#astronomnomysasks

[astronomnomy-blog]

I haven't been able to get a good answer to this one -- but I have a feeling I'm going to feel really silly when I find out. The submillimeter telescopes all seem to be idle over the day. But, submillimeter telescopes operate below IR wavelengths. What keeps you from operating over the daytime?

Not a daft question at all, neither is the opposite question (why do submm telescopes work during the day) :D. To answer the part you already know, the Sun isn’t very bright at all in the wavelengths we look in, so it’s always “night” for the sub-millimetre in terms of light, hence we aren’t restricted 

There are a few reasons why we don’t observe all day, that’s because 1) with the doors open, the primary mirror would heat up. This would cause it to warp a bit, which we could compensate for in some cases, but when it came to night time we’d have to wait a long time for the mirror to thermally relax.

2) (Have I got this right?) Even if the weather looks good, apparently it’s really hard to get a good pointing? Even if the atmosphere is perfectly transparent to submm light, which is awesome if it is we love that, the atmosphere can be a tad granular during the day, causing the submm to twinkle. This means when we try and calibrate the telescope with a pointing by finding, say, Mars, it moves all over the place, and there’s just no point in observing since all your observations would be smeared and messy. So we can get all the light, just it doesn’t sit still.

3) Money, sadly :( nowadays we can switch for extended observing in the morning for a few hours, we switch over control to the team in the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo when the weather is good, but that finishes about 10/10:30/11. 

All the telescopes have a day-crew of engineers who come up and test/update/fix everything that’s needs it during daylight hours, too and they are the most important people on the telescope team. I haven’t met any of the team sadly, but they always get everything done because they’re the real pros - and as a side-note someone even curls up the ethernet cables too (which I felt bad about when I noticed so I tried to do the same when I leave I’m so sorry if everything’s a mess aaa). The day crew makes everything possible :) 

[astronomnomy-blog]

what does it feel like being at high altitude for so long? Do you feel like you're going to faint?

Hi! It really depends on the person but yeah that's a definite possibility. We sleep at 9,000 ft in a residence called Hale Pohaku (stone house) and we come up the day before observing to get at least one night's acclimatisation but you still feel it.

When you get up here immediately you notice the drop in air temperature and humidity (HP is pleasant in the Sun rather than unbearably hot in Hilo) and then you realise the drop in oxygen when you start moving your bags - everything's a lot harder to lift for a long time and you get out of breath quicker. What you end up doing is you starting off dragging your suitcase at your normal speed happily and a short time later you have to stop and are gasping for breath in an embarrassing fashion. It's odd because you're not sweating with the exertion, just gasping. It's the same with walking up the stairs. Take it slow at HP though and you'll be fine!

The summit is 14,000ft high and air pressure and oxygen are about 60% that at sea level. Here you really feel it. Temperature is usually around freezing. Just walking into the dome carrying my rucksack is a pain, I have to stop to catch my breath up the stairs to the control room. I'm a "two steps at a time" person usually so I accidentally do myself in if I try that. We all get a bit out of breath with those steps, coming back from the restroom you can hear people struggling to breathe enough if they start talking when they get back into the control room.

The lack of oxygen also affects you brain - you feel really slow and it's harder to concentrate and you make a lot more errors (thinking you've double-checked something when you clearly haven't seen it). It's like when you're really tired. Plus the fact that we are really tired because we're doing a thirteen-hour night shift. Yesterday our telescope systems specialist Callie was showing me something on the computer and asked me to type something - it took us both a good fifteen seconds to realise I was typing on my laptop keyboard! It also affects your eyes, too. Whilst the stars outside are beautiful with the naked eye, everything looks a bit dimmer than it could be because your brain doesn't have the oxygen to produce a vivid scene. They say if you take oxygen up with you you can see everything clearer and it's bright enough that you can read a book by the light of the Milky Way.

Another weird effect is that you have to pee a lot. For reasons I'm not sure of (anyone know?) your body just throws out water. If you're drinking and not peeing that's bad because that water's going somewhere and it could be your brain or chest cavity. It could kill you. Altitude sickness is super serious but often resolved by just getting down to lower altitude. Feeling faint is a possible symptom of altitude sickness and should always be reported!

Alcohol also takes effect quicker and more strongly so it's not allowed up here. Although I hear that Champagne (bubbly + alcohol) gets you instantly drunk!

Altitude affects everyone differently and sometimes in weird ways. Our support scientist Harriet told us that once she had a guy who could only smell almonds at the summit but was otherwise healthy, and another bloke whose stutter completely disappeared at the telescope… I just tend to get more paranoid and believe that telescope-zombies are a non-zero probabilty threat, haha!

[astronomnomy-blog]

pls excuse my stupidity, but what do u mean by a grasp of the "basics" as a background for astronomy? do u mean an understanding of basic physics concepts, like velocity and forces?

And then there’s the stuff you just can’t do, and that’s fine too. Like… I really don’t understand electronics. I struggle with it for some reason, and every time I learn I just can’t keep it in my head. I wasn’t that hot on general relativity either, which I thought was a bit more embarrassing considering I was going into an astro PhD, but my supervisor said “meh, don’t worry about it, I can’t do it at all and you probably won’t need it”. 

Does that make a bit more sense? You need to study hard at some point, but undergrad is literally the most "stuff" you'll ever know in your life. After that it's more about remembering that you knew something once, being able to look it up and thinking to apply it to your work. Research is "open-book" ;)

[astronomnomy-blog]

Oh hi wow I'm so glad to find your blog and it's lovely. Also, I'm in love with science and am especially interested in astronomy and astrophysics and was wondering if you could give me any tips on getting into the field or tell me what it's like working as a researcher? I would be so thankful to hear more about it

Astronomers are divided broadly into two categories: (This may apply to other areas, but it’s so obvious in astro). You have the passionate problem solvers - they love finding the science problem, breaking it down, throwing everything they have at it, borrowing techniques from other fields and improving on current methods of analysis whether computational, mathematical or engineering related. You’ll usually see them more than happy to work in other areas of astronomy and sometimes moving altogether to attack new projects and problems, or helping others with their own expertise. They’d quite happily do a project on goldfish if they think they could help - they don’t really care about astronomy itself, just the general problem to grapple with. These people can come across a little scatter-brained, but they’re respected as experts in techniques and can often act as bridges between research groups.

Then you have the passionate astronomers. They love astronomy to pieces, maybe they really love stars or a particular type of galaxy or they want to find planets, they’re more likely to have been amateur astronomers first. You’ll find them quite happy to study one thing for ages, to try and gleam all they can about that object. Or, they’re trying to solve one particular physical problem in simulations and get that 0.01% improvement compared to the observations etc. These people are sometimes seen as obsessed by one group of objects/one problem and they are well-known for their extensive knowledge. Their name can be synonymous with one particular research area and they can have entire research empires around them.

Everyone has a bit of both in them usually. It’s something to think about for yourself; is it astronomy or bust (“I must work on black holes in some way!”), or is it the actual work that attracts you (“computer/mathematical-based modelling is awesome!”). I’m more of a problem-solver, I find most areas of science - especially physics - interesting in some form. I went into astronomy because it draws on /all/ aspects of physics in some way, and I loveeee computer programming, which is a massive component of astronomy nowadays. 

By the way, not all astronomers (and scientists for that matter) are super “clever” people (“clever” is an odd term, anyway), this is a massive misconception. Yes, most researchers will have done fairly well at school, after all you need a degree to start a PhD, but a scientist who scored 100% on their maths or physics tests at school isn’t necessarily going to be better at their job than the student who scored 70%! As long as you have a solid grasp of the basics needed that’s all you need for background. E.g. everyone in my department is assumed to have a foundational knowledge of quantum physics, but if you asked us to derive the energy levels in hydrogen on the board from first principles most would struggle. What makes them good researchers is their ability to problem solve and be creative, to persevere when they’re stuck at something and - what is often forgotten - the best are able to communicate effectively and share their toys.

As much as people lie through their teeth about it, science is very political. The best science doesn’t necessarily rise to the top, you have to capture people’s attention and that’s done through talks, collaborations, seizing opportunities and going outside your comfort zone. That includes spending a lot of your time not doing science - grant-writing, meetings (especially in big astronomy collabs! There are a lot of meetings) sharing data and expertise with collaborators and being social. I can’t find the study but a group of sociologists followed around some UK astronomers and found that the best place for ideas was in groups down the pub rather than individuals at work in the office. Talking and socialising is so important for idea development! 

So what I mean is that if your strength is academics and 100%s everywhere then that’s great, but if your strength is communication and passion then that’s also great! You need a little of both to find your niche. 

In terms of how to actually get into research the traditional route is through college/university. At college-level you’ll want to be taking a technical subject; computing, maths, physics or astrophysics to get into astronomy research, engineering if you want to get into building the instruments and operating the telescopes long-term. You don’t have to do a degree in astronomy to do astronomy! Obviously it’s up to you but I’d go for physics and pick some astrophysics and computing modules to see what you think. That gives you the flexibility if you decide you don’t want to do astronomy anymore to go somewhere else. If you can do a summer research placement in the department (Royal Astronomical Society has funding) then gogogo for it! I did one and it gave me a taste for what research is like.

After a degree you’d do (and I’m not sure in other countries but) grad school in the states which is more exam-based, or in the UK you’d do a masters (or a four-year M__ undergrad) then go into a PhD programme, which is no small feat! If after a PhD you decide you want to go into research, you have the option of industry or academia. There aren’t many postdoc places compared to PhD student so it can be really competitive. In academia you’ll have to spend a few years as a postdoctoral research assistant, or postdoc. A postdoc is usually a one-to-three year contract at a university or research facility, where you’ll be working a little on your own ideas and on work you’ve been contracted to do. You’ll be moving universities and sometimes even countries between postdocs. After about three of these (or a Fellowship) comes faculty applications, which would be a full-time, stable job. In UK uni’s you’d get part funded by the uni and in return you’d do some teaching and other administrative duties, and part-funded by your own grant applications. These jobs are far fewer to come by than even postdocs, sadly, it’s a tough climb. But people do do it every year :D 

I have typed faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too much whilst watching telly haha so if this has sparked any questions from yourself or anyone else, please ask away!