Did you know that Brian May, guitarist of Queen, used to be, in a way, a colleague of mine? Or rather, that he still is one?

May was working on a PhD in astronomy at the Imperial College London in the 1970s, but quit when Queen rose to fame. He was studying zodiacal light, the faint glow that is visible above the horizon under favourable circumstances after twilight or before dawn. It is produced by sunlight reflecting off dust particles within the solar system. (May can undoubtedly tell you much more about it than I can.) As part of his thesis work, May performed observations on Tenerife, resulting in his co-authoring two scientific papers (one, two). Even more interesting, the first of these two was published in the very prestigious Nature journal.

As of last year, May is once again working on his thesis, hoping to finally earn his astronomy doctorate after a thirty-year break. It’d be cool if he succeeds!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 09:01 and is filed under Music, Science: Astronomy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.