Minor Planet 23248 Batchelor

So, long story short, I have a near-earth asteroid named after me. It’s pretty much the second-coolest thing I own (apologies, but first place has to go to my new handbag) and makes for a pretty interesting talking point in job interviews. Anyway, I mentioned before that talked about this to my mentor and his colleague. Well it transpires that Alan (the colleague) was so intrigued as to whether or not I would ever be able to see my asteroid, that he went away and looked it up. And then he delved a little deeper and worked out when and where it will be visible from Earth. And then he realised that this corresponded perfectly with a telescope time slot and location that he will be using at the end of the month. So, THEY ARE GOING TO TAKE IMAGES OF MY ASTEROID FOR ME!!! HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?!

I still haven’t quite got over how amazing this is! I just thought that I would never actually ever get to see my asteroid (it’s much too dim to see with the naked eye, binoculars or even most small telescopes at night) and now, the people from Fermilab and a professor from some university are going to use up their valuable observing time to takes photos of it for me! If the images are good enough, we should be able to perform photometric analysis on them to determine exactly what my minor planet is composed of. Wow. I am keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that it’s a clear sky at the observatory that night!

Jobs

Had my interview with Selex on Friday afternoon. I'm finding it really hard to tell how it went - it seemed much more like a chat than an interview and I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing! Before my interview, I got to catch up with one of the guys who had given me a tour of the site in January which was nice. He wanted to ask me some questions about the Nuffield Bursary project that I did as they're thinking of providing one for next year. It's always good to hear how the scheme is growing as it did so much for me.

Then I had the interview. It was meant to be a competency-based interview where they could find out whether I can work in a team, whether I'm a good communicator, what my skills are, that kind of thing, but it kind of just turned into a normal conversation. I'm hoping that it's because I was the last person to be interviewed and that they'd just stopped sticking to the script by the time they got to me. Hmmm...

There are 11 people going for 4 places and I should find out by the end of this week so fingers crossed! It's a 12 week placement and the pay is fantastic so I really do hope that it all works out. I've still to hear about Tokyo too though. The suspense is killing me!

The Story So Far

Okay, I'm meant to be working so am looking for distractions. I therefore thought it would be a good idea to give a (very brief!) summary of my life so far. I really should have started a blog 2 years ago...

Born in Edinburgh.
Went to school in Edinburgh (I'm a Mary Erskine girl, whether I like it or not).
Wanted to be a fashion designer.
Then wanted to study project design.
Changed my mind again and went with physics.
Did a physics project over the summer holidays at University of Edinburgh (in between fifth and sixth year).
Got paid by Nuffield Foundation to investigate cosmic rays for six weeks.
Exhibited my project at the National CREST Fair (now the Big Bang Fair).
Represented the UK with my project at the Intel ISEF in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Ended up with minor planet named after me and an internship with Agilent Technologies.
Went to Budapest for the day with Intel to discuss "women in science".
Went to last year's CREST Fair to say hi.
Spoke at "Science, Innovation and Enterprise" conference in Glasgow, discussing the future of science education in Scotland.
Part of panel with Lord Drayson and PM at "Building the Britain of the Future" expo in Westminster - again talking about science education and start of "Science: [So What?]" campaign.
Now studying physics at University of St Andrews because Oxford said no (which, in retrospect, I'm very glad about).

Phew.