It’s been a rather crazy winter in the Netherlands this year. Two weeks ago I distinctly recall photographing daffodils along the Amstel River, today we’re one week into the longest cold stretch in a decade and people are walking and skating on the canal outside my apartment!
Posted in Amsterdam, daily life, Dutch traditions
Daffodils blooming on the Amstel River in Amsterdam- taken Jan 21, 2012
Now imagine the following for a second. It’s Saturday night in Amsterdam, and due to my birthday party the night before I’m too tired to do anything crazy but a low-key drink sounds like a good idea sort of thing. No worries, there are a bunch of little cafes around here that I haven’t checked out yet and one is hosting a CouchSurfing get-together, so I head to said cafe to see what I see.
The place is busy, but there’s a spot next to a cute fellow with a German accent who is asking intelligent questions about my research, and it turns out he’s a Physics PhD student in a town in Lower Saxony six hours away from Amsterdam, in town for the first time this weekend to help a friend move. A geek running into another geek unexpectedly is always a relatively rare occurrence so we spend ten minutes discussing our respective areas of study, and then he mentions offhand that he used to study in Auckland.
“Wait, New Zealand?” I am momentarily confused, then have a flash of recognition. “Johannes! Professor LW’s E&M class, the first half of 2007!!!” He in turn recognizes me and much hugging and squealing ensues, not all of it coming from me, and we chat nonstop into the wee hours to catch up. (So much for a low-key night!) Because you see it wasn’t just that we were in the same class, we actually did problem sets together- which Johannes recalled in much greater detail and fondness than me, he’s the theorist after all- but I never grabbed his contact information before leaving, so I hadn’t heard a thing about or from him in five years.
Let me repeat this again so we are clear on this: I went into a random bar and sat next to a random guy who was randomly in town… and it was one I last met five years ago, half a world away! I believe we have now passed from “it’s a small world” to The Twilight Zone- or as another friend put it, I have now officially traveled enough that the entire world is my neighborhood.
What’s the strangest coincidence that ever happened to you? I’m sure I’m not the only one with such a strange story!
The University of Auckland- taken February 15, 2007
Posted in Amsterdam, daily life, New Zealand, Science!
I hosted my birthday party earlier this weekend, and because my friends are awesome they knew just what to get me- a towel so I’ll always be a frood who knows where her towel is, a gift certificate to the outdoors shop, and a scratch map where you can scratch off where you’ve been like a lottery ticket. I finally recovered enough from the merriment to tackle the map with a guitar pick (more precise than a coin), and the resulting picture above is a generally good idea of where I’ve been on planet Earth in my 26 years here.
My only comment (beyond thanks again guys!) is geez, nothing like the Mercator projection to make a girl consider traveling to Russia, Greenland, and Antarctica! When that happens, I’ll be sure to take the towel.
Posted in daily life, Photos
Gather ’round partners, it’s time for Artie Aardvark’s recap of the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas!
Yee-haw, I am off to the biggest astronomy conference in the whole wide world! This year it is in Austin, Texas, which is so far from the Netherlands I have to fly hours and hours to get there. I’m glad that gives me lots of time to look out the window! Continue reading
Posted in Artie Aardvark's Adventures, ASTRON, Texas
When I think back on 2011 it will undoubtedly go down as the year where I did more in 12 months than most people do in a lifetime. If I didn’t personally already defend a thesis, become a published author, move to a different country, and explore 20 countries on 4 continents along the way I would accuse myself of lying because I’m tired just thinking about it. But I apparently did because I lived through all of it! Continue reading
Posted in 0. The Netherlands, Artie Aardvark's Adventures, China, daily life, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Kenya, Nepal, Ohio, Post-Trip #2, Tanzania, Tibet, Uganda
It’s that time of year in Holland: there is only sunlight for about seven hours, the fall bok beers have been changed for hearty winter fare, and the entire country is engaged in a national debate about the racist overtones of a beloved childhood mascot. Yes, it’s Christmas time in Amsterdam! (Which looks even prettier with all the Christmas lights by the way, the above is my favorite set not too far from my apartment.) Continue reading
While waiting for my code to compile, a few notes…
The December 2011 issue of Astronomy is currently out at all major newsstands and bookstores, and you should check it out because my second article for them appears in it! Specifically the article is “Visit Southern California’s Top Astronomy Sites” on p. 61, and is a sequel to my article in the July 2011 issue. And I’d say more, but I’m currently busily writing my third article that is due next week (my first feature, on cosmic rays!) and 2,200 words don’t write themselves!
In other news, I’ve been taking an improv comedy course of late and my first set is this Friday, November 25! In short it’s at the Crea at 11:30pm after the regular show and will last a half hour or so, and is FREE! It should be a good time- there is also a “proper” show starting at 10:30pm, and that will cost you 5 Euro (and an 8:30pm show that runs an hour that’s 10 Euro, but you can see both for 12 Euro). Details are here.
Mind this set is primarily practice for my class’s “real” Improv show that will be on Dec 9 at 10:30pm and run an hour, also at the Crea. If you can only make one that will be the one to see- I’m not saying this Friday will be awful or anything, it’s just shorter and later obviously. It’s 5 Euro to go to this show and reservations are recommended.
It should be super fun times, and I hope to see you all there! And if you’ll excuse me, my code’s done running…
Only 24 people have ever flown to the moon, and I met one of them in Amsterdam last week! Continue reading
To continue our series with Artie, everyone’s favorite aardvark, here is the little scamp exploring the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT).
On the last day of Nova school we spent the afternoon going to see the Westerbork radio telescopes, which is about 20 kilometers from ASTRON. I passed my time on the bus ride making friends with all the astronomers.
After a long drive through the rain we made it- hooray! The telescopes looked awfully impressive, as all 14 of them were pointed in the same direction tracking a source in the sky.
Here is one of the telescopes up close. The Westerbork telescopes are interesting because they have an equatorial mount, meaning one axis is parallel to the Earth’s rotation, and most radio telescopes have azimuthal mounts. This means the Westerbork telescopes can track something in the sky by moving only one axis, but most radio telescopes require two!
After the telescopes detect a radio signal all that information comes here to the correlator, where all the signals are put together so the astronomers can analyze what they see. There were lots of wires running everywhere- it looks awfully complicated to run a radio telescope!
I also got to see a test of the next generation technology for radio telescopes called EMBRACE, which looked like a giant field of spikes if you ask me. Basically over the next decade or so radio astronomers are hoping to build the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) which will do exactly what the name sounds like, put an array over an entire square kilometer. Wow! Something very, very big like that also needs parts that aren’t too expensive, so they’re hoping to use EMBRACE to show how this telescope of the future will work exactly.
I was also excited to learn that next year they will announce the location of the Square Kilometer Array, either in western Australia or South Africa. I’m crossing my paws for South Africa to be picked of course!
After that it was time for one last paparazzi shoot, with my friend Oscar’s help-
And after all that excitement I was tired, and snuggled into a pouch in Yvette’s poncho-
Hmmm, these kangaroo-style pouches are quite comfy. Perhaps I won’t mind if they build the SKA in Australia after all!
Before we begin, I’d like to introduce you to my new friend Artie Aardvark. Artie is the mascot of the AARTFAAC (pronounced “aardvark”) project that I work for at the University of Amsterdam, where we look for transient radio signals from the sky. Because Artie takes his job seriously he has volunteered to explain Interesting and Important Astronomy Sites this blog may visit, as he rightly assumes that he can explain technical stuff in a better and cuter way than I would myself. So with that I give you Artie’s Amazing ASTRON Adventures, where ASTRON is the Netherlands institute for radio astronomy ~100km east of Amsterdam.
Oh my goodness I’m so excited, I’m on my way to ASTRON to see what astronomers do! Here I am on the train looking at the Dutch countryside. It is very flat and filled with farms so far as I can see.
When we made it to ASTRON I could tell because the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope was poking out of the trees! This was the biggest radio telescope in the world in the 1950s, but now is used by hobbyists. They do things like detect neutron star pulses and talk to people in around the world by bouncing radio signals off of the moon. It sounds like a fun hobby to me!
To get close to the telescope we had to put on hardhats. Mine was a little bit too big…
Nowadays at ASTRON the astronomers help build and run lots of astronomy projects all around the world, and some are even in space! Here I am inspecting some models of instruments ASTRON is working on for future projects. I also liked the aluminum blocks on the right side of the table, showing how a heavy solid block could be made a lot lighter by drilling and hollowing out the inside.
I also got to check out a mirror polisher up close that is used to give a telescope mirror the right shape. I was amazed to learn that “right shape” for astronomers can mean within the thickness of one of my hairs!
In the middle of the tour I got tired, and decided to get some coffee…
… which was good because I was alert enough to help the engineers keep an eye on things at JIVE headquarters! JIVE is short for Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe, and VLBI is short for Very Long Baseline Interferometry. It is funny that astronomers like acronyms so much that they have acronyms of acronyms.
JIVE is really cool because they take radio telescopes from all over the world and link them together to make more detailed observations than if you were just using the one telescope. They can do stuff like pinpoint where a mission orbiting Mars is within meters!
This map shows where telescopes involved with JIVE are around the world. And all those signals end up here in Holland!
Tour done, it was time to listen to some lectures. Yvette was at ASTRON this week for Nova School, a program aimed at first year astronomy PhD students in the Netherlands, so there was a lot of learning for a little aardvark like me. At least I could help Yvette with her talk on AARTFAAC! She and my other friends on the team are hoping to monitor the night sky 24/7 to find rare radio outbursts from mystery objects like neutron stars and black holes, and I’m excited to see what they find.
After all that it’s time for a rest, so I’ll talk about some other adventures later. Thanks to Daniela for helping with the pictures!
