This is a short post to let you know the latest in my adventures. Over the past few weeks, I've been packing up and getting ready to move out of Chile. My current fellowship has ended and after these four years I'll be returning to the United States. Specifically, I'll be moving to New York to work at the American Museum of Natural History. This next job is a bit of a hybrid job with a variety of tasks to do. I'll be helping out with some of the science carried out by the BDNYC group, mentoring students, producing visualizations, helping manage their brown dwarf database, etc, etc. It's a job that will train me in a variety of ways and can serve as a stepping stone in my future career.
My experience in Chile has been good. There's been ups and downs as with any place. I've had lots of trips to explore the country and others in South America and tried lots of tasty food. Scientifically, I had plenty of telescope observing runs. The amount of data I got was overwhelming and while I could focus on keeping track of it and organizing it, I couldn't always work on reducing or analyzing it. Socially, I met many interesting people and made some good friends. The nature of an astronomer's career, though, is that one has to frequently move and these connections can be lost. Fortunately, today's internet connectivity allows us to stay in touch.
I look forward to this new change and being back in the US. My blog will continue detailing my adventures and, of course, providing reviews for the books I read.
Earlier this month, I got a request for a telephone interview for one of the many academic positions I applied for. While it was good news, I immediately knew that this was not something I wanted. This was not because of the particular offer, but because of the greater aspect of being a professor. It was the moment I realized what had been nagging me for the past few years: It was time to leave the academic path.
In this post, I'll describe some of what I went through. I know I am not the only one that has left academia, nor will I be the last. I think this may be of help to people passing through the same situation.
I've recently returned from a brief trip to the southernmost parts of Chile. Like my prior journey to Patagonia (see here), I saw many great sights and enjoyed traveling to such remote places. This particular journey featured lots of penguins and the famous Torres del Paine. For more details, and for those that may be interested in doing their own trips, keep reading.
A week ago, I took a brief journey with my good friend Jackie to part of Northern Patagonia in Chile. I realize I haven't always written summaries of my trips and that's a shame. I'll have to remember to do this more often as it's fun to have it written down.
This trip consisted of a drive across various small towns as well as experiencing how the people there celebrate the Fiestas Patrias (the Chilean independence holidays), a boat trip to the fabled Marble Caves, and lots of traveling across beautiful rivers, valleys, and mountains with waterfall after waterfall. It was a great journey and my first time in these parts of Chile. In this blog post, I'll briefly recount the adventures we had, both to keep it as a memory and to perhaps help future travelers thinking of visiting Southern Chile.
As always, the pictures can be clicked to see larger versions.
There's been a lot of news lately about the brightening of Comet ISON. If it survives its close passage to the Sun on November 28, it may grow even brighter and so it's receiving some attention. However, most of the information I've seen has been for observers in the Northern Hemisphere. I figured I'd see what I could figure out about observing comet ISON from Chile. Unfortunately, things don't look too promising for the Southern Hemisphere.
Santiago has some of the worst air pollution of any city I've been to. Last week, I took a few pictures from my office that very vividly illustrate the problem here. The first is above, for the next few and some discussion, keep reading.
Three years ago, before I moved to Chile, there was a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake in the central region. This occurred on the 27th of February 2010 and the event is commonly refer to in the news as 27/F (or variants like 27-F). A few days ago, there was an interesting report on earthquake statistics in Chile, which I would like to summarize (and translate, as it's in Spanish) for you.
Given my current travels this is a scheduled post and I didn't have time to double check all the facts in the report. I'm hoping they are mostly accurate, though that newspaper has had it's share of mistakes in the past. Nevertheless, the important trends still should hold. Now, on to my summary...
I've now spent over a year in Chile and have taken pictures from time to time. Here I present two pairs of pictures of approximately the same location, but shifted in time by several months. That is, one picture is taken around Summer, while the other was taken around Winter (or close enough). This showcases how the seasons change here in Santiago and it's a good opportunity to talk about how the seasons work on Earth.
As always, remember that you can click the pictures to see them larger.
More details, and the second picture, after the jump.
As of October, I have now spent one year as an astronomy postdoctoral researcher straight out of graduate school. It has been a great year, though with plenty of ups and downs. I figure I should write down my thoughts about this experience. I have both good things and bad things to say, but I try to be honest, fair, and positive throughout. This may be of interest to curious grad students, or anyone really, especially if they have wondered about pursuing a postdoc or are just interested in astronomy in Chile. One thing to keep in mind is that this is an individual, personal experience and your own story or circumstances may be quite different. It's obviously difficult to approach this critically and unbiasedly, but here goes nothing...
September is a month of history in Chile. Back on September 11, we saw the remembrance of the military coup that overthrew Allende and established the Pinochet dictatorship. Today, however, we go further back in history: to September 18, 1810 and the first steps in Chile's independence. From my readings, it looks like there were many notable dates throughout the process for independence, but September 18 is celebrated as the Day.
In the United States of America, September 11, 2001 (aka 9/11) is remembered as the day terrorists hijacked several aircraft and crashed them, most famously into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. While those events were tragic, it's sometimes easy to forget, particularly in this political climate, that the US is not the only country of the Earth. There is a whole world out there for whom the date may or may not have special significance.
Chile is one country that remembers something similar for September 11.
Today was a cold, overcast day with some light rain in Santiago. It wasn't the rainest or the coldest day I've seen, but when I looked out in the late afternoon I was impressed.
This is what I saw:
I think my camera has failed to capture the amazing scene I was seeing, but I tried my best.
This is the last of my three posts on Easter Island. Part 1 described the astronomy outreach we did there, part 2 was about the transit of Venus, our main event. This part now describes all the touristy things we squeezed in when we weren't working.
First, a map:
Easter Island. The map I used in my activity has a few embarrassing errors (this one is fine).
There are, as you can imagine, tons of moai on the island. These are statues built by the natives of their ancestors many, many years ago and are the most impressive things you will see. Most were torn down and have subsequently been restored, but a few impressive ones are broken.
(Remember: you can click on the pictures to see them larger.)
Broken moai at Ahu Akahanga
All of these moai were constructed at one place: Rano Raraku, the remains of a volcano that now hosts a lake. The rocks on one side of the volcano was carved up into these great statues, which were then transported all across the island. We had with us a friend and guide, Edmundo Edwards, who told us these great stories and taught us a ton about the history of the island.
Moai at Rano Raraku.
The lake atop Rano Raraku.
Ahu Tongariki, picture below, is one of the better known moai sites. This one has 15 huge moai.
Ahu Tongariki
Most moai face inland, though a few, like Ahu Akivi picture below do not. It's not clear to me why this is, but it's an interesting curiosity. Somewhat unusual is that the stones around Ahu Akivi are all river stones, but there are no rivers on the island (they were recently imported from the mainland).
Ahu Akivi
The highest point of the island, Maunga Terevaka, stands at 507 meters and is the tallest mountain in a 4000 km radius. That shouldn't be too surprising considering there is practically no land (just a few small islands) in that area. Easter Island is truly isolated. We climbed this hill at sunset as we were buffeted by the winds. It was a gruesome hike (I may be exaggerating here), but we made it.
Almost at the summit of Maunga Terevaka.
There are two beaches on the island (the rest of the shore is rocky or cliffs). One was supposed to have pink sand, but it wasn't that pink. I've seen better beaches, but this one was still cool. And it had moai!
Moai at Anakena beach
On our last day of tourism we visited the ruins of Orongo. This ceremonial village is located near the south at the edge of Rano Kau, which is picture below.
Rano Kau. The crater is about a mile in diameter.
Orongo is important as it was used for the Birdman Cult on the island which replaced the moai-building period. The birdman cult is present in other islands and is tied to the creator god Make-Make.
Orongo ceremonial village,
There was a ceremony every year in which a champion would go out to swim to the island to gather the first egg laid by the manutara, the sooty tern (a bird). The host of the winner would then become famous as the tangata-manu (the birdman) and would be considered sacred.
Motu Nui, where the manutara would have their nests is the 'large' island more distant in this shot.
And finally, here's a shot of Ahu Tahai at sunset on June 5, 2012 (the day of the transit of Venus).
This is the second of a three part post series on our recent trip to Easter Island. Previously I wrote about the outreach activities we did on the days leading up to the transit. In this post I describe the main event itself: the transit of Venus.
I've previously talked about the transit of Venus (here) and described the math involved in determining the distance (here). Hence, I'll skip the overview and jump right into the details.
This past week I've been with a group of astronomers on Easter Island to do outreach, observe the transit of Venus, and do some tourism. This is the first of a 3 post series describing our adventures. Part 1 is a description of the outreach activities we did at Easter Island. Part 2 describes our viewing of the transit of Venus along with our distance estimate, and Part 3 is about the places we visited.
Yesterday we had a lot of rain in Santiago. The day started foggy and cold:
It then started raining, with thunder and lightning, and eventually even hail.
Getting that much rain in Santiago all at once is rare, but it was necessary given that the Metropolitan Region has been in drought for the past few years. The amount of rain thus far this year (7.3 mm, including a brief rain shower in early April) still is less than the yearly average up to this date of 11.5 mm.
The news today is reporting that last night we saw flooding in some sectors with a few minor landslides. The main problem is traffic jams or "tacos" that were an hour longer than usual. The metro was very crowded and apparently also suffered from some technical problems near Manquehue that caused delays, but it's not clear if it was due to the rainy weather.
The lack of proper drainage in Santiago causes flooding very quickly. Credit: instagr.am/ maritesanz
Today, however, the day is expected to be clear or partly cloudy.
I woke up this morning to see a beautiful sunrise over mountains that are now capped with snow:
This is the third and last post on our trip to Iguazu Falls. After brief visits to Argentina and Paraguay, we now turned to Brazil. We were actually staying in Foz do Iguaçu, but had yet to visit the parks on the Brazilian side.
This is the second post of three regarding our trip to Iguazu Falls.
Iguazu falls at the intersection of 3 countries: Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. I've already described our brief trip to Argentina. For the second day, we took a brief trip into Paraguay to check it out.
The main attraction to Paraguay is the Itaipu Dam. This is the second largest hydroelectric dam, in size, in the world, second only to the Three Gorges Dam in China. However, the annual energy output of Itaipu is the largest. In 2008, the produced a record 94.7 terrawatt-hours which is comparable to the amount of electricity the entire planet uses in two days.
The Itaipu Dam in Paraguay
The Itaipu Dam is a joint effort between Paraguay and Brazil. There are 20 turbines split evenly between the two nations. Interestingly, Paraguay uses 220V/50 Hz for its electricity while Brazil uses 110V/60Hz.
A broader view of the Itaipu Dam. The foreground shows the discharge channels, which open (but don't generate electricity) if the water level is too high.
Paraguay used to own the territory of Parana, where the Iguazu Falls are located. However, they were landlocked and, according to our tour guide, wanted access to the sea. In 1864, war broke out as Paraguay invaded Brazil and Argentina in order to reach Uruguay. Uruguay was a small nation, easily conquered and with access to the ocean. However, the three nations formed a Triple Alliance and soundly beat Paraguay. Paraguay now no longer controls the falls and lost a lot of territory as a result of the war.
A satellite view (from Google Earth) of Itaipu Dam. The discharge channels are partially open. Up to 40 times the Iguazu Falls rate can pass through these channels.
We were given tons of facts on the dam. The most repeated one being that all the iron and steel used in its production would amount to 380 Eiffel Towers. The one that caused us to be skeptical though, was that the amount of water passing through 2 of its tubes (see photo) is the same as that of the Iguazu Falls. That seemed far too impressive to be true. So like good scientists, we set out to check it with some quick order-of-magnitude calculations.
These 10-meter diameter tubes channel the water to turbines about 50-meters below that generate electricity
We can calculate the velocity water, or anything really, would reach given an initial height of about 100-m with:
mgh = 1/2 mv^2
The mass cancels, and we can ignore the factor of 2. Between friends, g is 10 m/s^2, so we have v^2~1000 or v~30m/s.
The rate of water is just the velocity times the cross-sectional area. We were told the diameter of the tubes were 10-m (internal) so we have a rate of (3*25)*30 ~ 2200 cubic meters/second. This is likely to be off by a factor of a few, but certainly accurate within a factor of 10. In comparison, Iguazu Falls has an average flow rate of about 1800 cubic meters/second so a statement like "the amount of water in the Iguazu Falls falls through two of these tubes each second" is a perfectly believable statement. Considering there are 20 tubes, we can see that the Rio Paraná has 10 times the flow of the Rio Iguazu.
The location of Itaipu Dam with respect to the 3 countries and Iguazu Falls. Red arrows indicate the direction of the water's flow. The Paraná River, which runs south from the dam, divides Paraguay-Brazil and Paraguay-Argentina. The Iguazu River, which flows west and joins the Paraná, divides Argentina-Brazil.
After the brief excursion to the dam, we went shopping. None of us really were up for it, but apparently the rest of the tour group would die if they couldn't shop. At least we got a look at the city, but we were not impressed:
The streets of Ciudad del Este, in Paraguay
We were warned of the blatant corruption of police officers and the streets were so crowded and full of people trying to sell you stuff or run you over with their bikes that we spent most of the time indoors.
Here's a brief video of the Itaipu Dam. Not as impressive as my Iguazu Falls video, but here you go:
