What's going on?
What are the astronomy blogs talking about right now? Unsurprisingly, the 100 Hours of Astronomy is quite far up the list as is the International Year of Astronomy.

The buzz during the 100 Hours of Astronomy CREDIT: Stuart
Another side-effect of the funding crisis is the reduction in postdoc jobs (the jobs after finishing a PhD). Last year at the National Astronomy Meeting we heard that postdoc places would be reduced by 10-25% over the three year period of funding (the CSR) even though STFC can claim to be spending more on research because they were now paying for the full economic cost of academics. In reality, less research will be done and more young researchers will leave the UK.
It is funny how certain economic institutions in the UK are receiving billions of pounds for making huge mistakes when physics is being forced to cut jobs and world class experiments to save the comparitavely small amounts of a few million pounds. It isn't even as if astronomers can now get jobs as stockbrokers as Keith Mason suggested last year during a House of Commons Committee Meeting.
All this leaves me wondering just what the plan is for UK astronomy. Which bits will be allowed to remain? What do STFC think everyone should be studying or building? Should I be digging out the Save UK Astronomy banner again?
Posted in astro blog by Stuart on Friday 03rd Apr 2009 (23:57 BST) | Permalink