ESO Science Day
Today was the ESO Science Day. What does that means?? Means each astronomer would talk about the latest results. Not everyone at ESO is an astronomer, there are several other areas on development, like lots of engineers and lots of administrative people. And most of the astronomers are not hired to do full time astronomical research. Most are hired to do research and work on duties (like user support, instrument development ...). So astronomers must gather from time to time to know what the others are doing.
84 were available to talk today, that means 4 minutes talks to each one. No exceptions! The director for science had the same 4 minutes as the undergrad student. If the director general was around he would have the same 4 minutes too.
Very nice to know what most of the people is doing! Some are doing stuff related to some project I'm in, some do very different things, but still interesting. No one else talked about compact groups of galaxies ... :-( But Magda Arnaboldi talked about intracluster light, like half way there.
Back in Goettingen. On the train some work on KG and some work on hi-z clusters ... more things running over night.
Next post will be from Brazil. We're going on sunday, half work (collaborations), half vacations. Lot's of good things to happen.
Labels: hi-z morph, kg, life
Getting ready
So! Applications sent!
Backup done!
Part of the stuff needed for the trip copied to the laptop. Tomorrow more copying.
E-mails with the collaborators about talk schedule back home and abstracts and titles and logistics.
Ah! And cleaning my desk since Miguel Verdugo will be visiting Bodo for a month and using my desk.
Tonight yet: last pass on tomorrows 4 minutes talk about dynamical evolution on compact groups and some literature research to have all the papers I need to write the papers I wanna do it on the way.
Basically getting everything ready for the trip.
Labels: hi-z morph, IGL, life
Induction course
Today the day was basically the ESO induction course. We've got introduced to the various parts of the organization, which is pretty complex, from HR to Science passing through IT, for example. It took most of the day. The rest was used "applicating" :-)
Labels: applications
Finishing
Catalogues finished, next step is photometric redshifts.
Talk to friday at ESO's Science Day, finished, now gotta think exactly what to say (4 minutes).
"Applicating", reviewing text.
Labels: applications, hi-z morph
Snow and redshifts
No, snow don't cause redshifts or vice-versa :-)
We started to have snow this weekend (even though it's suppose to stop for 2-3 weeks and then come back). That caused the train to delay for about 1.5 hours (luckily after I was inside). That, on the one hand messed up my program, I had a faculty meeting at 14:00, and I had to go directly to ESO, quick lunch and meeting, instead of stopping by at home and drop my suitcase.
On the other hand I had 1.5 hors more of work on the train, and they were quite good. Now there's only one redshift "hunt" to do, the WHDF, to have it all ready for estimating photometric redshift. I hope my friend Hendrik Hildebrandt (Leiden) can help me again with it. I'll have it done for tomorrow.
Besides that, it looks like book keeping ... :-))
Faculty meeting was long, but OK.
Labels: hi-z morph
NOTHING ... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
Yes, as the title says, today I did absolutely nothing of work (not really truth, I read 1/4 of a paper on the bus).
The whole day was spent on solving the "ticket home issue".
As I said here before, TAM refused to correct our names that were switched. A large travel agency in Brazil was unable to get them to do this simple thing, even though they first said they would they changed their mind and forgot to tell us.
Checked a last minute agency and found a good price as alternative, but we would have to act fast. Used a contact inside TAM (a cousin) to fix it, the reply is "the booking code is different now and the names are fixed". The travel agency (airline-direct, a bad option) did a new booking, even though I didn't ask for it, what invalidated the first (and wrong) one ... so nothing to be fixed!!
Called the agency, who confirmed the new booking with the old price, I would just have to pay the fine for canceling the first one. Great ... great??? Last friday I was refusing to pay anything because it was not my fault. Now after a week fighting I was glad I would be able to fix this just paying the fine ... that's their strategy. Every time you call someone different answers, they give any answers (never written), but you're the one that is always calling back and forth, to you're tired, fed up, pissed off, they are fine.
Anyway, I would accept this as a good option, given the circumstances, and asked for an e-mail giving all the information, including the price that I asked the agent to confirm to me about 5 or 6 times. Turns out that when the e-mail arrived (way later than they promised me) the price was 300 euros more expensive. After calling 3 times and not talking to the same person, who would call me back ASAP, I managed talk to the same agent ... "sorry sir, when we checked my colleague saw that the price was more expensive". As Fernanda said "we still have a little bit of integrity, we won't accept that", my words to the agent were "So, as the price is different, I don't want that ticket, you can cancel the old one also, I will pay the fine, and I will not travel anymore".
Called the last minute agency, who still had 2 places on the flight and while booking it the attendant probably did something wrong and came with a "sir, I'll have to call you back after talking to my superior" ... in the mean while I found a KLM flight for an even cheeper price. While filling up the form, called back the last minute agency saying "don't do anything, I'll call you back", finished up the KLM booking ...
Of course, the day was not the best one, so there was an internet problem after paying (this never happens before paying), their phone service asked me to call tomorrow to confirm, but I've already got their e-mail with booking code. I'll call them anyway.
SO! NOVEL (NIGHTMARE) IS OVER. Unfortunately we're flying with one connection, the TAM flight was direct, and coming back the 31/12, so reveillon will be at 12,000 meter of altitude ... the bright side is that we arrive yet on 30/11, my father's birthday, which he will celebrate with his grandson (Matheus is all that matters now hehehehe).
Hopefully I'll have some time on the weekend to work a bit, let's see. Monday 7:03, train to Munich.
Labels: life
Still cataloguing
It's taking too long, but there where too many references in this cluster and I want to refer to literature previous works. Found some redshifts to be rechecked also.
The next one has almost no redshifts ... tomorrow I'll finish it ...
No news on the flight to Brazil issue, just more stress ... grrrrr
Finish reading the paper about doing and writing science, I'll comment it tomorrow, too tired for that.
Labels: hi-z morph, life
Redshifts search
So! Redshifts search, the whole day, and if it keeps going as slow as it is, it will take the whole week.
The novel of my tickets home also keeps going. Our contact into TAM told my father in law everything is set, we can board and they would contact TAM in Frankfurt to make sure of that. At the end of the day I received an e-mail from the travel agency here in Germany saying they were contacted by TAM-Frankfurt, that told them they were contacted by TAM-Brazil and still TAM-Frankfurt insist they won't let us board. Either TAM-Frankfurt decided to disobey the instruction from TAM-Brazil, or TAM-Brazil forgot to inform us that TAM-Frankfurt has a mind of its on, or the travel agency is "playing" with it (what doesn't seem to be the case). In any of the options I can't take chances and just get to the airport with nothing saying I can board. So I need something written. Why TAM-Brazil just doesn't fix our names once and for all. Nothing will change tomorrow, national holiday in Brazil.
Tomorrow: redshifts, "applicating" and some extra stuff.
Labels: hi-z morph, life
Cataloguing ... still
I'm feeling like a book keeper lately :-)
I'm organizing the final version of my tables, with all the important information. That is done for the photometry, now I have to search for spectroscopic redshift in order to get photometric redshift for the whole sample ... that will keep going for a while.
It's been a while that I don't comment about a paper. Just read a paper from Dimitri Gadotti (MPA) that is nice and worth commenting (not because he's my personal friend). He analyses SDSS galaxies with multicomponent modeling (disk, bulge and bar). Nice results about classical bulges and pseudo bulges. That the first ones are quiescent and likely formed by violent processes such as small mergers, while the second ones are forming stars and formed by non-violent processes such as disk instabilities (like bars). On the other hand, despite being quiescent and occupying the red sequence, classical bulges are not ellipticals with a disk. One thing that called my attention is the semi-automated way of modeling the galaxies, about the same kind we are doing in the hi-z morphology project.
Another paper, I'm still reading it, is "Doing Science, Writing Science" from Jutta Schickore (Department of History and Philosophy of Science - Indiana University). The paper is about the mismatch on what scientists do and what they state they did in a paper. We don't really tell in a paper all we did. I'm still in the beginning of it, is a large paper, but the main discussion seems to be that we write things in a way it can be judge in our favor and not with the insights and the way we constructed this knowledge. The discussion is old, there's a long work from 1936 about it. Let's see how it goes.
Labels: hi-z morph, papers
Late for friday!
Friday was a well organized day, up to a certain point. Things worked on the clock as I have "scripted" on the train home on thursday. Analysis of the hi-z morphology all arranged, last objects sent to CAS analysis, also multicomponent modeling running, some work on the KG project to get it done soon ...
THEN I received an e-mail from the internet travel agency, which I have asked to "unswitch" our names on the tickets to Brazil in 2 weeks. Their reply was that TAM (the brazilian airline) refuses to do the change and requested them to cancel the tickets and re-emit them. That implies that there's a fine of 120 euros each adult + the new rate for the ticket. A ticket bough now is a "bit" more expansive than a ticket both in JULY!
Called myself TAM and the agency several times and the throw one to the other the possibility of changing and the agency "claims" they did nothing wrong with our names so we have to pay the onus of changing it. Also TAM informed us that with switched names we're unable to board ... basically the agency system switched our names, TAM is seeing a "golden mine" where they can get 1000 euros extra reselling our sits to ourselves and I'm the one to pay for that. Now my father in law is dealing with it, since he has friends inside TAM and controls all the flying of a large TV channel ...
Learned my lesson. Never buy from "airline-direct.de" again and avoid, as much as possible flying TAM.
That basically used half of my day and took my head out of business.
Also tried to help a friend saving data from a broken HD and destroyed my PC's windows ... now I have to save MY DATA and re-install everything.
Labels: hi-z morph, kg, life
Cataloguing
So updated catalogues, new list for CAS, new list for multi-modeling, that goes.
Some work on KG, rerun and decontamination going on.
Travel arrangements for Brazil in December.
Labels: hi-z morph, kg, life
2 days + 007
Yesterday I came to Garching.
Finishing the VF data on the train, noticed a pair of problems, that were solved by today.
Checking some problems with galaxy counts and a long discussion with Bodo.
Then comes a social part. Part of the new James Bond (007) movie (Quantum of Solace) was filmed at the ESO Residencia at Paranal. That caused a lot of talking by the time. Now the film is on theater and ESO got us one exhibition of it. So yesterday, end of the day, a large fraction of the institute got to see the movie and 007 blowing the residencia! hehehehehe
After that dinner with work mates, nice restaurant, nice evening.
Today finished the VF data (the kcorrection and the CAS analysis were missing) and sent it around. Job done! Now Elif Kutdemir has to write the paper :-)
Also some KG programing and several e-mails back and forth about several things. At the end of the day got to the excellence cluster "get together" and met Jasper Sommer-Larsen. Was nice talking to him.
Labels: hi-z morph, kg, life
Repair + music + baby sitting
So!
Friday was still repairing files and I played at Fernada's boss birthday party with some colleagues. It was nice. A couple of Bossa Nova songs to a select audience of scientists, including a nobel prize (they look exactly like us, but are way smarter :-)).
Today I was suppose to go to Munich, but Matheus had no sleep at al and I stayed to take him to the pediatrician and see what's wrong (and also because I manage to get to bed, at the time I was suppose to be waking up). The doctor said he probably has a virus infection that's causing a sore throat (also known as "he has no idea"). But its not ear inflammation of something dangerous. We hope he sleeps tonight. Tomorrow I'll go to Munich.
Labels: hi-z morph, life
Repairing
So! Whole day repairing tables ... yet to go. But then things are RIGHT!
Also have to mind passing along some of the corrections and arranging some quantities (CAS parameters and rest-frame M_B) for the VF project, so I finish passing data to Elif Kutdemir (Gronningen - "one of Bodo's students" - she hates when I refer to her like that, she's the last survivor of the old research group :-)) HI ELIF hehehehe).
Labels: hi-z morph
Scripting
Scripting to solve problems, not done, but almost there.
Nice discussion with Asmus Böhm about the need (or not) of circularizing effective radius results given by GALFIT. It gives along the semi-major axis ... and the literature (theoretically) on circular and not elliptical apertures ...
Labels: hi-z morph, kg
Errors
A small error will make me fix the header of about 30.000 images ... writing a script for that ...
Also writing a script for the analysis of the KG project.
Today some work on KG, some work on morphology, until I found this error ... grrrr
Nice chat with Paula Coelho about spectral synthesis models, astronomy and life in general!
Exabyte tapes reading on the way thanks to an ESO colleague Lowell Tacconi-Garman.
Labels: hi-z morph, kg, life
Back
After 2 weeks of hook, due to the back injury, back to ESO.
Friday was application + finish the last clusters for the velocity fields analysis.
Today, some work on the KG project, matching catalogues and also on the morphology in clusters, back to arranging catalogues :-)
Also today, meeting of students and fellows with the Director for Science of ESO and arranging things like external HD to expand my storage area.
Lunch with Dimitri Gadotti (MPA) and Paula Coelho (IAP), another PhD mates meeting :-)
Labels: hi-z morph, kg, life
