. It was a good year. Very relaxed, by my standards. Got lots of thinking done. Planned things out. Developed new ideas and concepts. But the success rate on things I had hoped to achieve was a case of hit and miss:
- Started and got really good work done on a new Internet start-up - one of two reasons I had come back to Maldives - but is still not ready for launch thanks to its scale and complexity.
- Science education and popularization - the other reason I came back - didn't go so well. The two science books in Dhivehi I had planned to write and publish, I couldn't finish. An exciting science TV series I had formulated, with a bunch of others, didn't get off the ground. The science organization I formed with two others, Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science, fared better. We had a number of events, each with an audience and participation higher than the previous. But all it had was our love and passion for science and less in the way of proper planning and and close to none in the way of external funding.
- The tinier, highly portable version of the magnetic implant interface for my man-machine interface, which I mentioned on my previous post, was completed early in the year. But the research on the effects of extended use which I had designed it for, didn't get a start and is still sitting on my desk.
- Technova, the web and software development company I had co-founded about 6 years ago had become non-functional over the years especially with me and some others involved being away from the country. So when Semicolon, a promising Maldivian software house offered me partnership towards the end of the year, I took the opportunity. Things are looking up.

I'm usually not one to make new year resolutions or such but this year, I'm making an exception. I have set goals. I have set milestones. And I bloody damn hope I achieve them without getting distracted or lazy or bored.

I hope that by the time the Earth completes its current lap around the Sun, that I and you achieve what you all desire Have a good year!

I always seem to remember a few days after... but the 22nd of this December marked the three year anniversary since I had tiny neodymium magnets implanted into the middle and ring fingers of my left hand in my attempt to explore and develop a new type of human-machine interface for my masters degree work.

Unlike the previous years which were uneventful, this year, a few months ago, I developed some discomfort and slight pain in my ring finger when I accidently applied too much sharp pressure on the area and upset the implant. It was the first time in three years that I had any sort of trouble from the implant. Luckily the internal wounds healed in a few days and the pain subsided. Below is an X-ray image of the implant I got done a few months ago and it looks like it is still safely tucked in where it was originally placed!

At the beginning of this year, I had set out to develop a smaller, less intrusive version of the external interface I had developed earlier with the goal of exploring the effects of wearing the interface for an extended period of time - 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 3 months. I did get around to hacking up a tiny interface package that I can wear as a ring on my finger. Sadly, for too many excuses and what not, I didn't get around to actually getting on with that bit of research.

So, here's to me actually getting on with wearing the new interface for three months beginning 2012. Fingers crossed!

There has been an interesting meet-up for techies every Saturday for the past several weeks. The meet-ups were a brilliant initiative of the great guys at Limopalm with support from Leaf Technology (thanks guys!). The meet-ups usually loosely center around a topic chosen beforehand and are organised and publicized on Facebook. The last meet-up, on 10th December was on the topic "Discussing Web Development Issues" while previous meet-ups have discussed things ranging from software development methodologies to noSQL databases.

Anyway, at the very first meetup, I took the opportunity of having a bunch of developers in one room to propose something I've had in mind for quite a while - a Hackathon event in the Maldives. Everyone seems to be interested in seeing what they can come up with in such an event. The current ideas are to hold the event sometime in February 2012, away from Male' in a mostly isolated place, where the participating individuals or teams will be given 24-48 hours to work on their project. Winners will be chosen from among different categories - commercial-related, community-related, public vote etc. Nothing is set in stone yet and discussions are ongoing at the meet-ups and on the Hackathon group on Facebook.

Today is a Saturday and there will be a meet-up at 5pm at Leaf Technology (M. Chaandhaneege, 4th floor). Today's meetup will be specifically on discussing and planning the hackathon event. If you are in the computer/software industry and are interested, drop-in!

There will be a total Lunar eclipse that will be visible in the Maldives taking place tomorrow, 10 December 2011. The eclipse starts at 4:34 PM, reaches mid eclipse at 7:32 PM and ends at 10:30 PM. The total phase begins at 7:06 PM and ends at 7:57 PM, which allows us to catch the eclipse not long after the sunsets at 5:54 PM.

This eclipse is reported to be not central - meaning the Moon does not pass through the center of the Earth's shadow. Hence, there will be a nice gradient visible on the Moon, with one side appearing darker and the opposite side lighter even during the total phase.

Maldives will not be seeing another Lunar eclipse until 28 November 2012, when a penumbral eclipse occurs starting at 5:15 PM. The next earliest total Lunar eclipse visible in the Maldives occurs 8 October 2014.

The astronomy community has been abuzz lately with the discovery of a supernova, dubbed SN2011fe, in the Pinwheel spiral galaxy. This is the 136th supernova discovered this year but what makes this particular supernova special is that this one is the closest of its kind discovered since 1986 and astronomers believe it was discovered just hours after it went supernova. It also presents an exciting opportunity for the public as it is visible with the aid of binoculars or a small telescope!

The supernova was discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory survey for supernovas on 24th August. The supernova was located to the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) in the easily identifiable constellation Ursa Major (a.k.a. Great Bear), and has been brightening since discovery. It is expected to reach peak brightness on 9th September.

The fact that the supernova was located to the Pinwheel Galaxy which is about 21 million light years away, means that this event actually took place 21 million years ago! It is only now that light from the event has completed its long journey and is reaching us here on Earth.

Observing

If you have a good set of binoculars or a telescope, you can attempt to view the supernova yourself. For Maldives, the Pinwheel Galaxy is currently located very low on the horizon at sunset and sinks below the horizon around 9pm.

If you have a computerised telescope, get it to locate the Messier object M101 for you. Or you can use your choice of stargazing application on a smartphone or tablet device to locate the Pinwheel galaxy.

If you don't have either of those, locate the "handle" of the Big Dipper asterism in Ursa Major and extend an imaginary line from the last two stars to form an equilateral triangle - you should find yourself looking at the Pinwheel Galaxy and the supernova SN2011fe as a bright point.

What is a Supernova?

A supernova is the violent explosion of star, which results in a burst of radiation that could outshine the star's host galaxy and could radiate as much energy as our Sun emits in its entire lifespan. The SN2011fe supernova is classed as a Type 1a supernova, which is thought to occur when a white dwarf star starts to siphon off material from a nearby star and accretes enough material, increasing temperature and density, that nuclear fusion is triggered. Supernovae happen all the time and astronomers have observed many a supernovae over the years but there is still much to be understood about them.