In late March and early April I went to Hawaii for 10 days to observe at the Subaru and Keck telescopes. In my next couple of blog posts I will share some of my impressions and photos from that trip.

On Friday, I received the very sad news that Norwegian astronomer Sjur Refsdal has passed away. To the broader international astronomy community, he is best known for his pioneering work, laying the foundation of the field of gravitational lensing. To those of us in the community who were fortunate enough to know Sjur, he was also a dear colleague, teacher and friend who will be sorely missed.

So the winter flu season has really hit us hard here in Norway. Our 1-year old son started daycare last week and it only took 4 days before he got the flu and subsequently passed it on to his parents. Until I recover, I will leave you with a time-lapse movie, taken last September, of the sunset behind the Nordic Optical Telescope .

In our modern world, scientists move around a lot, but astronomers seem to be more mobile than researchers in many other fields. Typically, one would do undergraduate work at one university, attend graduate school at a different university, then be temporarily employed through a series of 2-3 different postdoctoral positions before (hopefully!) obtaining a permanent position at a university or research organization. This requires a lot of moving which has its pros and cons.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to look through a version of the galileoscope which is being mass produced as one of the IYA2009 cornerstone projects. I was impressed by its optical quality (particularly considering the $10 price tag) and was struck by its similarity to my own first telescope. I hope that a large number of children worldwide will experience the same excitement and feeling of discovery I had some 27 years ago.

The International year of astronomy 2009 has finally arrived ! In this first post I’ll briefly preview some of the most important developments expected for 2009 that will affect my work as a professional astronomer in Norway. I will also share some visual impressions from a short and frosty new year’s day outside Oslo.