A completely new experience

Many things happened since my last post here. One of them is that I got a new job. Well, yes, I’m still an astronomer, but after ten years of work as support astronomer in the Users Support Dept., I now moved to the Observing Programmes Office of ESO, which I am now leading.

What? Those of you who know me might indeed wonder how this can possibly be. Well, not sure… As a consequence, I changed office, building, collaborators and so on. But I’m still at the European Southern Observatory, my alma mater.

The Panel Scientific Assistants (a.k.a. secretaries) relaxing after the Panel sessions.

In these days, with my Department, I am going through a very interesting exercise. Twice a year, ESO summons some 80 astronomers from all over the world to judge the about 1000 proposals we receive for observing at the Very Large Telescope and the other ESO facilities. Though job, but very exciting, both from a scientific and a social point of view.

The team working with me is wonderful, very dedicated and very funny too. All the fears I had are fading away by the day. Sure enough, as somebody made me notice, there is still room for failure 😉

The meeting lasts one week, during which the referees keep discussing the proposals and ranking them. In the end, they will deliver to us a final ranked list, which we will use to finally schedule the telescope. That’s my next task. This will start already on Saturday morning, I fear. My next concern is telling that to my wife 😉

More on the next days.