rottnest island

i was in perth, western australia last week for a GAMA group meeting. i stayed for some of the weekend to do a bit of exploring as well. during my last visit, i went north to see the pinnacles. this time, i went west to explore rottnest island.

the oddly-named island is just another ridiculously gorgeous coastal part of australia - this time with ship wrecks, a massive osprey nest, and quokkas, in addition to 63 beaches!

cars are not allowed on the 11 km wide island, so we rented some bikes and rode all around. that's a lighthouse in the background, although it almost looks like a shuttle launch pad from this distance!

we rode a lap around the island and then came back to this spot to swim. to the left in the photo below is a rusted old ship wreck. before jumping in, we watched two dolphins jump around in the water along the coast!

there have been an unusually high number of shark attacks off the coast of western australia over the last year, but there were still surfers out in the waters.

we also spotted a huge osprey nest on top of this tiny rock island!

luckily, the air was calm during our visit, but the wind can get VERY strong, as demonstrated by these permanently bent and stripped trees!

this sign somehow summarizes australia for me.

what are quokkas, you ask?

Photo Credit: Quokkagirl

they're funky little rat/kangaroo marsupial creatures that are the size of big cats (or small dogs) and live almost exclusively on rottnest island.

slaves to the arrow of time

Art.
The expression of consciousness, emotion, desire.
Experimenting with materials, sounds, words.
Mastering techniques, developing anew.
Tangible proof of love,
Left vulnerable to interpretation.
Powerful product of our souls,
This Art.

Science.
The figuring out of how it all works.
Testing ideas, boundaries, possibilities.
Creating new knowledge, building on the past.
Maleable proof of existence,
Susceptible to new evidence.
Language of the Universe,
This Science.

Life.
The ultimate wonder.
Unstoppable evolution marinating in infinity.
Frighteningly fragile, each single specimen,
Yet astonishingly adamant as a whole.
Teasing and shunning, mysterious and bold.
Embracing the challenge of change,
This Life.

beaming

a beautiful photo by datso.

an invocation for beginnings

interesting points to consider, by ze frank.




"life isn't just a sequence of waiting for things to be done," he says.

yes, that's certainly true, but my struggle right now is that i'm not entirely sure what my "goal" is, or in what time frame i'm trying to reach that vaguely elucidated end point.  it was easier when my goal was to get a PhD and a job.  ok.  now what?

so i'm traveling and accomplishing small things in hopes that they help me envision and define what it is i ultimately want. such is the problem with career steps (ie. postdocs) that last for a couple years, i guess. but i'm not trying to follow along a traditional academic career path, i just want to do astronomy and share it with as many people as i can, because the Universe is awesome in the true sense of the word.

what am i trying to do, though? i think i know,** but i don't know how to get there. so that is the goal i've set for myself for the next ~6 months... more clearly define what it is that i actually want to do, who it will benefit, and who i can convince to pay me to do it!

but ze is right - we must remember to actually enjoy the moments as they happen, or what's the point? i know that these days i'm certainly enjoying being super! :)




** dream job: science correspondent on the daily show! jon stewart, have you been getting all the post cards i've been sending over the last several years? call me.

cosmic mural

if someone could just come and paint this on my bedroom wall, that would be great.

a little knowledge

i one hundred percent agree with the punchline of this abstruse goose comic.

wireless gingko

this photo from a book called abstract city made me laugh...

... and reminded me of the beautiful gingko trees i saw all over south korea...

... and generally of south korea...

kimchi pots

... and, of course, food!

Bibimbap (my favorite!)

they like to serve lots of little tiny white dishes - of yummy spiciness!

more than survival

high atop the parkes radio dish

during the routine maintenance period this week, we got to climb high up to the focus cabin of the parkes radio dish to see what the receivers that we are using to collect data actually look like!

to get to the focus cabin, first we have to go onto the dish (if only i had a cup of tea ;)

up there is where we're climbing!

the incoming signal from a distant source bounces off the dish and gets focused up where the receivers collect the signal. radio waves are electromagnetic radiation, just like light you see with your eye, but they have longer wavelengths and carry less energy. any electromagnetic signal with a wavelength over 1 millimeter is a radio wave.

since radio waves are much weaker than optical light, the signal needs to be amplified through a whole series of electronics that i honestly don't completely understand. but i'll show you some photos anyway ;)

happily up at the focus cabin!

the cabin has two stories - it doesnt look so big from way down on the ground!

the receiver you can see the top of in the photo above looks like this:

the engineer who is giving up our tour has a last name of armstrong, and in the true aussie fashion of shortening words and giving everyone nicknames, they call him "army" :)

the multi-beam receiver we are using this week is this beast, which is kept at a cool temperature of 18 Kelvin (-255 Celsius = -427 Fahrenheit!).

of course we climbed on top of the focus cabin to enjoy the view...

and then climbed back down.

mystery "shelf"

so, i need a little help with this one. in the women's shower at the astronomers lodge of parkes observatory, there is an odd feature. see in the photo below, the little shelf down low? well, it's not flat at all. in fact, its at such a steep angle that you cannot rest anything on it.

the other little shelf was full, so i went to place my soap on that dish, but noticed it's steep angle and thought - huh? and then wondered why there would be a shelf so low anyway?

so my question is - what the heck is that thing for?

refreshing color

via scotch & jazz @ dusk

"the dish"

this week i'm about 6 hours west of sydney near a town called parkes where the 64-meter parkes radio observatory lives.

parkes is featured in an australian film called the dish that was released in 2000. the movie didnt do very well in the US and i have to blame poor advertising, because it's a great movie! if you havent seen it, i highly recommend it! it's definitely one of my favorite science-y films and it fantastically highlights hilarious australian humour! here's a trailer:



they shot the film on location and used the original control room, which nowadays looks like this:

that room still houses the correlators and computer equipment, but is no longer where astronomers sit to control the telescope. instead, we sit one floor below. here we are in the current control room, watching the dish under the dish late on my first night of this observing run!

an interesting safety feature of operating this telescope these days is this device.

the counter goes up to 15 minutes and some time before that happens, you have to push the green button or else a very unpleasant alarm goes off and a whole series of automated safety precautions is activated! it's kind of a fun game on these long observing stretches, as radio observations do not require much work at all compared to using optical telescopes! and the whole process reminds me of the tv show lost.

and yes, when i visited the dish last year i got to go on a hayride!

(if you don't know what i mean by this... watch the movie! ;)

sixty symbols does the LHC

brady and professor ed copeland recently visited the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near geneva for sixty symbols.

the main video in the series (click here) gives an overview of the entire project, but i wanted to share this video about the CMS experiment:



ed is absolutely adorable when he sees the detector for the very first time, as captured here ;)

jupiter, the moon, venus, and the dish

here's a lovely view just after tonight's sunset at the parkes radio dish. from left to right is jupiter, the moon, venus, and the dish.

i think the planets and the moon look like a little koala together ;)

all the stars

a nice moment from calvin and hobbes:

"Look at all the stars! The Universe just goes out forever and ever!"

brought to me by scipsy

a family portrait

captured last week at siding spring observatory...

molecule necklace

there's a whole collection of these molecule necklaces, but the one of LSD with this insane hair is my favorite!

an episode on the AstroPodcast

i made it off the mountain one afternoon earlier this week to join allison in the small town of coonabarabran and record an episode of the AstroPodcast!

"This week Dr. Amanda Bauer, Super Science Fellow of the AAO, joins us to talk about her life as an astronomer collecting images of galaxies and trying to find the reason for some of their seemingly strange behaviours."

listen: HERE

this was a lot of fun and i hope to join allison on the AstroPodcast again sometime soon. please let me know if there are any issues you'd like to hear discussed!

high atop the telescope dome

last night we received the privilege of venturing to the tip top of the 4-meter anglo-australian telescope dome! excellent views and good, windy fun!

here is the telescope with us on top.

hello!

here are some of the views as the sun set on the march equinox.

here are some excited astronomers!

here is the blue shadow of the earth just after the sun set below the horizon.