Making Friends with Important People

I've known the names "Triaud" and "Dumusque" for awhile now, but I always thought they were 40+ professor who have been studying planets and stars for as long as I've been in college, which is far far too long.  This impression came about because they each have published a number of very important papers, and works with a number of important people and projects; the most notable for Triaud was with the WASP project, which has been popping out planet discoveries for 7 or 8 years; and the most notable for Dumusque was the discovery of an Earth-sized planet around the Sun's nearest neighbor!

Then an email arrived that said "Amaury Triaud is giving a seminar on Wednesday, discussing Looking for Genesis"; thanks to Star Trek TOS, astrobiologists (me and mine) throw the word "genesis" around to mean "finding life in the universe".  This is one of a handful of times that I've been at an institution where someone is giving a talk on *exactly* what I do!  It is a very exciting time.  It makes you feel like someone cares that you're stuck in a windowless room in the basement, tanning by the light of your laptop screen.  They probably don't, but it feels good to pretend.

Things That Could Be Happening Outside

I have been to plenty of interesting talks and plenty of important talks; I've also been to plenty of conferences where I discuss my work with everyone else who is also researching what I do.  But I went to undergrad with a bunch of solar system scientists, then I went to grad school with a bunch of extragalactic (not the Milky Way), star formation (our galaxy + others), and high energy (black holes) type of people.  So it is very rare for a speaker to come to an institute that I work at and talk about research that I do.  This was very exciting! But I still prepared for a professional meeting, where I have to discuss the finer details of planet finding and atmospheric compositions.  I expected to sit in person and characterise our research on the global scale, then follow this with dinner

Instead, it turns out, that Amaury is just a few years older than me, did all the great work that I knew about in grad school, and now was a post-doc at MIT.  Some people just have a way of settling the tension in the air.  The first meeting I had with him, we geeked out on computational algorithms and statistics.  This was going to be good!

Xoco por Ti

The plans for dinner started at a "Chocolate Bar", which is exactly as awesome as it sounds!  It helps that my advisor, Andres, in Chile is a super cool dude, who has as much style than smarts.  Xavier Dumusque, who discovered an earth sized planet around Alpha Cen B-- the closest star to the Sun-- scientifically named Alpha Cen B b, or "AC Bee-Bee" to her friends. Sidenote about how fun these guys are: they are both pretty tall, especially Xavier who stands about 6'7".  So Xavier kept running into ceiling beams, trees, and hanging lights, always comically reacting like he'd been assaulted by the inanimate object.

A.C. Bee-Bee

The dinner ended us up at a bohemian, hipster pizza joint in Barrio Italia near my house.  This is exactly the kind of place that I would look for if I was having dinner with friends or a small birthday party.  The pizza was great, the conversation was mostly about how weird the Chileans are to the rest of the world, but then also how uptight the Swiss can be too, thanks to our two guests having lived together in Switzerland for a years.

Andres had to leave to meet up with his wife, but kept negotiating for more time.  I thought she was home alone with their two kids and he had to go relieve her of duty.  It turned out that she was waiting for him to go to an art exhibit instead, but that story comes later.  We stuck around for another hour or so, finished our pizzas, and sharing everything while having a great conversation.



After the dinner, Amaury, Xavier, and I wanted to go find a bar to get a drink at.  We headed back toward the main area and look a left, walked another kilometer (~ half mile), took another left, walked another kilometer and realised we were literally back at the pizza restaurant we started at.  Obviously frustrated with our failure, we saw a bunch of people hanging out outside with drinks in their hands.  As we approached, we realised that this was not a bar, but in fact an art showing.... hmmm?  Just as we decided to walk in and find the bar (free champagne!), right in the center of the hallway was Andres!

Barrio Italia

After walking nearly 3 km, just to end up back where we started, we find Andres literally next door to the dinner joint and smiling at us like a confused child.  The art was not all that great, but the free champagne was free, and that made up for it.  Finding Andres was more than funny, he could actually tell us where a good bar was in the area and how to get there.

Three foreigner walk into a bar, and Xavier into the door frame.  We finished off the night at a small, dark bar drinking terremotos and pisco sours-- very chilean cocktails.  Starting off the night, expecting to be tiptoeing around scientific conversations, but ending up discussing international politics over tasty alcohol with 2 new friends was really great way to start yet another international collaboration.

LAN vs OneWorld

My first impression of international life was both at the airport and beyond.  I landed at 8am on a Thursday morning.  I've alway done rather well at sleeping on airplanes, but when they offer you non-stop wine / scotch and free seatback movies, I fight the urge to slumber and snore and just watch decreasingly quality movies or tv shows.


American Airlines Should Swap with JetBlue

For a story primer, there was an in flight movie on the way from Ft Myers, Florida to Dallas, Texas.  Before this, I thought that "in flight movies" were something they talked about on "Madmen" and other shows set in equally ancient times-- I'm looking at you Parents!  Somehow I skipped around from airline to airline with either no movie, or seatback screens, and nothing in between.  But I guess that American Airlines are those "something in between" kind of people.  The service was terrible, they wanted to charge me $2 for a can of soda, and were rude when I said "oh, well, nevermind".  But they were playing the film "Lone Ranger", which is something I've been meaning to see for months.

The movie was suppose to run for a whole 2.5 hours, while the flight happened to be 3 hours long.  This seems like good news.  They started the movie just after take off, which makes perfect sense, but then-- for apparently no reason-- they stopped the movie about 30 minutes later.  I was so into the film, that I could only think "wow, are we there already?".  But alas, they took the time to shut the movie off, closed all of the screens, did nothing else at all, put the screens back down, and restarted the film.  Now with exactly 2.5 hours left to the flight, we were going to watch a 2.5 hours flight; I see nothing wrong with this so far: "la-di-dah".

We got all-the-way to the exciting action climax stuff that every movie with guns is required to have, and POOF they shut off the damn movie again, but this time saying "we are preparing for landing".  This movie was so good, and their timing was so terrible, that I swear I got cinema-blue-balls! (CBBs for short) The only other thing I can say is that I'd rather have flown Southwest for more reasons than free soda and nice people.

 

LAN vs the World

None of that really matters in the end, but it sets up the rest of the story about the flight down, up, and down again.

The international portion of my trip was still to come.  The last time I did this, I flew with LAN Airlines, which is a member of the "OneWorld" alliance with American Airlines.  LAN Airlines is singularly the best airline I have ever flown on in my life.  They had the best service, the nicest people, free booze, awesome food, etc.  On top of that, no one told them yet that it's misogynistic to only hire gorgeous women as your flight attendants; it was like flying PanAm on the tv show!

So I had pretty high expectations of American Airlines on this international flight.  In hindsight, I can now add my story to the pool of every American who has flown with LAN and then AA; we all agree, "Don't do it! Just stick with LAN".  Their flights are usually cheaper anyways, and the American flight attendants usually respond to any request as though you asked them to redirect the plane so you can get a better picture of the Grand Canyon; not that nice!

The only saving grace was that they did in fact have seatback screens-- which is mostly a given these days-- with a list of good movies.  The bad part was that mine didn't work; it was black and white and kept restarting my movie.  Although I asked a few times prior, this was the only way I got them to allow me to move to a different seat.  After quite a little finagling, I was seated in the middle of 5 seats, 3 of which were empty.  I had to wake a guy up to get over, but I apologised and it was worth it.  [ If you've connected the dots, and think that maybe they weren't that nice to me because I kept asking to move from my aisle seat for almost any reason, then I have no idea what you're talking about ]

Another point of comparison, LAN Airlines has seatback touch screen displays that let you access, play, pause, fastforward, rewind, etc ANYTHING in their catalog.  American Airlines has seat arm controls that let you select things from the displays, but made you wait for the next viewing, which were on 20 minute increments.  Not to whine too much, but how is that a reasonable solution in modern times?  I literally could have reprogrammed the control system for them in the 20 minutes I was waiting for my movie to begin.  Moreover, I found out why my movie kept restarting: the system cannot handle fast forwarding or rewinding, which are default controls on the keypad.


Here's Why That Mattered

One of the selections for movies on the flight from Dallas to Santiago (9.5 hours) was none other than "Lone Ranger"; although my CBBs were still sore, I knew I had to finish at some point.  Unfortunately, the movie was still 2.5 hours long, and I didn't want to re-watch 2.4 hours of it just to culminate.  I knew that I would fall asleep at some point, and there were plenty of other movies to watch.  So I flipped through the channels, watched "Internship"-- not bad--, some tv shows (Big Bang Theory) and played a few games until I was *just* tired enough to sleepily watch "Lone Ranger" again.  

Luck was on my side this time!  On the flight from Florida to Texas, I missed ~10 minutes of the end of the movie: again, WTF AA!  So this time, I fell asleep before I even knew the movie was on; I kept waking up every 30 minutes or so, and finally arose completely at almost EXACTLY the moment I last saw from the previous flight!  I couldn't believe my luck.  I watched the end, it was cute, I liked the movie-- my CBBs calmed down--, and I fell asleep again, a woefully satisfied man.


Santiago Airport

I landed at the Santiago airport (SCL) named after the pioneer of LAN airlines Arturo Merino Benitez. [If you'd like to read about it, there's some interesting heritage there: SCL Airport Wiki and LAN Airlines Wiki ].  At SCL, I had about 4 hours to kill and not enough sleep to navigate my way through a foreign airport in less time than that.  Because I was transferring from American Airlines to Sky Airlines (not in the "OneWorld Alliance") to fly to the telescope directly, I had to grab my bags from international baggage claim, carry them through customs, find the Sky Airline ticket booth, and re-check them; this adds up to more reasons I don't like American Airlines.  At the same time, I have to wonder: had I transferred to a LAN Airlines flight, could I have smuggled anything cool into the country?  They directly implied that I would not have seen my luggage until La Serena (the telescope) if I flew on LAN; this is quite curious....

This is a historic picture, not a current picture!

I have to stop and thank the ticket counter ladies at Sky Airlines, which were of course gorgeous!  But that's not why.  It turns out that on an international flight to/from the US, you are allowed 46kg (100 lbs) of stuff.  But if you are on a domestic flight inside Chile, you are only allowed 20kg (45 lbs) of stuff, which includes your carryon luggage too.  At the beginning, they were saying that I would have to pay for the extra baggage, the cost of, which I did not know until much later, would have been $160!!  But when they found out that I just got off an international flight, they realised that in the US and on LAN (AA), they have very different weight policies.  I can only assume that they thought I was equally as gorgeous, because they let me get away with 60 kg (132 lbs) of stuff (2 suitcases and a carry on).  In the end, the entire team of them made sure I did not have to pay anything.

After this debacle, I should have taken them all out for drinks, but I needed internet to phone home; as a result, I found myself at a Starbucks (*$).  That's right: I literally flew halfway across the globe, to another continent, just to use the wifi at Starbucks; I'm so ashamed. Crazy enough, I found 2 Americans there who were just passing through Chile on a tour of South America.  One of which just happened to be named "Linda"; hi Mom!  The fun part was that I-- after visiting Chile for only 2 weeks ever before this-- got to help them deal with the "natives", find wifi on their iphones, and discuss the nature of Chilean life.
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When my next flight to La Serena (Two Months Down South) was near, we kindly departed and I headed off in the wrong direction.  I expected that I would need a power converter from American to Chilean power at the telescope.  So I went to find an adapter.  The duty free shop nearby had *just* the thing.  It was a universal adapter from any power type to any power type; for the low low price of $40 (20.000 CLP).  I found out two terrible things later: 1) The observatory facility makes it's own power, and uses the US system because we are now the standard in more than just language and money; 2) a damn US-Chilean converter costs $5 at the minimart in Santiago!

Sky Airlines

My last flight of the "day" was on Sky Airlines.  They are a domestic only carrier that flies small planes on 1 - 2 hour long flights.  Apparently, it is very common for business people to fly around the country for 2+ hour meetings and back again, because they are cheap, quick, and frequent.  As a result, the service was *amazing*, which was topped off by the full lunch they served on the hour long flight, including a delicious chocolate covered something that I ate first!

For more from here until I returned to Santiago, read my previous entry Two Months Down South

Culture Clash

In the end, I had an inverted "culture clash".  I actually came out of it liking the Chileans WAY MORE than the Americans; I blame AA for that fact, not America herself.

Two Months Down South

My first two weeks in Chile have been both warm, enlightening, and troubled.
Altogether, I'm still looking forward to the full 2 months!



Leaving Home

I started my journey to foreign lands by first traveling diagonally across the entire United States. I started the trip with good friends in San Francisco, who are borrowing my car while I'm away-- thank you both; then I traveled to Denver, Colorado for the Division for Planetary Sciences 2013 meeting (DPS2013); and I finally ending my stay in America by literally living in a trailer, in my parents' backyard, in Naples, Florida.  After 4 days of living my dream to be that special kind of redneck, I hitched a ride with American Airlines from Florida to Dallas to Santiago to La Serena and back to Santiago.  Oh what a wonderful few weeks it has been!

New Friends

My first friend in Santiago, Nestor, greeted me at the door with a great big smile and a hug.  Having been friends with the nicest person in the world, Rodrigo, who is from Santiago as well, I expected Chileans to be nice people, but now I know that they are all the nicest people in the world; okay maybe not all of them, but the astronomers are rather amazing!

Nestor was accompanied by one of the official drivers (Juan) for the Las Campanas Observatory.  Nestor and I would be calling LCO home for the next 2 days, while we observed our funny little wobbling stars in the sky.  The 4 hour trip from the airport to the telescope was both beautiful and daunting.  Although I was exceptionally tired from the 9.5 hour flight from Dallas to Santiago, I was overwhelmed and excited to hang out with my new Chilean friends and explore a new language and culture that I planned to immerse myself in over the upcoming 2 months.  Both Nestor and Juan were more than happy to tell me about Chilean culture, the mountains we were driving through, and the telescope facilities as well.  Most of the trip was open country with a spotted houses, but then we crested a hill and BANG!, there's the Pacific ocean!  It was immense and beautiful.  I stared at it for the remaining 30 minutes that it was in sight, until we crested the next ridge.

The observatory, LCO or Magellan, is at 2500m (8200ft) and is so named "Las Campanas" or "The Bells" because there are rocks there, when hit with other rocks or triggers, sound like bells.  The neighboring observatory, which you can easily see from LCO is called "La Silla" or "The Chair" because it apparently looks like a chair.  I can personally verify that many rocks at LCO do indeed sound like bells.  As for the Chair-esque view of the neighboring observatory hosting mountain? Not so much!

Observing like a Real Boy

Immediate upon arriving, the host of the mountain walks out and hands me a very cool looking water bottle that says "Las Campanas Observatory" in white, on a pretty metallic blue facade.  The funny part about this is that he didn't say "Hola! ¿Cómo estás?", he just looked at me and handed me the bottle.  Obviously water is more important than communication at 2500m in an arid desert.  Next we enjoyed a late lunch and chatted more about the observatories, the country, etc.  LCO must have the single best chefs in all of astronomy.  For a "simple late lunch" they had some of the best home made pizza I've ever had.  Granted, not all of their meals were as amazing, but this was a good start.

After lunch, I decided that a much needed nap was due to me.  So I venture to my private room for the respite that I was craving.  The room looked exactly like a 70's themed Motel6 (minus the prostitutes, if you know that story).   The bedspread was brown and orange; the curtains were brown and orange; the carpet was a orangy-brown!  Viva-la-70s!  None the less, it served wonderfully as a napping spot.

I woke up JUST in time for Dinner.  Again, a wonderful meal.  I think it was something like a meat stew, very similar to good a old home cooked meal, except with lots of salt.  The dinner was okay, but the company was even better.  It turned out that the people I randomly chose to sit across from were in fact using the same telescope as we were.  Of course, they were scheduled for this night, and we were scheduled for the next night.  But this provided an excellent opportunity to request a "showing around" of the facilities.  I was going to crash the party anyways, but at least now I had permission.

Following dinner, Nestor and I went out to see sunset, look around the base camp and play billiards; oh yeah, did I mention that LCO has a "wreck room"?  They have a billiards table, a weight set, a treadmill and a drum set.  I thought "hmm, I like to play the drums.  Maybe I should try it a bit".  I did, and it was fun, until Nestor dropped a few beats. That's when I found out that he needs to quit astronomy and go on the road as the next Dave Grohl.  I won't be able to hit a drum in his presence ever again!

Off to the observatory we went, which started out like "fra-la-la-la-la" and ended up like "breathe! breathe dammit! breathe!".  There should be a sign that says "The air here is thin, stupid, so don't run!"  But finally we met up with the team for that night, who were observing M-dwarfs, Brown Dwarfs and White-Dwarfs-- very interracial observing.  But I got to see the control room, the weather maps, the control screens, and meet one of the TOs (Telescope Operator).  Funny new fact: TO is pronounced Tee-Oh, but so is "Tio", which means "Uncle" in spanish.  So the Chileans refer to the TOs as the "Uncles of the Telescope".  After a few hours of wasting time and chatting with like minded fellows, we ran off to our rooms to work and try to stay up all night.

The point to showing up on the mountain a day early is that we get used to the altitude, lack of humidity, as well as the observing sleep schedule.  I think I lasted until about 3 or 4am.  This is not a bad try, except that I was convinced to wake up at 7am for the apparently awesome breakfast that LCO has to offer.  Admittedly, it was pretty good.  But I will not be waking up at any hour, while on an observing schedule, just for food, ever again.



Observing for Beginners

Finally, it was time for us to start observing.  Of course, this actually starts at about 3pm, when the sun is still up.  It shows rather interesting progress in my career that starting observations when the sun is up no longer surprises me.  We had to first run hours of calibration frames just to make sure everything was lined up, both physically and spectroscopically.  Additionally, Nestor had to show me the ropes.  I bet he could have started a 5pm, gone to dinner at 6pm, and been back for a night of observing by 7pm if he was on his own.  But like most things that I've been through in that last few weeks, I have many thanks to Nestor for helping me through it.

Now I know what to do and can truly call myself an observer.  This was the first time that I was at the controls of one of the worlds most powerful and capable telescopes ever made!  I feel truly honored to work with such great people, and to do such interesting and wonderful research with them.  If it were not for my advisors (Drake, Heather, Andres, Eve, Casey, Brian,...) and fellow grad students (Sarah, Ashlee, Nestor, Kamen,...), then I would not be the scientist I am today.

The rest of the night was more or less boring.  When things are working as they should, there is nothing to do.  I spent almost the entire time downloading the data from the telescope and running a script that Nestor wrote to get up to date photometry (measurement of photons) about the observing.  This allowed us to know if anything was going awry outside the sophisticated monitoring systems of the Magellan-Baade telescope.  Of course, I got bored with waiting for the script to run; so I reconfigured it to automagically store the old results, download the new data, rerun the script on the newest files and plot the updated figure.  Writing that took me a few hours, but that's all I had the brain power for at 2am, waiting for sunrise.  By the end, we observed from 8pm until almost 6am,  continuously monitoring our target; nearly 10 hours of observations!!  I was so excited to begin examining the data, but first: sleep!



Grand Departure

After lunch the next day, we frollocked around the mountain, "rang the bells", and took some photos for another hour or so before departing with my final view of the magnificent Magellan telescopes: Clay and Baade.

Although my adventures down south have just begun, it was actually daunting to leave LCO.  It might have been the excitement for all of Chile, but I felt that this place was the cornerstone of my entire life in South America.  Although it will be 2 months before I return for another observation, I will look forward to it every day!