Life is for living, so live it

November 2013 was the third time I met with the United States this year, and this time we saw each other for more than a few days. The first destination: San Francisco, or more precisely, Mountain View. The headquarters of NASA Ames is located there, and they were hosting the second Kepler science conference. Despite a worthy try by the American politicians to interfere with the conference by shutting down the government only weeks before, the science meeting took place as scheduled and we spent a week discussing results using the Kepler satelite's data, and their implications on exoplanet research.

Being together with a few hundred colleagues from all over the world to discuss science always has something inspirational to it. The conference's public lecture was given by prof. Frank Drake, known to astronomers and non-astronomers alike as the person behind the Drake equation. This equation, which he failed to mention at any point during his talk, predicts the chance of having life on another planet by multiplying factors such as the amount of stars, the amount of planets and the amount of planets which can support life. I share a sense of optimism with most exoplanet researchers that there is likely life somewhere out there, and that we might be able to detect it in the not too distant future. Or to paraphrase Frank Drake, perhaps we will soon connect to the intergalactic internet.

As with any conference, you need something remarkable to happen to make it worth remembering. This time the price went to my advisor, whose rental car turned out to be a white Mustang (with remarkably little space in the back seats).

On 19:20 | 0 reacties

I wonder how, I wonder why

Astronomers do astronomy, and while that involves computer work more often than most people would expect, we do have telescopes. I went on a trip to La Palma, to observe at the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) for two nights. In the traditional scientific division of tasks, there is the theory and the observations (in other sciences, the experiment). While I would never call myself an observer, seeing a magnificent night sky and an amazing milky way, doing hands-on astronomy moving a telescope around to find that star to take spectra of... It serves as a nice remember of why astronomy is so fascinating. 

La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, has its Roque de los Muchachos filled with telescopes from all over Europe, as I posted last week (in Dutch) on Scilogs. While preparations for a night of observations typically start in the afternoon, and you can only go to sleep after having closed down the telescope dome at sunrise, I was lucky enough to have two observing nights on Thursday and Monday, nicely separated by a weekend off. I was also fortunate enough to be there with Jens, a fellow PhD student who has worked at the NOT for a year. He knew both nice people and places on the island.

Most definitely worth mentioning - and highly recommended to anyone who happens to visit Santa Cruz on La Palma - is Restaurant Enriciai. With our group of eight people, we took up half of the restaurant, quite literally, as there was only one other table (for six people). A menu does not exist, but the lady of the house tells you what is on the menu that day, in Spanish, while addressing everyone as 'mi amore'. She's one of a kind, and some kind of strange combination between an overly friendly mother and an ex-girlfriend who is happy to finally see you again. It all adds to the wonderful atmosphere, to which the Mediterranean climate - which allows for a night out in nothing more than a T-shirt - also has a valuable contribution. And I should probably mention - or perhaps I shouldn't - that bottles of home-made alcohol appeared on our table after I had finished my baked tuna. This kind of dining experience, you just can't get in Denmark. 

There was the beach, including a little sun burn, and a game of paintball. And some amazing views, in between the telescopes on the Roque de los Muchachos, but also when climbing another volcanic mountain. And apart from observing at the NOT, we also got a tour at the Isaac Newton and William Herschel telescopes, at the Swedish Solar Telescope and at the KU Leuven telescope Mercator. After all, I am an astromer.

On 22:49 | 0 reacties

Zij moeten mannen met baarden zijn

The Moesgaard Vikingetraef is a yearly meeting in Aarhus for vikings from over the world. They bring traditional tents and lifestyle, food and drinks, battle outfits and horses. And they fight: complete with a nice show of beautiful horses, they are dressed up and go to war. A battlefield full of vikings, until the clinging of metal on metal is replaced by a field of bodies. And all of this happens at the Moesgaard beach, on a nice and sunny weekend. Pictures!

On 15:47 | 0 reacties

Tonight, we are young

Last weekend was Northside festival weekend! Sunday, Saturday and Friday were spent with beer in plastic cups, music filling the ears and pretty people everywhere. I did 2 x 8 hours of work, as a teamleader for the Student House in the Green Bar, and got a free ticket to the festival in return.

Friday was my work-free day and I went to enjoy the music with Tina and some of her biological friends. I started the day with a concert of Daughter, but it was Kaisers Orchestra an hour or two later that really impressed me with an inspiring concert. In the evening, I was truly disappointed by Keane: despite his fans and the music he's made, he couldn't hide his arrogance while on stage. Someone told me he should be compared to something like Coldplay, but he's not - he's simply not a nice guy. In addition, he was the living proof you don't need to be able to dance to make it to a festival stage, and when his only interaction with the public was when he started clapping for himself, it became a little bit ridiculous. 

There was also The Knife, and there is only one word to describe their concert: it was weird. It started out with some psychedelic music which I thought was the intro, but turned out to be the concert. There will ten dressed up girls on the stage dancing intensely and it took until the last twenty minutes to hear some vocals. The end of the night came with the sounds of the Danish band Nephew, who played for a home crowd and did what Keane couldn't: inspire the public. 

During the weekend and the days before, we had some friends (or friends of friends) making use of our spare living room bed, and so on Saturday I left for the festival grounds with my lovely roommate Catalina, her Italian friend Elena and Danish boyfriend Thomas. Not before picking up some raincoats, because the forecast predicted some real Danish weather for the day - read: showers! However, for me soon the time came to start my first shift and become responsible for 23 volunteers in the biggest bar of the festival. 

It was hard work, and my job certainly wasn't the hardest. I fixed some problems, did some explanation and tried to keep everyone happy by running around with candies. Team C, however, served a lot of customers and poured even more beers. Luckily, being in the center bar, we could enjoy a lot of the music while working. Worth remembering were Alt J, Kings of Convenience, Imagine Dragons, but most importantly... Nick Cave! Ah, music!

 After eight hours of hard work, when the festival grounds were empty and the bar cleaned up, we poured ourselves some after-work beers and saw our bar manager Niels wearing a weird (but apparently, warm) jacket. A few hours of sleep later, I had to be back, because my next eight hours of shift started at 11h.

 

This time, we died. Sixteen hours of work in less than 24 hours - too much. I did my best to keep morale up for everyone, but in the last hours, I had some moments of weakness. Luckily, the team was great and everything worked smoothly - with the exception of a little incident with our beer draft machine, which suddenly started pouring beer unstoppably. 

Luckily, to beat the fatigue, there was music. The beautiful Ellie Goulding and Fun in the afternoon, Gogol Bordello, Kashmir, Band of Horses, ... And after my work was finished (and I stuffed myself with food to recover somewhat), there were the great Arctic Monkeys and pretty Portishead to finish off a great weekend. Despite playing as the final band, this time of the year in Denmark, it never really gets dark outside.

See you next year!

Vincent

On 09:19 | 0 reacties

So Vincent can wait, he knows it's too late

I spent the past ten days in State College, Pennsylvania. A summer school for astronomers was organised there, by Penn State University. Together with Mikkel, a colleague and friend at Aarhus University, we went there to indulge ourselves in statistics.

The summer school itself was absolutely fantastic. With the ever-increasing size of observational data in astronomy, comes the need to handle those using statistical methods. Everyone in the field will recognize that as a fact, but nevertheless, deep statistical understanding often remains limited. Comparison and selection of complicated models, handling of various sources of errors, simulations, multi-dimensional datasets, complex parameter correlations and confidence estimation, large datasets from various sources, … The list of statistical problems is nearly endless and standard solutions rarely apply. While statisticians have answers to some of these challenges, astronomers – unlike a lot of people in social sciences, usually proud of their knowledge on mathematical issues – rarely outsource their issues directly to true statisticians.

The summer school was intended to bridge that gap between statisticians and astronomers, and targeted young people in the field, who, unlike some of their supervisors, acknowledge the need for a more thorough statistical background. Teaching was done by statisticians and astronomers (or combinations), and lab sessions introduced us to the freely available R program. It is safe to say the workshop was rewarding. I doubt statistics will ever be my favorite subject, but perhaps the time has come to embrace it.

It's not only about content. The weather was nice and warm for most of our stay, and having a margarita in a shirt outside was a welcome change from the Danish weather. Most importantly though, it was inspirational to meet astronomers from all over the world, doing a PhD in a wide range of topics. I might run into some of the exoplanet researchers that were present, one day. It will be interesting to see where all those young astronomers end up in five to ten years. How many will still be in the field?

The Lufthansa story

While Penn State's Days Inn hotel accommodated us flawlessly and the summer school's organisation was impeccable, unfortunately the same cannot be said about Lufthansa. Our flight scheme was Billund – Frankfurt – Philadelphia – State College. On the way there, they lost our luggage. It got stuck in Philly (as the locals like to pronounce the city), despite having rechecked the bags upon arrival on US soil. No big deal, as the next day it was delivered to the hotel, but it was on the way back to Denmark that things truly went fubar.

I don't use the term lightly (for those not familiar with it, I suggest an urban dictionary), but it is appropriate. In State College, they could not yet assign me a seat for the Philadelphia-Frankfurt flight, as it was overbooked, but since we got to the airport well in advance, it was not a problem (at least not for us). Then came Frankfurt.

Our flight got delayed by 15 minutes prior to arrival, because of bad weather at the airport. As we learned from the immense queue at the Lufthansa Service Desk, a large number of incoming other flights got diverted because of the thunderstorm, leading to subsequent cancellations in departing flights. Our final flight of the day, to Billund, was listed as “in time”, so we thought we'd escape the trouble, but an hour before departure, instead of the start of the check-in came a cancellation announcement.

We were informed that we were placed on a waiting list for the next plane to Billund a few hours later. With no other information than that there were more than 50 (!) people on that list, we could only hope that our four extra hours of waiting would pay off. I asked about compensation and my German was good enough to understand the discussion between the Lufthansa ladies, which was obviously not meant for my ears. Roughly translated: “How much can we give as food compensation? I didn't give anything to the previous people, but this one actively asked, so I guess I have to? - Yes, then you have to”. We got a voucher worth ten euro.

A few people from the waiting list made it on the plane, during what appeared to be a bit of a lottery: a large group of deeply tired people, hoping for their name to be called. Mikkel was among the lucky few, and with no other seats left on the plane, we decided to split up. He got his business class seat home, and I thought that on my own, it would be easier to find an alternative option to make it back to Denmark.

That turned out to be easier said than done. Together with the 30+ other people that didn't make it on the plane (what did they really expect?), we were sent off to find the Lufthansa Service Desk for more information and rebookings. After having crossed through half of Frankfurt Airport, we located it, only to find that they were closing it down. Granted, we were not the only stranded group that day, and the situation was rather chaotic.

Being sent out to the main hall for Lufthansa bookings, outside of the secured area, I started to lose hope to make it out on another plane the same day. A long and extremely slowly moving queue awaited us here, where we had to stand in line in a sun-lit tunnel of glass. Sweating, the first hour passed by. And another one. We wondered why they could not put more people on this. Throughout the waiting process, we were asked multiple times for our destination, and asked to remain patiently in the queue. When we finally made it to the front of the line, we were told that we were in the wrong line. This queue was only for Asian destinations. This Lufthansa person should consider himself lucky that the Danes are not aggressive people. I looked around me to find a hidden camera.

We moved a floor down and started afresh, in another line. At least this one moved somewhat faster. The friendly Lufthansa lady offered me a 'choice' between another waiting list attempt later that night, or a hotel and a flight the next day. Even the next-day flights were difficult, and she could put me on a flight to Billund, with a transfer at another airport. Not exactly tempted by the opportunity to see more German airports, I opted for a flight to Copenhagen instead. They wouldn't refund my train ticket to make it home from there, but I was long past caring.

I waited over an hour for the shuttle bus that Lufthansa promised would drive every 15 minutes, and arrived at the hotel around 21h – more than 12 hours after first arriving to Frankfurt airport. It stopped raining about an hour after I had arrived.

The food we got was halfway decent. With a gay couple from New York and anAmerican woman, we were discussing whether it was the airline or the hotel benefiting from this scam. It was certainly not stranded travelers such as ourselves. We got 30 minutes of free internet access, and for more, I paid ten euro out of my own pocket. The shower felt great, but it was less nice to change into the same t-shirt again – as my luggage was still somewhere checked in, Lufthansa promised me a hygiene package, but I never received it.

I woke up from the wake-up call, disoriented, but at least the breakfast was very good, so my spirits were up again. However, since the shuttle service wasn't large enough to take everyone to the airport and they had to call additional taxis, and we subsequently got stuck in morning traffic for the thirty minute drive to the airport, I got worried about missing another plane... but apparently it was time for Murphy to show me some mercy.

There was a small victory as well. The bottle of Highland Park I had bought at the tax free shop the day before, was taken from me at the security because I could not take it in from outside (too much liquid), as it was not packed in special duty free wrapping. I went to the shop that sold it to me the day before, and while they pointed out it was more Lufthansa's fault than theirs, they gave me a new one. Apparently, Heidemann does know what customer service means, which was refreshing to find out.

I left Saturday afternoon in the US, I arrived Monday at 16h home in Denmark. The travel took at least 24 hours longer than expected. In return, I got a lunch (only because I actively asked), a dinner buffet, a hotel room and a breakfast. I had a shower, but no clothes to change into. I paid for internet twice, at the airport and at the hotel. I paid my own train ticket and lunch on the train. While writing this, I my luggage still hasn't made it home, unlike promised, it was not rerouted properly. I should get it back later tonight.

The lady at the lost baggage counter was very helpful and advised me to file a complaint against Lufthansa. The friendly security person who took my whiskey bottle, and the duty free shop woman who gave me another one, advised me the same.

Lufthansa, consider this my complaint. I hope someone googles you, and reads this. Delays can happen, and bad weather is no one's fault. As most travelers, I accept that. The way you deal with the situation matters, though. This weekend, for me, I believe you did a pretty shitty job. 

Vincent

On 19:42 | 0 reacties

Amerika, Amerika

About five months after the start of my PhD in Denmark, I got out of the country for my first university travel. And not just any travel, because we were headed for Boston, United States.

Together with some colleagues from Aarhus, I was attending a two-day workshop at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The aim was to exchange knowledge about exoplanet atmospheres and set up future collaborations. Naturally, the research group at MIT was a very strong one, so I was excited and a little nervous about the trip. It all worked out really well, and I had some very interesting discussions with a number of people.

The head of the group, Sara Seager, is the author of a book that was my first introduction to the field of exoplanets. It was great to meet her in person. Actually, we already 'met' her on the airplane to Boston: one of the in-flight entertainment videos was titled "Alien Worlds", and guess which scientist was interviewed for it? Exactly.

As we arrived on Saturday night (local time), we had a full Sunday to see a bit of the city. Boston turned out to be a quite enjoyable, and a long walk along the Freedom Trail took us for some sightseeing. After having been in Denmark for a while, the American friendliness takes a bit of getting used to, and our hotel had a fully automatic pancake machine (!), but other than that, the city seemed somewhat European. I certainly wouldn't mind to return here for a while!

But first, on the plane to Belgium! Another workshop awaits me there, but so do my parents and friends. I'm coming home!

Groetjes, kusjes en liefde,

Vincent

On 18:44 | 0 reacties

Just some simple kindness

When living abroad, seeing your family becomes a privilege you can only enjoy a few times a year. The first one for 2013 was in Denmark, since my parents chose to spend their winter holiday here. For a week, they drove around and saw all the winter landscapes the country has to offer. An extended weekend of their trip was reserved for visiting Aarhus and me.

They had dropped me off in this city before, but it was the first time they could actually behave like true tourists and see some of Aarhus. They took some time for the city's classics, Aros Museum and Den Gamle By, and weren't disappointed. Generally, they seemed to like the town where I'll be living for the next few years - may it inspire more Belgian visitors!

For me, the reunion was a nice occasion to go to fancy restaurants without having to pick up the bill, and to show off my improving understanding of the Danish language. While my father regularly claimed the language can't be that difficult, after reading some words that seemed similar to Dutch, he quickly switched to English when spoken to. While I seem to have finally got a little grip on this Scandinavian language, it is still very much a work in progress - but 2013 isn't over, so my New Year's resolution still stands.

That they were here by car had two other advantages. It gave us the opportunity to visit a neighbouring village called Ebeltoft (see pictures). Tiny, but cozy, the town is mostly famous for the frigate that is visible from about everywhere. I will also remember Ebeltoft for the glass museum, with its somewhat crazy room with multi-colored walls.

In the car, they also brought me boxes full of stuff from Belgium: plates, silverware, but also real Belgian ice tea, a pot and a pan, and from my grandparents I even received a true Wafelijzer. Thank you, now I suppose there are no more excuses and I will have to bake real Belgian waffles here. The reason for all the kitchen equipment is that on the first of March, I am moving to a real place. Together with a friend, Catalina, I will move to an apartment in the city center, with our own kitchen and living room. I am ready and prepared.

On 01:29 | 0 reacties

Happy birthday dear Sandra/Tina

The birthday party of my great Aarhus friends, the biologists Sandra and Tina. Entrance to the party was on condition of wearing a special hat or glasses - I picked glasses that convinced people I am an astronomer, without having to spell it out.

On 01:22 | 0 reacties