It’s been rather an eventful time recently — all good! — with a new part-time editor job alongside the PhD, so I apologise for this late update.
October kicked off with a visit to Nantes, site of this year’s EPSC-DPS, described by one who knows as “the Worldcon of planetary astronomy.” While in Nantes, I intended to review The Black Jacobins for VL… then my Kindle battery went flat and I discovered I had forgotten to pack the cable. Thankfully, I did have a copy of another book with me, and you can see the review here. I find more and more that I reach for the Good Kirsty/Bad Kirsty approach in situations like this, where I find myself reviewing something that I would read both for work and pleasure; it lets me incorporate a bit more complexity while keeping the thing accessible.
Inspired by my visit to Nantes, I decided to put together an amateur astronomy feature for VL and tentatively approached Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, with whom I’d had the great pleasure of an interview almost a year ago (in case you missed it, it’s here). Not only did Brother Guy agree to speak to VL again, he responded to my somewhat vague question prompts with wonderful screeds full of detail and interest; as did Ian Walker, the amateur astronomer friend of a friend I’d approached at the same time. What I had initially envisioned as a basic hints ‘n’ tips kind of piece had instantly turned into something altogether more exciting. With the addition of a couple of paragraphs from the resident astronomer, it was all ready to go — just a few short days after the idea even occurred to me. If only everything in life were so fun and easy! You can see Part I of the feature here — Part II is here.
