It’s nearing the end of the year and that means committee time.

The ESO Observing Programmes Committee started in earnest on Tuesday.

ESO people hard at work...

Over the course of this week over 1000 applications for telescope time  are discussed, graded and ranked by some 80 professional astronomers; all are experts in their respective field. In return they get a decent meal or two and a couple of glasses of wine in a sunny (yet somewhat arctic) Munich.

Fabulous for carnivores

It’s a lot of work for everyone concerned but it’s important for everyone to meet face to face and discuss the merits of the proposed science. These things just cannot be done effectively by email or teleconference. Yet.

We enlist students and fellows to facilitate the process and they, in turn, get an insider’s view on how decisions get made and the kind of tasks they will be doing in a few years - this can be somewhat eye opening and you learn the three cardinal rules for writing proposals pretty quickly:

1. Explain the bigger picture. Why would anyone other than you be interested in your project?
2. Be clear - jargon is not appreciated and takes time to unravel, by which time you have an irate person judging your proposal. This is generally undesirable.
3. Be detailed but concise - an entire page of formulae is counterproductive. See point 2.

The latter point is probably the hardest to do achieve as it is by definition a balancing act - and every astronomer has a different idea of how much detail is too much or too little. The bottom line is you can’t please everyone so all you can do is think of what you’d want to read if you had to grade over 80 proposals yourselves.

Astronomers at play during the OPC meeting

Many thanks to Dario Dorigo, our very own paparazzo for these photos!

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OK, it has been an unconscionably long time since I last wrote. So long that I won’t even try to make an excuse. I have a few busy weeks coming up and thought it might be nice to share some of these activities with you.

First up, we have a “disks” conference next week. Several old chums and colleagues will be attending so it’s a good chance to catch up with them, as well as with the latest science of course. Disks, the sites of planet and star formation, have always been an interesting area of study. However, with new exoplanets being discovered every day,  infrared/mm observations of disk environments , and my own area, where we are obtaining the first images of strong magnetic fields that connect disks and stars, this area is progressing more rapidly than ever before.

A week later we host ESO’s largest committee - the Observing Programmes Committee. This committee consists of 79 senior astronomers from around the world. They meet twice a year to decide who gets to observe using ESO’s telescopes. We then draw up a 6-month telescope schedule based on their recommendations and inform all the applicants of whether or not they were successful towards the end of the year. Which could make for a nice little Christmas present - or not.

In the meantime I have a journal paper to finish up based on X-ray data from the Chandra satellite, new data on Orion from our newest telescope to pore over, and  100+ very good fellowship applications to rifle through and rank.

No rest for the wicked, and all that.

Hope to be back here soon, G

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Hi folks, Sorry for my long hiatuses or is it hiatii? My brain’s decided it’s too late to ponder such matters.

To say the past month’s been busy is an understatement - it seemed an unremitting stream of deadlines. And while deadlines are what many of us thrive on - I’m kind of glad they are mostly over with for the next 6 months. More on that later. Just wanted to mention some fun we’ve been having along the way.

Part of this has been the preparation for tomorrow’s 24-hour webcast - Around the world in 80 telescopes -  Nadine described this on her blog a couple of weeks back. We’re liaising with observatories that are quite literally everywhere (including Space). We’ll visit each observatory see new images they’ve taken with their telescopes and talk a bit to astronomers about what they do.

Along with another 4 willing victims, Nadine and I will be presenting this. Lee is doing a marathon session, covering the entire 24 hour period.

So we just had a trial run - this presenting lark is odd. The first run went ok. The second trial run was quite a bit more … um … entertaining, shall we say. Really hope I don’t manage that tomorrow. I have developed a profound respect for newsreaders over the course of this evening!

Hope you’ll tune in for a bit, check us out at:
http://100hoursofastronomy.org/webcast

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On days 6-7 I stayed at the APEX base. The APEX base is fabulous - it is essentially a tiny village consisting of buildings constructed from adobe clay - much the same as the buildings in the nearby San Pedro. Here are some pictures from the base:

Adobe dorms - this is where the APEX staff and visitors stay. Everyone gets their own hut.

I especially loved the main offices and canteen - there is something of the Flintstones about the design of these two buildings especially. The adobe really works well in keeping the buildings cool naturally - no fans or airconditioners required. Which in over 30 degree heat is an extremely welcome feat.

The main offices and control tower, which is used to control the telescope.

The all-important canteen.

Interestingly even though it is peak summer time in the southern hemisphere at the moment the APEX telescope is actually not in full operation as it is “Bolivian winter”. It does seem counterintuitive that while the rest of the continent is in peak summer the Bolivian altiplano is experiencing winter. Apparently the weather system changes in January and February allowing wet winds to come in from the east bringing winds, rain and even snow. The enhanced moisture this brings mean radio observations aren’t possible.

Visit to the Chajnantor plain

Once we’d had a generous Chilean lunch, my very kind guide and APEX engineer, Juan, drove up to the APEX telescope. The drive was fantastic - we went past the base of the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array) project, where a contingent of 60-80 telescopes are being assembled. We also saw the Gran Salar (the giant salt lake bed) and at enormous cactuses (cacti?) sprouted up out of nowhere. They only seem to grow over a small range of altitudes just over 3500m.

Chajnantor plain with a storm brewing in the background.

Finally we arrived at the Chajnantor plain - this consists of a few control buildings and one telescope for the moment. Ultimately it will be covered by about 80 telescopes - all essentially updated versions of the APEX telescope. For the moment it is rather a stunning vast empty plain surrounded by even higher peaks. You don’t appreciate how high you are because of this. The main clue is that your brain feels woolly - there are clear indications that your thought processes are a bit slow. Kind of how you feel if you haven’t slept in a really long time.

The first ALMA antennas have already been constructed and are scheduled to start operations in 2010.

Until the ALMA antennas arrive, APEX holds pride of place. APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment, is a prototype of the antennas that will make up ALMA. So eventually this whole plain will be covered in 80 telescopes that look more or less like this.

APEX telescope & Juan.

You can see a picture of the surrounding peaks below: a few of these are actively volcanic. Indeed one of them just to the left of this picture was quietly smoking away the whole time.

On Cerro Chico - a small peak near APEX. The mountain behind me hosted a sulphur mine - hence the strange colour.

On our return I had to catch up on a massive backlog of work. Luckily it’s such a tranquil place I cleared a lot of things out of the way. I also vamped up a talk on my research that I had to give a couple of days later.

The APEX base is a great place to work. If ESO ever want to make money they could market the APEX dorms as a writers’ retreat. Quiet, beautiful, insanely sunny and with a great internet connection. What more could you want?

The following day I headed back to Santiago for a few days and into the arms of the extremely genteel ESO guesthouse. More on that anon.

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On day 4 I left Paranal. This is the main entrance to the Residencia. It looks like part of the desert - the only clue to the fact that there is a building there at all is the top part of the dome just visible in the picture.

Main entrance to the Residencia

The next stop on this whirlwind tour was San Pedro de Atacama. A 5-hour bus journey from Antofagasta discharged me in San Pedro along with a bunch of hikers. San Pedro is an interesting town - a blend of a Chilean village, backpacker’s paradise, and upcoming luxury spa destination. It’s built on an oasis and is at an altitude of over 2000 m so you have to be careful to drink lots of water or you really feel it.

Various pictures from San Pedro - the last one features one of the many stray mutts of Chile.

There are numerous attractions nearby including geysers, a huge salt lakebed, and the Valle de la Luna - which has been used to test prototypes of Mars rovers in the past. Exploration of these and the many other sights will have to wait for future trips - due to my crazy itinerary there just wasn’t time. In any case, the main objective for being here was to acclimatise before going up to the Chajnantor plain, which is at an altitude of 5000m.

Of course - it being me, I did manage to fit some shopping in. Even though it was a Sunday all the shops were open well past 8pm. Having lived in Germany for the past year, this is shocking - and yet extremely welcome.

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Today I saw much more of the day-to-day activities at ESO. Oh, and of course I saw the telescopes!

The VLTs at sunset earlier today. VLT stands for Very Large Telescope - astronomers can be an imaginative bunch sometimes. In reality the four telescopes have rather beautiful individual names.

The four large telescopes are known as the VLT’s - their everyday names are UT1, UT2, UT3 and UT4. However their real names are from the indigenous Mapuche language: they are called Antu (Sun), Kueyen (Moon), Melipal (Southern Cross) and Yepun (Venus). There are more details about the names and how they were chosen on the following webpage.

Support astronomers carry out and oversee the actual observing on all of the ESO telescopes. They also, very kindly, show visitors around. Suzanna Randall, an expert on Kueyen, showed us “her” telescope - will post some pictures of it soon.

In the meantime I thought you might enjoy a view of the mountains as seen from the summit. The mountains here have a distinctive red soil that is reminiscent of that found in Mars. And of course Dominic Greene met his end somewhere near these parts.

Mountain view from the summi

Mountains in the Atacama desert.

First, I must apologise for the long hiatus. I was hit by a vicious form of the flu, which wiped out my ability to do very much at all except lie there and feel sorry for myself for a few weeks. Fortunately I recovered just in time for my epic tour of Chile.

As you may know, ESO - where I work - builds and operates telescopes in Chile for the benefit of astronomers everywhere. As I work for ESO but have never seen any of their telescopes, I’ve been sent to Chile to educate myself. And this is how I find myself in the Atacama desert today.

I arrived in Santiago a couple of days ago and then flew out again at an ungodly hour the following morning. Here is a picture of the sunrise at Santiago Airport yesterday:

The mountain range seen here is the Andes - home to some of the most powerful telescopes in the world.

After a two hour flight and three hour coach trip we made it to the Paranal observatory in the Atacama desert. It is one of the driest places on earth – which makes it an ideal observatory site – but more than a little inhospitable for us humans. In order to make it a more attractive proposition to live and work here ESO have created an incredible living space in the middle of this barren land. I’m posting some pictures of the Paranal residencia here. James Bond fans may recognise it as the building that was comprehensively blown up at the end of Quantum of Solace

The residencia at sunset

The residencia with the four VLTs (Very Large Telescopes) in the distance. My room at the residencia is in the first opening on the right.

The swimming pool and mini-oasis.

The oasis is the centrepiece of the residencia and it really is stunning. It even has wifi so it’s become my favourite place to sit and work.

I will shortly head up to see the telescopes and the control room so will post some photos of the telescopes tomorrow.
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Greetings from London! I am taking a break with parents and friends while finalising my first visit to the ESO telescopes in Chile. ESO builds and operates telescopes in three main sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. Provided I pass the altitude exams I hope to visit all three at the end of January. ALMA - which stands for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), is going to be a mm/submm wavelength observatory run by an international consortium including ESO  This will be based on the Chajnantor site at over 5000 metres. While one feels the effects of altitude at most observatories I hear Chajnantor is a whole other level - so to speak. More on my plans over the next few days…