Back!?
Two months with no posting and three months without a real post.
Well, as said in the last post a huge crisis was on the way and it hit us like a hurricane. It's a crisis at home, but nothing to do with family. Family is great.
Long story short. My wife came back to work after two lumbar disk hernia surgeries and took little time to find out the kind of ASSHOLE (sorry for the word, but is the sweetest that comes to mind) he is. After some professional mistreat she decided to quit, putting our life in Munich in problems. We managed a provisional solution.
That solution also goes through looking to the world outside of the research "bubble" ...
Besides that, I also commented here, a couple of times, that the childcare structure in Munich is extremely deficient. That forces parents to basically build their own kindergartens. The state funds most of it but has no work (and expenses) administrating it.
Our, the
drachenei, started on august. This had a lot of work associated. From end of june to mid august literally building the place, still every weekend some stuff to do. From that on we all have tasks to perform. Mine, of course is IT and part of the Facility Management group.
The whole month of august was the adaptation of the kids there. That represented part-time care, with increasing time and in good part staying at the place during a couple of hours. Adaptation went well. Now the second phase started. Making it work properly with all the problems of a starting operation.
It took a lot of time.
Together with that, a lot of time spent with application material outside of the academy and difficult times to put my mind on work.
Not all lost. The GCS project is flowing, tends to accelerate now. A nice radio sources project has effective started and we observed good data on PNes in compact groups. Data to be reduced.
The good news are that the UCDs paper was accepted TODAY. So soon is astro-ph (probably friday).
In summary we have detected, for the first time, UCDs in two Hickson Compact Groups (HCG) - HCG 22 and HCG 90. The detected UCDs indicate two different formation channels and now NEW objects. Old objects with possible mid-age ones.
Cool paper :-)
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_pn, hcg_ucd, life
Several things
So! Several things in a long time.
In this time the UCDs paper is gone and back from the coI's and it's submitted for real.
Done some stuff on the GCs, now I think I have it clear. Still playing with the data, but almost there.
Several small crisis happened in the meanwhile and a major one that is still being dealt with ... let's see.
More when it's done.
In this time without posting, June 27th, this blog had it's 5th anniversary. Not sure it's really fulfilling it's purpose, but surely has done something.
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd, life
GCSs photometry again
So! GCSs photometry. Redoing some stuff now more accurately after confirm that "there's something there!"
Labels: hcg_gcs
Back on a new topic
As weird as it sounds :-)
Back on an old, but new considering the last few weeks, topic. GCs! Selecting objects!
Gotta finish that ASAP.
Also some minor changes on the UCDs paper text after ping-pong with Steffen Mieske (ESO-Chile).
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd
Now it goes!
Ups and downs weeks. Time spent in personal things like solving problems, going to the doctor to try to find out why Fernanda still has pain after two hernia surgeries (they may know why now ...) and on good things also like recording our cycling podcast (Radiocorsa) on a raw/live way to discuss the first long week of the Giro d'Italia. That was fun. Also some good time spent taking Matheus around with his bike. Now I just need to find a time slot (and a weather slot) to cycle myself.
Finished the text for the Mammary Gland paper. Looking for the GCS center on H90. Not trivial task, but today there was some light on the topic. Lets see how it goes. Also finally updating the UCDs paper. Tomorrow I'm meeting with Iskren (AIfA) who's visiting ESO Bodo and Michael to discuss some topics on that. Also meeting Magda Arnaboldi (ESO) and Ortwin Gerhard (MPE) to talk about our coming observations of PNes.
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_pn, hcg_ucd, life, mammary_gland_paper
A little bit of everything!
So! A bit of UCDs work with the new objects we have redshift for. Next week gotta get back to the text and make "it happen".
A bit of GCs with the transformation equations and revisiting the candidates selection in color space. No changes, but "better defined". Now density maps which have some impact on the UCDs also.
Some quality time with Matheus. We started to go to the pool and have "swim" lessons. Yep, with the help of our good friend Elysandra Figueiredo (IAG/USP), former infant swim instructor I'm teaching the basics of swimming to my son. First lesson was just "being there". Next time (hopefully next tuesday) we'll start with legs movement.
Fernanda's parents arrived, so thursday was basically used on picking them up at the airport and spending some time with them and friday a bit of tourism in the city. As grand parents they already started with gifts to Matheus, who's got his first bike. Now I'm the one to teach him :-)
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd, life
Going on
So, paper on velocity fields read and comments sent, a lot of them.
Color transformations still going on, not much time spent on that and news on the UCDs paper, which is back to life.
Tomorrow, if it all goes fine, first swimming class to Matheus.
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd, hi-z morph, life
Getting back
I know a weekly report is not the best way to show "getting back on track" but that's what it is.
Science remarks are color transformations being worked out and paper commenting almost done.
Personal remarks are a lot of paper work and "stuff" processed and some quality time spent with my son. Not as much as I would like to, but some.
Also this week I've been in Garching for a talk about funding options from FP7 and managed to talk to some people I care about.
Not forgetting a new application.
Labels: hcg_gcs, hi-z morph, life
Collecting posts
So, several days.
Gave up writing a new proposal, better advance some stuff to give more background for the next proposal. Of course, not before checking what I needed and I we wanted ...
Successfully modified the ISODENS code I've got from Hugo Capelato (DAS/INPE) to work on the Mac and expanding capabilities to "today's computers". Not, interpreting the results is a whole other story :-)
Mammary gland project almost ready. Gotta write my statistical conclusions.
Wednesday we went to Hofbräuhaus to have dinner with Elif Kutdemir (former Göttingen) that just finished her Ph.D. thesis in Gronningen. It was a nice evening.
Weekend was typically german. We had a really sunny week, that I couldn't enjoy due to too many things to do. Then, friday at 3:00 PM weather changed, windy and rainy ... as it was the whole weekend.
My parents arrived to visit for a month :-)
Labels: hcg_gcs, life, mammary_gland_paper
More on GCs
So! Once the color-color issue was set, candidates were selected on the color-color plot using Harris (1996) Galactic GCs and GALEV SSP models for ages from 2-15 Gyr and a range of metallicities. Locus defined, candidates selected.
Also young star clusters locus defined using GALEV models, from 100 Myr to 1 Gyr.
Now that candidates are selected, density maps to find the GCS center. Options are, they are centered on the galaxies, or they are "common" to the potential (what is the expected considering the distribution of galaxies, UCDs and IGL). To that an kernel density estimator. Tried to find something available on the net, but couldn't (maybe if I look better ...) so using an old code from my old boss and friend Hugo Capelato (DAS/INPE). Making old workstation FORTRAN work on a Mac :-) Also expanding capabilities.
Labels: hcg_gcs
Found!
Despite the 300 thousand things I have to do this week, the whole day was spent on one single, but solution was found and an elegant one :-)
I was worried about the FORS calibration for my images. When I plot a color-color diagram and overplot Harris (1996) Galactic globular clusters on it they are not where my supposed population is.
Option 1 - There's a calibration error. Small errors can't be seen in magnitudes, but popup in colors!
So part of the day was a recalibration effort. FORS transformation equations, surface brightness profiles, very old FORS equations ... confirmed my values. If it's wrong, it's a serious problem ...
Option 2 - Filter differences. Johnson-Cousins to FORS-Bessel filters are supposed to be very close to each other ...
Couldn't find "colors" from Johnson-Cousins to FORS-Bessel filters, so solution was using a SSP model with output in both systems.
Not used to SSP models. Learning how to use Bruzual & Charlot (2003) or any other model would take too much time.
GALEV (Kotulla et al, 2009) turns out to have a great web interface that works very well, at least for simple uses such as my need. Managed to get my magnitudes for a GC with different metallicities and a large range of ages. All that without having to spend time learning details. Of course for something more sophisticated you probably have to really get into it, but for this filter transformation it has worked perfectly.
Got a mean color shift for a 15 Gyr population in metallicities ranging from [Fe/H] = -1.7 to 0.3, applied it to Harris (1996) GCs and VOILA, it all falls into place :-)
One problem less! Now let's move on and with minimal damage (bad calibration would require several modifications, once the right value was found).
Labels: hcg_gcs
For several days!
Just noticed now that several days have passed without posting. Things are quite crazy around here.
So, summarizing including some stuff done during the weekend (which I shouldn't but despaired times call for despaired measures).
Mammary gland projects is going. Still to be done parts 4 and 5.
A lot of discussion about the UCDs paper, even though no feedback from other authors, just the usual ones.
Tweaked the star-galaxy classification to a misclassification ratio of 19%. That includes extended objects in the point-sources list and point-sources left out of the list. That was done in the R FORS image and checked at the ACS image. The ACS image is about a quarter of the FOV, so it's not useful to do the whole classification deal. How this has got to the point where there can be a small error in calibrations. So that's the days task for monday, along with other things.
Other things: prepare a proposal and a job application. All that for friday. Deadline is next week, but my parents will arrive on saturday, and you can imagine what that means :-)
Comment on the weather. This weekend was a typical german weather. Sun until friday, rain on the weekend and a sunny monday :-) At least I took Matheus to the Tagesmutter by bike, like old times. Feeling german again hehehehehehe
I'm also astonished by some stuff I've been reading lately. Can't comment for political reasons, but the only thing that can be said is "the worse bureaucracy is the one we carry inside of us ...".
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd, life, mammary_gland_paper
Two days like one :-)
Monday was a very, but very short and slow day. Matheus decided to wake up at 4:30 and finally slept about the time we should be waking up ... so we slept a bit longer.
Sent the paper to the other co-authors, after some small modifications and then organized some info to be "repaired" when it comes back. Small stuff.
Today a failed anaerobic threshold test ... home trainer should have more resistance at the beginning. Again next time.
One more step in the Mammary Gland project. Now gotta write it and do 2 more.
Some playing with colors from SSP models.
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd, life, mammary_gland_paper
Friday
So! Friday!
Good thing, this week I managed to train twice, in-door (I know, like a hamster, but there is about 10-15 cm of snow outside).
Retrieved the FLT images from the HST archive ... but still the coordinate transformation doesn't work. It complains about a missing keyword on the header, but doesn't tell me which and why ... dammed pyraf! I'll have to do it brute force, as usual!
UCDs paper is back to me. Gotta finish going thru it, couple of small modifications and distribute it to all the authors on monday.
Tweaking the star-galaxy classificator. Figured out a nice way of defining the tweaking procedure.
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd, life
A bit of all
So! Wrote some text describing the analysis so far of the Mammary Gland project, discussed some conclusions for the UCDs paper a we started the idea for the next proposal. Paper will be back today and distributed to all the authors after I fix a couple of references and table captions.
Installed a new version of SciSoft (for OSX) to be sure pyraf would work. Well, it does, but still the function TRAN from STSDAS.DRIZZLE doesn't. It maybe that it's the header of the WI4 image that is not the same as the FLT image. So I already requested the image from STSci's archive, but this may come only tomorrow.
In the mean while I can do something on the ground-based images. So, star-galaxy classification using my old FWHM x Mag method, as in the 2002 paper. On that, it needs some tweaking. On that.
Let's see tomorrow!
Labels: hcg_gcs, hcg_ucd, mammary_gland_paper
Geometric corrections ...
Yesterday more on the mammary gland project. One more step gone. Gotta stop and write what's up so far. 3 steps yet to go and getting more complicated and interesting.
Today GCSs in H90 to complement the UCD's study. Fighting with ACS multidrizzle corrections. Of course there's a pyraf task for that and of course there's something wrong with my pyraf.
The first question is why pyraf? IRAF has been working fine for more than 15 years!
The second question is why ONLY FOR pyraf?
Never managed to make pyraf works! You're told "install scisoft, it comes with it all", no it doesn't! There's always a problem!
Also, I want things on a terminal, so I can do things remotely! I hate windows and GUIs and stuff that doesn't work remotely!
They say Python is the future ... as long as you define which version you're programming to, seems 2.5 is not compatible with 2.6, or so. And as long as you can make it work, mine comes with a "closed package" installation, but still there's something wrong.
Probably gonna have to do things "the hard way", as always. I don't even know why do I bother ...
Labels: hcg_gcs, mammary_gland_paper
Since friday
Yep, posting is a bit erratic lately. Too much to think about, many things in mind.
By parts. Friday, a whole deal calibrating a run, using the individual frames, pretty consistent but still not taking me where it should. Now I'll try with another run from FORS2, instead of FORS1, but that was more complicated before friday when I've got the master files for BIAS and flats, thanks to Sabine Moehler (ESO). There's a small problem with the archive soft that it retrieves only part of the master calibration files, but all the raw ones are there. It was just not worth going from scratch.
On the train back more galaxy morphology. Found a group of missing objects in the CAS analysis of all clusters. Gotta identify them all and get the parameters. Together with retrieving missing objects from raw photometry to complement our last spectroscopic run. Together with studying for a very complex job application (I'll explain that later). All that has been happening since the weekend.
+ visa paperwork + repairing broken mobile + fixing some stuff at home + more important discussing kindergarden issues also takes a lot of time.
Labels: applications, hcg_gcs, hi-z morph, life
Calibrations + solving problems
So! Basically solving problems (as usual, but this week more) and working on recalibration of our data for HCG 90.
Also some "applicating", tomorrow applications will be sent.
Hans-Walter Rix gave a nice talk at the JAC today about streams in the MW and how this can be used cosmologically, specially to solve the missing satellites problem.
Labels: applications, hcg_gcs, life
Lots of small things
Calibrations + morphology ... paper work + applications = solving problems.
Tomorrow will be a day with good news ...
Labels: applications, hcg_gcs, hi-z morph, life
Getting back
So, last week was kind of off focus due to the DFG workshop that required some preparation and had a lot of pressure, what takes us out of focus ... results were not as good as we expected ... still being worked out.
Working on the catalogues and on re-calibration ...
Labels: DFG_report, hcg_gcs, hi-z morph
