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Meet the astronomers. See where they work. Know what they know.


The Project:

The Cosmic Diary is not just about astronomy. It's more about what it is like to be an astronomer.

The Cosmic Diary aims to put a human face on astronomy: professional scientists will blog in text and images about their lives, families, friends, hobbies and interests, as well as their work, their latest research findings and the challenges that face them. The bloggers represent a vibrant cross-section of female and male working astronomers from around the world, coming from five different continents. Outside the observatories, labs and offices they are musicians, mothers, photographers, athletes, amateur astronomers. At work, they are managers, observers, graduate students, grant proposers, instrument builders and data analysts.

Throughout this project, all the bloggers will be asked to explain one particular aspect of their work to the public. In a true exercise of science communication, these scientists will use easy-to-understand language to translate the nuts and bolts of their scientific research into a popular science article. This will be their challenge.

Task Group:

Mariana Barrosa (Portugal, ESO ePOD)
Nuno Marques (Portugal, Web Developer)
Lee Pullen (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
André Roquette (Portugal, ESO ePOD)

Jack Oughton (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
Alice Enevoldsen (USA, Pacific Science Center)
Alberto Krone Martins (Brazil, Uni. S. Paulo / Uni. Bordeaux)
Kevin Govender (South Africa, S. A. A. O.)
Avivah Yamani (Indonesia, Rigel Kentaurus)
Henri Boffin (Belgium, ESO ePOD)

Welcome to IYA 2009!!!!

Dear All,

First of all I’d like to welcome you the the International Year of Astronomy 2009, secondly I apologise for the delay in my first posting. This was due to my first holidays in a very long time!!! First let me quickly introduce myself, my name is Diego and I am an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. I am involved in the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array) project which is being built in the Chajnantor Plateu in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. I spend half of my time working on my own science in the office in Santiago and the other half with duty work at the ALMA site.

I think that for today that should be it, I’d like to invite you to get involved with astronomy as much as you can, I believe you’ll find it fascinating even if you don’t fully understand everything about it! I’ll leave you with a picture of the volcan Villarica in the X Region in the south of Chile where I spent my New Year.

Volcan Villarica - Araucaria Region - South of Chile

Volcan Villarica - Araucania Region - South of Chile

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under General. 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.

2
  1. Nicole
    January 6th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

    ALMA is big stuff. Very cool! What’s it like working up at the high sites?

  2. Diego Garcia
    January 7th, 2009 at 2:53 am

    Hi Nicole!

    Thanks for your post! Working at the high site can be challenging, though I currently don’t spend that much time at the high site I have spent time at the high site observing at the APEX telescope which is located in the same place where ALMA is being built. The headquarters are at 2500 metres (~ 8000 ft) above sea level and you go up to the high site at 5100 metres (~ 17000 ft)in about 1 hour through a dirt road so by the time you get up there you feel a bit dizzy and your legs feel a bit like jelly but you eventually get used to it. At that altitude the oxygen levels are half than at sea level so you tire much more easily! I hope this answers your question and if you have any more questions or you’d like to talk about something in particular please just ask!