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| The sun sets on my final flight from Calama. |
Officially, my "visit" at ALMA is finished. I completed the agreed upon three months and three "turnos" (shifts at the ALMA site in northern Chile) in January through April, with a bonus fourth turno in late April. The experience has been entirely positive, I have had an insider's view of what it takes the raise an observatory and to begin operations at the largest observatory in the world! There are still many complicated aspects of the observatory that are beyond my understanding, but every day I learned something new that I hope will help me soon when I propose to use ALMA for observations related to my dissertation.
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| Following a wet "altiplanic winter", ALMA became rather green. |
I value the opportunities I had to travel to northern Chile,
and live for several weeks in the "driest desert in the world". In
fact, we experienced rain storms, snow, and sand storms in the early
months this year. Now it seems that the weather is improving, and we
were able to make observations that are only possible in a few places on
earth.
Equally interesting to me were the people I met who are part of this incredible international collaboration between North America, Europe and east Asia. In the control room I often heard English, Spanish, and Japanese, which happen to be the three languages which I have learned (and I hope I have occasion to improve my Japanese again!), some sort of strange coincidence that leads me to believe that everything we do and learn will have some purpose in our lives in ways that we cannot foresee.
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| The sunset was always impressive from ALMA. Check out the time sequence, especially where the sun is setting relative to the mountain in the distance. In January... |
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| Late February... |
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| And finally the sunset in April. The sun is now farther north, meaning summer is over and winter is soon. For you in the northern hemisphere, summer is coming your way. |
I hope to maintain my connections to ALMA during the remainder of my time in Chile, so now I'll be splitting time between the ALMA offices in Santiago and the Universidad de Chile Department of Astronomy. During my final turno at ALMA, I asked a few of the people I had been working with (astronomers, data analysts, antenna operators) some questions about their jobs, to get a better idea of what it takes to work full time at an observatory like ALMA, realizing that one day I may be in a similar situation. You can find their responses in my
astrobites post here.
