Well, as the really sharp ones among you may have gleaned from a careful reading of my posts on this blog, I like to make sure that there’s a bit of fun mixed in with the work whenever I can. Makes the work better, overall. For example, today I got up early, dashed to the top of neighbourhood geographic highlight, Mount Hollywood (ok, I used one of the upper trailheads), and back down, did some shopping at Trader Joe’s, and then from 10:15am to 1:00pm brainstormed with three of my students (Arnab, Tameem and Veselin) on campus. (We think we have discovered a new phase transition! Hurrah! More later.) Then in the afternoon, I seem to have done nothing but laundry and floor-sweeping….
Ok, wait. Stop. That last bit’s not so fun….. Day not ending well. Hmmm. It’s Saturday night, so I think I’m off to either see a movie or go contemplate life (and maybe a bit of physics) in a local bar (probably scaring the clientele). Decisions, decisions.
Well, while I figure that out, why don’t you verify that I’m not the only one who likes to mix work and play. Happens all the time, you know. Here are hilarious pictures of Alice Shapley (Princeton Prof. of Astrophysics), Chung-Pei Ma (Berkeley Prof. of Astrophysics), and Alison Coil (Arizona Astro postdoc) showing how it’s done, during a long night of a Keck observing run. (I found the link by accident while preparing an earlier post.) The Paris Hilton impressions are uncanny!
Perhaps we can get them to come and tell us what they were up to, physics-wise? Looks like fun too!
[Update: Alice, in the comments, says, "I should mention that in addition to wearing such "fashionable" observing clothes and napping on the sofa in the Keck Observatory Remote Operations room, we were trying to learn about the physical conditions in star-forming regions in galaxies 8-9 billion light years away. The galaxies we targeted were drawn from the DEEP2 redshift survey (a project led by University of California astronomers), which has mapped out a chunk of the Universe at z~1 and is telling us about galaxy properties at that earlier epoch. We were attempting to measure the relative strengths of rest-frame optical emission lines from Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, which are produced in the regions of ionized gas in which stars form. In such high-redshift galaxies, the lines which have been targeted by traditional optical astronomy for decades get shifted to the near-IR region of the spectrum, and we then use the KeckII near-IR spectrograph (NIRSPEC) to measure them. The relative strengths of these lines can be used to infer the degree of chemical enrichment in the gas from which the stars are forming. But, in turns out that the line strengths we measure actually follow a significantly different pattern from those of galaxies in the nearby universe, which may tell us something very interesting about star formation in the early universe (we're still working on exactly what...)"]
-cvj
P.S. Looking at the dialogue (who writes that stuff? – It’s great!) in the captions to the Astrophysics party linked from Alice and Chung-Pei’s pages, I now realise I’ve been going to the wrong physicist parties all these years. Drat!
P.P.S On a more serious side-note, and in view of our discussions of women in physics (see also e.g., here, and here) not so long ago on this blog, notice how more balanced the demographic is in this subfield. Refreshing, frankly. Here’s to the future.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
You have been going to the wrong parties. You need to hang with astronomers.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Gosh, I’ve not been going to the wrong parties in general, it’s just that a lot of the physicist ones look like less fun than the astronomy or astrophysics ones, I admit. However, I’ve plenty of other professions’ parties to choose from! (See for example my upcoming post on hanging out with the English teachers. No, really.)
Cheers,
-cvj
March 25th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
Nice pictures, by the way. Let me know when the meeting’s held in LA, and I’m there.
-cvj
March 26th, 2006 at 12:30 am
Trader Joe’s….Where the physicists shop!
The TJ’s I work at has a somewhat different clientele, since it is only a few miles from Langley, VA, home of….(secrets)
March 26th, 2006 at 6:23 am
The other guys party always looks better
March 26th, 2006 at 10:49 am
That reminds me of this picture I took in October 2004 when I was observing at the 1.5m telescope at Chile; the people are an undergraduate student and a post-doc who were there observing with me:
Photo
-Rob
March 26th, 2006 at 11:52 am
Thanks for linking our pictures, Clifford! I should mention that in addition to wearing such “fashionable” observing clothes and napping on the sofa in the Keck Observatory Remote Operations room, we were trying to learn about the physical conditions in star-forming regions in galaxies 8-9 billion light years away. The galaxies we targeted were drawn from the DEEP2 redshift survey (a project led by University of California astronomers), which has mapped out a chunk of the Universe at z~1 and is telling us about galaxy properties at that earlier epoch. We were attempting to measure the relative strengths of rest-frame optical emission lines from Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen, which are produced in the regions of ionized gas in which stars form. In such high-redshift galaxies, the lines which have been targeted by traditional optical astronomy for decades get shifted to the near-IR region of the spectrum, and we then use the KeckII near-IR spectrograph (NIRSPEC) to measure them. The relative strengths of these lines can be used to infer the degree of chemical enrichment in the gas from which the stars are forming. But, in turns out that the line strengths we measure actually follow a significantly different pattern from those of galaxies in the nearby universe, which may tell us something very interesting about star formation in the early universe (we’re still working on exactly what…) I have to say, though, there is nothing like a good nap on the sofa in Keck Remote Ops….(though it looks like Rob had a picture of some pretty good observing naps as well…)
March 26th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Alice….thanks! and Welcome to blog-land. Glad you don’t mind that I picked up those links, but they were on your website and so legitimately public domain.
Cheers,
-cvj
March 26th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
If I were observing at Keck with that partial pressure of O2, I’d probably nap a lot too.
March 26th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Ah, the Keck II control room. For those not in the know, Keck I and II are controled from Waimea at about 2000 feet. The telescope operator is at the summit, but the observers run the instrument from below. This has many advantages like more oxygen (and fewer sick astronomers), easy communication with the headquarter’s staff and much, much better food.
As someone who has used the Official Alice Shapely NIRSPEC Observing Strategy, I am amazed that she found time to nap. I was just too busy. I am sure that the three double espressos had nothing to do with it….
March 26th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Historically, women have had a much larger presence in astronomy than in physics. It was one of those fields that respectable, upperclass, married ladies could partake in with their husbands (!!) back in the Renaissance.
That’s the story in the West, anyway. Dunno how things are in non-European derived societies.
March 27th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Though there is more of a gender balance in astronomy than in physics, it’s not as good as fields like biology or chemistry. And while there is historical precedence for women in astronomy, some large observatories barred women from using them even into the mid-20th century.
Also, while the numbers of women at undergrad and grad student level is gaining, the number of women in faculty positions (particularly entry level positions) is still not what it should be given the demographics of the pool of applicants. And when departments hiring faculty say, “There are no good women candidates.” (huh? Have they been to any conferences lately?)
Yes, things are getting better, but there’s still work to be done.
March 27th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Clifford, you haven’t been going to the wrong physicist parties; you’ve just had the wrong people writing your captions. The trick is to have even more fun with the pictures than you did at the party.
March 28th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Katie…. Brilliant!
-cvj