Research

ESO 50th anniversary web-stream live now!
Published 10/5/2012 in Fernando Patat Author Ferdinando
A Day in the Life of ESO is live now! Watch it at: http://new.livestream.com/ESOAstronomy/ESO50 I will be giving a talk at 14:17 CEST. See you there.     read more ❯

Stephane Udry gives a talk at ESO on exo-planets
Published 2/10/2012 in Fernando Patat Author Ferdinando
Long time no see... Many things happened in between. For instance, my boss Bruno Leibundgut joined the team led by Brian Schmidt in Stockholm, for the Nobel Prize ceremony. I already expressed my feeling related to Brian's visit to ESO before the Nobel Prize was announced. The account Bruno gave on the Nobel Ceremony was equally stunning. I rejoice for them, and for astrophysics in general. But I cannot hide, at least not to myself, that I envy them... all the more because I happen to be so close to these people ;-) Speaking of great deeds, yesterday Stephane Udry gave a great... read more ❯

A completely new experience
Published 5/25/2011 in Fernando Patat Author Ferdinando
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. [caption id="attachment_1284" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Panel Scientific Assistants (a.k.a.... read more ❯

Early Saturday's thoughts of a [mature] astronomer
Published 2/19/2011 in Fernando Patat Author Ferdinando
Every year here in Garching there is a workshop organized by the International Max Planck Research School for Astrophysics (IMPRS for short). The purpose is to give the chance to brilliant undergraduate students to participate to the IMPRS programme and get a PhD in Astrophysics in one of the most active campuses in Europe and in the world. This year the IMPRS received almost 140 applications, out of which about 50 candidates were invited to a 3-day workshop, where they could give a presentation on their scientific interests, meet other students and potential supervisors for their PhD Thesis. As I am... read more ❯