Job:	Post-doctoral research assistant, Queens University, Belfast
Born:	Dublin, Ireland, 1972

My name is Eoghan O'Shea. As you might guess from the name I am Irish and was born in Dublin in 1972. My family however comes originally from Co. Kerry in the Southwest of Ireland, from one of the last remaining Gaelic speaking areas. Hence the Gaelic name, Eoghan. Eoghan apparently means 'Born of the yew tree' while O'Shea means descendant of the noble hawklike person. Weird or what?

Did you know.... The old celtic people of Ireland were worshippers of a Sun god called Lugh long before Christianity arrived in Ireland. There is evidence that the celtic peoples in the other parts of Europe also worshipped this god, as the names of cities like London, Leon, Lyons are all thought to derive from the name of this ancient god. By a strange coincidence the 1999 eclipse is going to occur in the month named in honour of this god, that is, in August or Lughnasa as it is called in Gaelic.. Don't you think that it is fitting (or worrying?) that there should be an eclipse in the month of the celtic Sun god?

My background I attended the University College Dublin for my primary degree and then later went to Armagh Observatory to study for my PhD. At present I am a Postdoctoral Research assistant in the Queen's University of Belfast where I study the heating of the Sun's atmosphere. Hobbies: Not very exciting (I'm lazy)....I enjoy swimming, studying languages and travelling. So I'm in the right job as doing this work means that I get a lot of opportunities to travel especially to America and the continent of Europe. I also like to play basketball and indoor football whenever I can find enough people willing to put up with my lack of skill.

Hale Bopp Comet over the Armagh Observatory

Where have I travelled to
So far I have been lucky enough to travel to the United States three times, twice to Washington D.C. (1995,1996) and once to the city of Boston (1997). In 1996 I spent some time at the N.A.S.A. Goddard space flight centre just outside Washington D.C. It is from here that the solar satellite S.O.H.O. is controlled. In addition I have travelled to Florence in Italy (1995), and to Berlin and Potsdam in Germany (1998). For the conference dinner in Potsdam in September 1998 we were taken on a boat trip on the river Spree. This is the river on which Berlin is built. When the boat reached Berlin the mayor there had organised a massive firework display for the conference participants. It was really amazing. Who said conference dinners were boring? These trips abroad are either to attend conferences or to collect more data. However we do usually get time to take short holidays when all the work has been completed. So it's not all bad! Do solar physics, see the world!

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