Happy birthday to the Faulkes Telescope Project (and Dill Faulkes!)
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The Faulkes Telescope Project was officially launched at the Science Museum in London on March 16th, 2004, coinciding with founder Dill Faulkes' 60th birthday. Today we celebrate 5 years of operations, and of course Dill's 65th birthday!
We'd like to thank all those users who have been with the project through this time, and the various team members who have come and gone over the years. Things have come a long way since 2004, when the project team consisted of Richard Cole, Paul Roche, Lucie Green and Louise Eccleston. Paul is the only original team member who has still not managed to find a "proper job", with Richard and Lucie both now working at MSSL near Guildford and Louise teaching in a school in Cardiff (and looking after baby Josh, with another baby on the way!). On the education side, we've had Richard Beare, Dave Bowdley, Danny Duggan and Jon Yardley based up in the Midlands, and Rachel Dodds and Edward Gomez in Cardiff. Edward still "lives" with the FT team, although he is now the LCOGT webmaster amongst other things.
Over the past 5 years, FT has been involved in a lot of educational and research projects - you can see some of the more recent science work being carried out by the FT PhD students (Fraser Lewis and Vanessa Stroud) on the new "Research Showcase". As you'll see from recent new articles, we remain very active in science outreach, working with the Big Bang event in London and the BBC Wales Roadshow in the past week.
So, whilst Dill is enjoying the day skiing somewhere exotic (no chnage there then!), all of us here in Cardiff would like to wish him, and the FT project, a happy birthday.
Paul, Alison, Sarah, Fraser and Vanessa
