Golden Geese and Other Goodies

I am now a month into my fellowship, and two weeks into my stay as a Fellow hosted at NSF. And I've been keeping quite busy!

On the work end of things, I’ve been running all over! I’ve been trying to get a feel for the various projects and foci of the CRS group within CNS in CISE at NSF. (And there are so many new acronyms to learn, too! Computer Systems Research; Computer Networking Systems; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; National Science Foundation; FYI.) I’ve been getting familiar with the building and it’s quirks (the elevators are VERY fancy -- so fancy, in fact, that I got stuck in one within 15 minutes of entering the building for the first time). NSF just moved locations so not only am *I* unfamiliar with the layout, so is everyone else! For this reason, I’ve been making a point of taking all the AV training and the like, so I can help my group with all the newness as best I can. I have my own work computer, I have an official badge I can ‘beep’ in and out of the building and the more secure floors with, and it seems like my group works on a lot of interesting things! Everything from grant panels, to outreach programs, to career/industry training, to online performances, to international collaborations.

I'm also attending a lot of events through my fellowship program. The AAAS fellowship program (another acronym -- as a reminder, this one is the American Association for the Advancement of Science) has a lot of different workshops, events, social groups, networking events, happy hours, and seminars that the fellows are invited to attend. For example, one of the social affinity groups basically just tries a new restaurant in DC every month. When I heard about it, I decided that it OBVIOUSLY was the best social group, don’t you think? 

Also through the AAAS group, I went to the “Golden Goose” award ceremony last Wednesday, which was a LOT of fun. The Golden Goose awards were created in order to honor science that had, shall we say, unusual, obscure, or controversial beginnings. This award was conceived of as a contrast a congressman's annual ‘golden fleece awards’ – highlighting projects that used federal funding that he felt were ‘fleecing’ the American taxpayer by funding silly research. But research can have very humble, or even silly origins, since it usually starts with a question which doesn’t have a obvious or even noticeably useful answer. One of the speakers at the event had a great quote from Isaac Asimov, where he said: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, 'Eureka! I've found it,' but, 'That's funny!'" It’s impossible to say where the next big breakthrough is going to come about, especially when research can be full of serendipity. 

So the awards on Wednesday honored three projects: mussels sticking to rocks, ‘fuzzy math’, and an obscure type of fungus that practically no one cared at all about for ages. Or rather: research that eventually turned into an adhesive that is currently in 60% of American-made plywood, dramatically changing the industry and removing the irritant formaldehyde for a far more eco-friendly adhesive. A method of analysis and statistics for situations where the answers and parameters aren’t always clear, with large commercial implications/applications in industry. And the answer to a decades old question of why certain populations of frogs seemed to die out with no immediate cause detected. The award ceremony was quite enjoyable -- I really enjoyed hearing about the science, the MC was very entertaining, plus we heard from at least 4 different representatives from congress. The reception was also particularly neat -- it was held in the beautiful hall of the Library of Congress, where we could wander over and view the reading room from above while drinking champagne and eating delicious grilled shrimp, mussels, and other hors d'oeuvres.

And last, by not least, on the home front, I’m enjoying being back in a city with all that THAT entails.  I’m living very close, within a half mile, of the new NSF building, so I can walk to work. The metro station is literally across the street from the building, so I can go into DC with ease. I'm within walking distance of Old Town Alexandria, which is full of adorable shops and delicious restaurants. There are excellent Korean and Vietnamese restaurants not even a 15 minute drive away, and I can and an excellent Mediterranean and great French restaurants literally on my walk to work. I’m going to miss Green Bank – the beauty the mountains, the quiet, the outdoor opportunities, but I gotta say, the number one thing I missed there were good restaurants within a reasonable distance! So, life is pretty good right now -- busy, but good!

A New Start!

Post-defence celebrations!

Many important things have happened since the last time I wrote here, the most important of which is: I successfully defended my thesis!  The defence itself went well, as did turning in the thesis, but the week prior to each was rather stressful, trying to get everything done. Not only that, the week prior to my defence I was feeling rather under the weather, and to top it off, on Wednesday night my computer DIED. And I hadn't backed up my slides and notes sufficiently. So I basically had to redo the majority of the slides for my defence which was NOT NOT NOT fun at all. As you can imagine, I was in a bit of a state. But as I said, the defence itself went well. The morning of, I actually found that a friend of mine had left "before" and "after" gifts for me on my desk -- the before was a stuffed snake toy (in reference to this amazing essay), and the after was a flask of whiskey. Both were very much appreciated and helped calm my nerves.

Not only did I defend, but I have also been hired as a post-doc at NRAO's Green Bank Telescope, in West Virginia, where I will be starting in late March! I'm really looking forwards to the new position, and I expect to learn a lot.  I've been joking that this will make me a "real astronomer" since I'll actually be working at a telescope and taking actual observations.  While I am an observationalist (as opposed to a theorist), all my data for my thesis has been from radio observations. So, while I wrote numerous proposals, got approved for telescope time, and had to figure out the details of the runs, I didn't actually do the observations myself --- I sent off  the relevant info to the VLA, and they scheduled the observations and sent me the data back. Even though I've been out to various telescopes, the only time I actually controlled a 'scope and took my own data on was on a class trip to MDM observatory in Arizona, and was for a class project, not my research (though it was a great experience). I am also not counting the observations I've done teaching labs or doing outreach, since those experiences aren't taking data for research so much as showing people the stars and explaining the awesome stuff that exists in the sky.

Anyway, I turned in my thesis on January 15th, and defended on January 29th. Since then, I've moved out of my apartment in NYC and shipped a bunch of stuff down to WV, where it is in storage. I stayed with my parents in Baltimore for a week, and now am in Cambridge in the UK visiting Benson. I'll be here for about a month, then going back to Baltimore until I move to Green Bank. I haven't bought a new computer yet -- I kind of want to wait until I've gotten to my new job, to see what kind of set up I will have there and what kind of computational needs I'll have. For now, Benson has kindly given me his old computer (very similar to the one I had that died) that he is no longer using, having upgraded about a year or so ago. So I can just use this one until I've decided exactly what I want/need to replace my old one. Happily, I did back up *that* computer regularly, even if I hadn't backed it up sufficiently close to the crash to save my slides, so I have all my work. The only thing I lost was the slides and notes. Which, well, was enough.

I've been having a lovely time in the UK. It is always good to see Benson and spend time with him, and it's been lovely to just relax and not worry about work, to take a real vacation. This past weekend, some good friends of ours -- Dahlia and Paul -- were in London for *their* vacation, so we met up with them twice! They came into Cambridge one day, and we went into London another. When in London, we went to a great restaurant -- Dinner by Heston Blumenthal -- which we all REALLY enjoyed a LOT. They take historical British recipes and modernize them somewhat to make an absolutely fantastic menu. We all got different things so we could try as much as possible, and split several of the appetizers and desserts. It's hard to chose favorites, since everything we got was fantastic, but I'd particularly recommend the roast marrowbone and meat fruit appetizers and the tipsy cake for dessert. The mains it's harder to chose one thing -- the duck breast was amazing, the ribeye was an extremely flavorful steak, and the halibut was a really well made dish.

Anyway, again, I've been having a great vacation. And I am both really happy and kind of sad about finishing my thesis -- it was so much work, it's very strange to be done with it. Even if research goes on and ever on, and I will be continuing my work on parts of it, having one big written work describing everything I have worked on is an odd experience. Here is 6 years of my life in 231 pages, right?? But for now, I'll relax a bit longer and then start on my next big experience!

Travelogue:Getting to Cape Town

So this week, I'm traveling to Cape Town, South Africa, for a conference on Novae (which, as you recall from blog post "The Astronomer's Day On," is my topic of study). The conference is from the 3rd-8th, and I'll be giving a short (15 minute) talk on 7th. After that, there is a two day "after conference" tour (optional, but fun), and then I'll be bouncing about on my own: mainly around Cape Town, but also in the town of Stellenborsch (in the wine country!).  I'll be flying back on the 18th, arriving in NYC on the 19th. Since I'm writing these on the road, these entries will probably be a little shorter, and possibly light on pictures, until I get back (sometimes I forget to take out the camera when I'm enjoying myself, or what I'm doing just isn't particularly scenic), not to mention more clearly written chunk by chunk.

The flight and layover:
I could love Munich for its airport alone. Seriously, great place to have a layover. Germany in general, probably, but this is the first time I've ever been in a German airport - the last time I was in Germany, I came by train, and the only other time was driving across the border of France to grab a meal, just so I could say I've been. There are little areas you can rent that are a quiet space to nap - an actual cot - plus a little desk to work at, if you want such a thing. But if you don't want to pay, there are chairs - both regular and lounge - and plenty of them, each with their own place to plug in your computer. So I can stretch out comfortably while waiting for my flight (as I'm doing as I type these vary words, though they'll be posted later, due to lack of internet connection). I suspect on my next layover I'll find one of these chairs and just NAP, since THAT layover is 4 hours, and early in the morning, rather than this one, which was 12 hours and starting at the beginning of the day I'm supposed to be getting used to. I think I recall I had the choice of  this or leaving super early in the morning, rather than in the late evening and sleeping on the plane, but honestly, I'm not really quite sure why I decided to book this flight in particular, when I was being reimbursed the cost.. But it was enough time to go into town. Which leads me to the German trains - so fast, efficient, and ON TIME. I traveled in Germany with Benson in 2011, for a bit, and they actually make an announcement and apologize for the inconvenience if the train is - LITERALLY - a minute late. And it's a rarity if it is late at all. I'd love to see the NYC metro do that...

Also, Germans do vending machines RIGHT

So I bought an all day train/bus pass at the airport, and went into Munich. Like I said, I've been here before, with Benson, so my first stop was actually the central station, where I knew I could pick up some VERY tasty sausage for cheap (breakfast!), plus then move on to anywhere else in the city easily from there. The second stop was a museum that we missed last time, the Deusch Museum, which was a museum of science and industry - very up my ally. Not the usual science museum, though - it seemed very focused on the instrumentation side of things, so there was a lot of really awesome old equipment from all branches of science. Astrolabes, old slide rules, tubes of all sorts, telecommunications, musical instruments, old cars and jets and helicoptors and rockets, whole ships, seriously, everything. It was a pretty cool museum, and a good chunk of the signs were translated into English, though not all. So that was a good place to spend my time. I also managed to hit not one, but 2 beer gardens. I'd been to both before, Augustiners for a light lunch (a bowl of liver dumpling soup, after the sausage, and a nice tall half liter of Augustiner Hells), and Hirschgartin for dinner (a half of a pork shank, with a potato dumpling and a pretzel, plus a nice tall half liter of a local Weissbeir.) Both were delicious, and refreshing. In fact, I wasn't able to finish my dinner, but got it wrapped up and through security with no problem, so I'll be having a some very tasty pork for breakfast tomorrow, as well! It was very easy to get through the airport, and security very efficient, so there was hardly any wait to get through again. Anyway, an enjoyable layover, for the most part! And now, an overnight flight (again) which will land me in Cape Town, where I've already booked a nice shuttle to take me directly to the hostel. Hopefully I won't be *too* tired, but I don't have anything planned for tomorrow (aside from working more on my talk!) just in case.

Addition:
Just jotting this down, I'm super exhausted and will be taking a nap shortly - but I've officially arrived in Cape Town, now and the hostel I'm staying at is really nice. I'm staying at a hostel for the first 2 nights before moving to the conference hotel (since while I'm getting free housing provided by the conference people, they're not going to pay for students to stay extra there, either). I'm in an all girls dorm room, which is nice, and it's very clean and seems pretty secure. Right near the waterfront area, so it looks like there are some nice places to walk around near by. But for now, after an 11.5 hour flight, I just got in, got a shower, checked e-mail and whatnot, and am going to take a NAP.  I can hold out until this evening or tomorrow to start exploring, and it would be nice to be well rested if I'm going to work on my talk any. Even if it is a lovely 92 degree (!) afternoon....

The Astronomer's Day On

Me on Mauna Kea (HI), during an observing run last August.
Those aren't the telescopes I was working with - the
SMA is an array of 8 radio dishes, whereas these are all
optical telescopes near the top of the mountain!

As I said in my introductory post, I am an Astronomy PhD student, studying at Columbia University. While the main focus of this blog is what I do when NOT at work, astronomy is a very important part of my life. Last week, I had a thesis committee review: every six months (or so), the panel that will eventually be deciding if I get a PhD meets, and I give an overview of what I've been doing, and what I plan to do. This is all designed to keep my thesis ON TRACK, make sure I'm not floundering, and to give me advice on what they think I need to work on, or keep doing right. So, having just ruminated on my research, where it's going, and what my accomplishments are to prepare for this meeting, it seemed an appropriate time to introduce readers of this blog to my research.

In a word, I study novae. Novae can occur in binary systems where a compact star (most often a white dwarf) accretes mass from its companion. When enough matter builds up on the surface of the star and some critical mass is reached, it triggers a thermonuclear reaction which blows off material from the white dwarf as a shell of plasma. This material is quite hot and luminous, so naturally at this point you will see the star brighten - hence the name, "nova", which means "new star." Depending on the type of nova, this material will brighten and fade on the order of days to weeks to a few months - in the OPTICAL range. However, my research focuses on the RADIO light curves of novae, and how they evolve over time. In the radio regime, the time it takes for the lightcurve to rise and fall is usually on the order of months to years.

A lot of my work is based on the fact that different frequencies of light travel through plasma differently (like X-rays travel through your hand, making it possible to image bones, but you can't see through your hand in visible light). Therefore, if you look at the plasma ejected from a nova in two different frequencies, you'll get two separate brightnesses. So you can watch a nova in multiple frequencies and watch how it changes in each one, put it all together, and using some simple models and assumptions, make estimates about various properties of the ejecta (and thus the star and explosion as well). One of the things I really like about novae is that they occur on a time scale that we can NOTICE and KEEP TRACK OF. A new nova can go off at any time, and people all converge on it at once. You can clearly see the time evolution of these objects, and have a list of novae which are doing interesting things.

 But... sometimes the models don't quite work. Our assumptions are too broad, or there is some extra factor we overlook, or we get an answer which flies in the face of current nova theory. One of these issues is going to be the basis of my thesis: we're finding too much mass. Based on standard nova theory, we can estimate how much mass should be ejected in a nova shell. But when we do our model fits with observations, we seem to get masses over an order of magnitude (ie 10x) greater than what we expect. So is the problem with theory, or with our model fit assumptions? We've been making more and more detailed observations of novae, and we're still getting these large masses, even when taking in some additional factors in our model fit - because you can only stretch parameters so far and still keep your assumptions reasonable.

One of the assumptions we generally make in our models of novae is that the material ejected is spherically symmetric. Now, we KNOW that isn't true - nova ejecta is known to have clumps, or jets, or other asymmetries - but its a useful first-order approximation to make. So I'm also interested in jets and outflows in general, and what they imply about the system. Jets appear on multiple size scales in the universe: they can appear in outflowing systems from white dwarves to active galactic nuclei. So, in addition to novae, I have interest in other systems with varying brightness due to accretion, with outflows - like cataclysmic variables in general (where variation is due to accretion between two stars), and symbiotic stars (white dwarf/red giant binary system). I also have a fondness for neutron stars, though I don't really study them specifically at the moment. So really, binaries, jets, and compact stars in general hold my interest!

Some of the VLA telescopes
(in it's SMALLEST configuration)

I'm working with a collaborative group (the e-Nova project) looking at a number of different novae in radio, optical, and X-ray. The majority of our observations come from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array near Socorro, New Mexico.  This is an array of 27 individual antenna, working together as one (very large) radio telescope. I've been out there three times; however, these have generally been to learn how to do radio data reduction and analysis, not for observations themselves. When you get time on the VLA, you can input your operating instructions in the online system, and the operators out in New Mexico take care of the observing for you. The only observing I've done personally has been one trip out to MDM at Kitt Peak, AZ, two years ago, and one trip last August to the Sub Milli-meter Array (SMA) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The first of those trips was with a class on observational astronomy, where students got sent to the telescope (of which Columbia owns a share) to get experience with optical observing. The second, however, was directly related to my research: in order to obtain time on the SMA, you are required to send out an observer for a week to assist the local operators. So, when we wanted time for high-frequency radio observations of a few young novae, I got tapped to go. It was a pretty awesome experience... though sitting for a control room over a long night actually gets rather dull after a while.

Anyway, my collaboration has recently submitted two papers on which I'm a co-author. They are still undergoing the referee process, so they're not "published" yet and will undoubtedly change a bit before final publication, but they've been listed on the Astro-ph archives. I'm 9th and 10th author on these - it's a large collaboration - so I didn't actually do much of the writing, my contributions were more on the data side, as well as in editing and general discussion. But if you are interested in a bit more technical detail about what I've been working on, you can find those papers here.