Life in optical

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited by the excellent Christina Scott to take part in her weekly radio show ‘Science Matters’. The main item of news that was going to be covered was the official signing of the agreement between the South African government and the International Astronomical Union to host the IAU’s Office for Astronomy Development and I was there as a foreign researcher, having just landed in the country.

Having just arrived, I wanted to brush up on the status of various projects that are funding my position in case the journalist asked me about them. I had long phone conversations with Kim de Boer, manager of the the SKA Human Capacity Development programme and Prof. Justin Jonas, Associate Director for Science and Engineering in the SKA South Africa Project Office.

As it turns out I wasn’t asked about SKA during the radio show: the main news was the astronomy development office. But since I got this great update, I thought I’d share a bit about the status of the SKA and MeerKAT projects in this country, because what is happening here is really cool.

First thing: there is way more to the South African SKA project than just the bid to host it.

There is a wealth of investment in people and when you invest in people, you don’t add up assets, you multiply them. And with MeerKAT well under way, cutting edge science and technology are already happening.

So what is happening with the telescopes?

First, there was KAT-7, the Karoo Array Telescope, a 7-dish array that was proposed as a prototype to the SKA. Quickly, this was complemented by MeerKAT, aka more of KAT, which would consist of 80 such dishes.

Well guess what, KAT-7 is being commissioned as I write this. 7 dishes are built, 4 are operating as an interferometer already. All of it on budget, on specs – and ahead of schedule.

There is also C-BASS, installed and operating. Members of the scientific collaboration from South Africa, the U.S. and the U.K look forward to the full-sky temperature and polarization map at 5GHz that will help extract CMB signal from other experiments and observe the synchrotron radiation from relativistic electrons in the galaxy.

What about MeerKAT?

MeerKat has undergone a ‘concept design review‘, during which international teams and experts come to evaluate the idea. This has all gone swimmingly with positive comments and useful input.

Now, the project is going through the ‘design review process‘, which basically turns the science goals into technical requirements, which then get translated into concrete choices of appropriate technologies and if all goes well, the selected technology should deliver the science.

While the design is being finalised, there are some things that can already be installed, and the team are not wasting any time. The telescopes will need solid foundations in the ground and excellent data connections to transfer the observations to the computers that are going to process them. Those are in an advanced planning stage.

Exciting times! The teams involved are working very hard on this, and on everything at once. Sometimes I wish I could be a fly seeing it all happen…

The Human Capacity Programme of the SKA project is well worth its own blog post and being one of its postdocs, I look forward to meeting SKA scientists and students at the next SKA Postgraduate Bursary conference where everyone will get together.

That’s it, it’s official, I have my one-way flight from Europe to South Africa. In a few weeks, I’m going for good. And I can’t wait.

What am I going to do there? I’m going to do science.

I’m going to carry out scientific research, work with students, possibly lecture a bit, try to write papers, etc. I’ll be an ordinary postdoc after 5 years out of the research circus, with a big wide gap in publications. That in itself is rather unusual, but I am not deterred. It will be great fun, because when I’m in South Africa, I feel free.

I feel free to seize and to create opportunities. I feel free to be myself. I feel unaffected by the pressure of traditional academia because in South Africa, the big picture is bigger than elsewhere.

I “grew up” as a scientist in a place where you are taught to believe that you need to get the high-profile fellowships and the faculty positions as quickly as possible, otherwise you’re nobody. Forever. Being under the impression that all the effort it takes to complete a PhD could have been in vain can be rather demoralising. In fact, that’s what made me leave research back then.

After 5 years of doing my own thing, something that doesn’t fit in any box, where how I am judged comes from what I’ve done, not who I’ve worked with, I feel that I’ve built something good. Now I don’t need to worry about staying in the race. I’m not in the race. I’m not in any race. I see a big forward-looking bright picture, I’m looking at a bit of future.

I’m also doing this because I’ve been given an amazing opportunity, because I can, because I love science and because there are awesome people that I can work with. Isn’t that how science should be done?

(image: SAAO/CAP2010)

Yes there may be less of some things than elsewhere, but it feels like there is more life in people there. And it’s people who make up the true richness of a place, not stuff. So while doing science, I’ll try to make sure it’s always teamwork. I’ll learn from everyone, I’ll try to work with grad students, who also work with undergrad students, who in turn can talk about their cool studies at their high schools, and – basically – everybody can be someone else’s hero :)

Some may say this is a naive way of putting things, but allow me to disagree. Once someone told me I was one of their their role models (alongside other amazing people I admire respectfully). “Me?!?” I thought in disbelief. But then I thought, “this person is going to out-do me in every way imaginable. She’s cleverer than me, she’s younger than me, she’s amazing, she is going to go much further than I ever will, and I will have been part of what pushed her forward…. Wow. That’s just awesome!” It’s positive feedback at its best. I just want to do even better now because I’m aware that people are looking at me.

There are more heroes to come than have been. And it would seem that I can be a part of making heroes by doing cool science in South Africa. So yes, I’m going to South Africa to do science because I believe that the science done there is excellent, that the people are stimulating, and because I believe it is so much more relevant to do science in South Africa than in some prestigious institute full of fancy people where the best I can hope to achieve is about myself not about the world.

(image: Carel van der Merwe)

In this telephone interview of Nathi Mthethwa, South African minister of police, a BBC journalist is desperately fishing for bad news about South Africa’s security records for the upcoming football world cup after the death of the white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche. The minister’s replies are pragmatic and rational and well balanced and the journalist really appears to be fishing – and failing to get what he wants.

FYI, this is what the minister refers to: The 2009 season of the Indian cricket Premier league coincided with the general elections in India. Due to concerns regarding players’ security, the venue was shifted to South Africa.

Playing in the waves from carolune on Vimeo.

Music: Dvorak: Slavonic Dances op.46 played by Breemer & Vorontsova from pianosociety.com

Those of you who know me – or have seen me use my beloved camera – know that I shoot it like a machine gun. Given that it peaks at something like 6 images per second, it makes for a funny timelapse kind of thing when looking back.

Usually I select the best shot of the series to make my one photo of the moment or subject. That makes for a lot of wasted memory space, which doesn’t matter at all in this wonderful world of digital photography :)

Sometimes however, it’s hard to chose the best one – and when it’s something very dynamic I’m shooting, I just wish I could make a timelapse of it all. I am a huge fan of timelapse photography but I have never put together a video of timelapse myself. I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t know if there’s a specific piece of software that’s required.

Anyway. Tonight I tried, and…. success! I’ve made a cool timelapse photography movie of some awesome waves on the Atlantic coast of South Africa. I didn’t take the photos with a timelapse in mind so apologies if it’s not at all stable or anything. I guess it could be seen as a very old movie or something?

This place is one of my favourite spots, It’s not easy to reach, you have to climb through a few rocks but it’s always worth it. It is spectacular to witness the waves break on those rocks. At sunset it’s a delight. You’ll see during the film that my lens got happily sprayed. Oops. Fellow photographers agree or not – but my gear has to survive my lifestyle and when I get the waves, the waves get me and my camera too…

I hope you enjoy the video. It’s a first and I’m hugely excited about it – now that I have unlocked timelapse photography, I’m going to have so much fun!

Waves from carolune on Vimeo.

Waves at sunset in Llandudno, South Africa. Timelapse photography. Music: Valse nonchalante, Camille Saint-Saëns played by Chris Bremer, pianosociety.com.

For the sake of other timelapse wannatries out there, here is how I made it :)

1: import the timelapse photos into iPhoto
2: create a new project in iMove
3: import the previously imported photos as media for the movie
4: select all frames (the default is that each second is displayed for 4 seconds with a Ken Burns effect, this is not what we want)
5: click on the settings of the media in the iMovie project.
6: set the duration of each photo to 0.01 seconds (that’s the shortest iMovie will allow)
7: remove the Ken Burns effect!
8: find some cool music to put on top of your timelapse series. To not be in trouble about copyrights and other legal issues, I usually use classiccat.com or pianosociety.com, both are treasure-troves of recorded classical music
9: add text, title, scomments, effect, whatever you like to do in iMove
9: export the whole thing into a nice format
10: upload to your youtube, dailymotion, vimeo, etc. account and share! :)

Please leave me a comment if you have a suggestion on how to improve on this. Thanks :)