Want to build cool stuff for telescopes? August 11, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, me . 2commentsFor over three years now I’ve been working here in Leiden’s instrumentation group. My time here in Leiden is coming to an end – I’m sad to leave but such is the life of a postdoc, and I’m excited about new things ahead (more about that later). I’ve written here about my own work on a few occasions, here’s a few examples:
Future facilities: Coming quite close now actually
If my work sounds like fun to you, and you have a PhD and experience in working on instrumentation projects, why don’t you apply to join the group?
I’ve enjoyed my time in Leiden immensely, both from a personal and professional perspective. The Observatory sets a high standard to its staff and students, but is very open and inclusive with a great “can-do” attitude. So if you’re passionate about your science, it’s great place to push the limits of your skills and creativity. If you’re interested, check out the ad on the AAS register and apply!
Personal note August 2, 2010
Posted by sarah in: me . Add a comment
As many of you know, I had a bit of an accident a couple of months back during and ended up with a limb out of action and a pair of crutches. Unexpected as these things are, things were pretty chaotic for a while. But somehow I managed to eat, sleep, get to work most days, even enjoy a few foreign trips, and generally not go insane. I attended several interesting and enjoyable conferences, hobbled around Venice on crutches, fell over in Venice on crutches, and had a super holiday exploring California.
I don’t usually get personal on here, but I thought a quick note of thanks was in order for everyone who helped me out these past months, kept me well fed, hydrated, mobile and reasonably sane – old friends, new friends, colleagues, acquaintances, some really entertaining taxi drivers, weirdos in Texas, and of course family and extra-special friend. I hope you never need me to return the favour, but if you do ever find yourself face down on a basketball court, give me a call. Big thanks to all of you.
Image: C. Odman
Global Poetry System May 19, 2010
Posted by sarah in: me . 1 comment so far
Thanks to my good friend Mary in London, I’m taking part in an arts project organised by the South Bank Centre in London called Global Poetry System. Global Poetry System, or GPS, aims “to explore and map the poetry of the world”. On the project’s website you can upload poetry, and tag the location where you found it on a world map. This month, the project launched a new initiative called Analogue Adventures. The project organisers have sent out digital cameras to all corners of the world, asking recipients to snap a picture of whatever inspires them as “poetry” – graffiti, art, signs – and pass the camera on to another volunteer within 48 hours. By the 23rd of June, the camera should make their ways back to London, where the pictures can be developed, uploaded and mapped.
So the little camera made it across the Channel to the Netherlands.
Making my software open April 6, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, me . 5comments
After thinking about software development in astronomy and talking about it with friends at work and on this blog, I thought it was about time I put my money where my mouth is. I too write software – in fact, the bulk of my work here in Leiden has been based around code I’ve written over the past 2 years for the METIS project (in IDL). The code basically calculates the sensitivity of METIS on the E-ELT, or the minimum flux it will be able to detect at a particular signal to noise (S/N) in a given exposure time over its wavelength range, in various modes of observation. You can find the full package with background info on my brand-new github page, and a paper is in preparation (to be presented at SPIE 2010) for your referencing pleasure.
Astrobetter guest post: Mendeley March 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: me, reviews, science . 3commentsStaying on top of the literature, even in a narrow field, is one of the biggest challenges we face in research today. Do you have an ever-growing pile of astro-ph papers on your desk you’ve meaning to read? Yeah, we all have that. In recent years a number of software packages and web applications have come on the market to help researchers organise their literature: Papers, Reference Manager, Jabref, and Zotero. Past AstroBetter posts have introduced Papers and discussed Papers vs. BibDesk. A recent addition that’s been getting good press lately is London-based Mendeley.[...]
I wrote a guest post on literature-management-slash-science.fm-software Mendeley for the Astrobetter blog. Go read it here!
More screenshots are in my public Astrobetter notebook, alongside those I did for the Evernote post.
