Chau

I'm pretty bad with goodbyes. I always feel slightly awkward and end up giving off the impression that I have a terribly cold, unemotional rock for a heart, when I actually don't. (Really, I don't.) Maybe that's why I like Chilean Spanish's use of "chau," which has a friendlier and more temporary feel than "adios." Then again, I don't really like the English "see you later," so maybe my preferences are just completely arbitrary.

In any case, today was our last full day in Santiago, so after filing into a classroom and receiving our grades, we exchanged awkward goodbyes with Professor Maza and departed from the observatory for the last time. I haven't even left Santiago yet, and I'm already starting to miss the city. It has all the liveliness of New York and the relaxedness of Los Angeles, with a culture that is unparalleled by any US city. I'm going to miss the people I've met during the past six weeks, whether at the observatory, at church, or just randomly on the streets (and mountains). In my mind, Chile will forevermore be associated with awesome people, awesome skies, and awesome national pride.

This concludes my official blogging for the summer. From next week onwards, I'll be back at Yale, working with Professor Meg Urry and one of her post-docs on the spectrometry of binary quasars. If you're a potential astro major at Yale, feel free to contact me at james [dot] kim [at] yale [dot] edu with any questions about the program. If you're just one of the random people who follow this blog (i.e. the coolest people ever), you can probably stop checking for updates, except for maybe a final photo post. Bye everyone! Bye Chile!

Somewhere in the Middle

Another chapter in my life is coming to a close. I'll take the final tomorrow morning, say my goodbyes in the afternoon, pack up on friday, get on a plane on Saturday morning, and fly away to the states.

It's been a solid six weeks. I have no regrets.

Grad students are really fun to hang out with. Especially grad students who enjoy talking about about astronomy while slightly tipsy.

We live in such a ridiculously cool universe. This world might be flawed, people might be imperfect, but I would never choose another universe to live in. It's so complex and yet comprehensible. I'm beginning to understand why Einstein loved to isolate himself and just think. There is a lot to think about.

I don't have the energy or motivation to string these thoughts together in a comprehensible manner. Just use your imagination. I know I'm using mine.

One more thing... 엄마 생신 축하합니다, 아라뷰~~

Chromatic

Okay, I totally lied. I'll probably write at least a couple more entries before I leave Chile. This particular entry is dedicated to a flippin' sweet lab that we started today (and nearly finished, surprisingly). If the technical details bore you, feel free to scroll down and stare at the pretty picture.

We were given black-and-white images of NGC 4603 taken with three different color filters: red, green, and blue. (I'm sure that sounds counter-intuitive, but what can I say? Astro is weird.) After debiasing and flattening the images using conventional methods in IRAF, we imported them into a program called kvis, combined them, and played around with histograms until the colors rendered clearly. Then, as is my wont, I imported the combined image into Aperture and played around even more. The final result, as you can see, was quite nice.

If only all research were as simple and straightforward as this lab.

The yellow central bulge contains older, population II stars. The blue spiral arms contain star-forming regions and newer, population I stars. Just in case you were wondering.

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In other news, due to the extremely addictive nature of Project Euler, introduced to me by a certain friend who I know reads this blog (grrrr), I've been getting rather proficient at Perl lately. Maybe this will make up for the fact that I've come this far in my academic career without really mastering any programming languages. (APCS during junior year doesn't count. I programmed Java fishes to eat each other.) Stand by for further updates.

Countdown

Whenever I walk alone along the streets of Santiago, I suffer from periodic episodes of disorientation. Is it the noise? The pollution? The fact that I hardly speak the language of this country? All plausible reasons, of course. Then again, living in a foreign country, I would fully expect to encounter the unfamiliar on a daily basis. No, the reason for my disorientation is the fact that Santiago already feels intimately familiar to me. The urban sprawl; the view of snowcapped mountains on the horizon; the crowded city center and well-to-do suburbs; the one-way streets lined with merchandise stands and street peddlers; even the ethnic enclaves scattered throughout downtown--every part of Santiago feels like home all over again. If I had the time and the means, I would even attempt to drive from the powdery snow of the Andes to the white beaches of Viña del Mar just to pretend that I was back in Southern California. It's possible that I'm only taking to Chile now that I have less than a week left before I head back to the hot and humid Northeast. But assuming that my sentiments are not misguided, I'm pretty sure that given the chance, I would enjoy staying here longer, living by myself and doing the things I love.

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Speaking of the things I love, I just realized that I haven't really written anything about the astronomy that I do here--despite the name, title, and subtitle of this blog, and the fact that I never would have had the opportunity to come here in the first place if not for astronomy. Oops.

I guess most significantly, I've come to appreciate how different classroom knowledge is from the analysis of real data using professional reduction and photometric software. It's one thing to know that variable stars exist, and another thing entirely to take hundreds of images, each containing hundreds of stars, and determine which (if any) stars vary intrinsically rather than due to atmospheric disturbances. It can be a tedious process, but producing a smooth and beautifully periodic light curve at the end makes everything worth it.

It's also not a coincidence that I chose variable stars to illustrate my newfound appreciation for real-world astronomy. The two labs we've completed so far have both involved finding variable stars in a sky field taken across different epochs. The process is conceptually pretty basic. First, I debias and flatten the images (i.e. correct for random background noise and differential pixel responsiveness in the detector's CCD). Then, I align the images either relatively, using the first image, or absolutely, using a catalogue of stellar coordinates. Then, using photometric software, I obtain flux or magnitude values (measures of luminosity) for the stars that exist in every frame, and import the data into Excel. Finally, I plot these magnitude values against time to determine which stars are variable (or at least seem to be).

What makes the process more difficult than it sounds is the fact that every step in the sequence, from connecting to the data server to writing scripts that analyze hundreds of images at a time, is completely new to me. More frustratingly, every lab uses its own program language and proprietary software, which means that I probably won't be able to use the skills I learn here for my thesis project, much less my eventual career. On the other hand, I'm having fun learning how to use Linux, Perl, a ridiculous program called SEXTRACTOR (Source Extractor), and all sorts of other useful tools, so I shouldn't be complaining.

The types of images I work with. Ignore the labels; they're meaningless without the accompanying lab report.

Light curve of EH Librae. The black lines are observational error bars. (Let it be known that I hate observational error. It makes life so much harder.)

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And finally, it's about time for another photo upload. Some of these are Joey's, but I don't remember which (except the ones of me, of course), so I'm crediting him here. Yeah artistic honesty.

More from the North: staring into an empty reservoir at the Pisco Mistral factory.

Feeding the doggies against my better judgment in San Pedro de Atacama.

Telescopes are just bigger in Chile.

I strongly recommend this rental company to anyone visiting Latin America.

Alas. The fates were not kind to this bicycle.

If you look closely, you can see our bikes locked up at the rightmost curve.

Taking photos of each other on top of the truck. While driving. On a mountain.

Mmmm nothing like third lunch at a ski resort in the middle of nowhere.

Ski lift.

Lots of mountain, lots of snow.

The weather wanted us to go away.

엄마, if you see this... It was perfectly safe, don't worry.

Santiago by night. Now just imagine the lights stretching about five times as far to both the right and the left.

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Happy Independence Day. See you all at the end of this program, probably.

Aventura

We didn't have class last Friday, so Joey and I decided to spend our free day constructively by going mountain biking. We woke up at 9:00 am and headed down to Alcantara, where we met with Peter, the owner of the rental company. After taking our money and Joey's passport as collateral, he handed over the bikes and told us to have fun. (Incidentally, he looked and sounded exactly like Will Ferrell, but that's another story for another day.)

From Alcantara, we began our long and fated trek eastward. A little bit of geography: Santiago is located in Chile's central valley, at an elevation of 520 m. The Andes Mountains rise up directly to the east, reaching altitudes of 4000 m or higher. Our goal was to reach a park about halfway up the mountain to look around and enjoy the sights. As it turns out, we grossly underestimated both the horizontal and the vertical distances we would have to travel to get there, but as you'll soon find out, it didn't matter.

The first leg of the trip was a relatively easy ride through the eastern half of Santiago, along Avenida Apoquindo and Avenida Las Condes. The sun was low, the air was crisp, and life felt good. Naturally, things changed once we got to the edge of the city. In retrospect, I suppose it was somewhat silly of me to expect mountain biking to be no harder than urban biking, but what did I know at the time? I'm a city dweller at heart.

Reality soon hit me as I struggled to figure out gear ratios and tackle 35+ degree hills while avoiding speeding cars that came out of nowhere. We pushed on, of course. Some hills were doable; others, unfortunately and embarassingly, required walking. By far the best parts of the afternoon were the lunches. Yes, lunchES. We had thrown together three monster ham/turkey/salami wraps the night before, and they were the only things that kept us going forward. We actually ended up getting pretty far on our bikes--almost thirty kilometers, in fact.

Then my bike broke. I have no idea how it happened. I was pedaling up a particularly nefarious hill when suddenly I heard a crack, and subsequently, the grating noise of metal against metal. Apparently, a centimeter-thick piece of solid steel had just snapped in half, leaving the rear gear train dangling on the chain like a demented pendulum. Our repair kit was, of course, useless, but since it was still early, we decided to lock up the bikes and hike up the mountain on foot while searching for a phone to call Peter.

It was our lucky day... Sort of. The first car that pulled over for us was a pick-up truck with five happy-go-lucky (read: high on pot) college students on a day snowboarding trip. They offered to put our bikes in the cargo bed and drive us up to the ski resort, then back down to the city when they were done. Not wanting to pass up such a surreal experience, we accepted the offer, though they told us that we'd have to sit in the bed along with the bikes during the entire drive. A word of advice to anybody who decides to hitchhike on a truck full of faded college students: Hold on to something. Tightly.

Fortunately, we survived the cold, curvy drive up the mountain and arrived at the ski resort, where the guys wasted no time asking around for used lift tickets so that they wouldn't have to buy their own. They managed to get their hands on two, and after making sure that Joey and I were safe and sound in the lodge, went to carve the mountain up. In the lodge, we ate our last lunch, drank hot chocolate, and ordered some heavenly crepes (raspberry for me, Nutella for Joey). At 5:30 pm, as the sun started setting and the lifts stopped operating, we met back up with them at the truck, where they informed us that they had been caught using used tickets. It didn't seem to affect their spirits at all though. We hopped back in the truck and started down the mountain.

Was our adventure finished? Of course not. A quarter of the way down the mountain, the guys decided that they had to stop the truck in the middle of the road, take photos of the sunset, and blaze up some more. They also offered us hits and asked us if we wanted to party with them that night. Tempted though I was, I had to turn down both invitations. (Please note the sarcasm.) After some lounging around, we started driving again, this time even more cautiously than I had hoped for. Either the driver felt obligated to make us feel safe, or pot really did heighten his judgment like he claimed. In any case, we soon arrived at the edge of the city, where they dropped us off and gave us their email addresses for photos. I almost felt sad saying goodbye.

Since the rest of the trip was downhill, it didn't matter that my bike was broken. We coasted down the main avenue all the way to Alcantara, where we dropped the bikes off, picked up Joey's passport, and took public transport all the way back home. Then I promptly knocked out.

Google Map view of Santiago, our bike route, and the Andes. Note that we got well past the halfway mark between the city and the snow.

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Now that I think about it, experiences like the aforementioned are what make studying abroad worth the money and effort. When else will I ever have the opportunity to bike up a kilometer of snow-capped mountains, only to find myself at the mercy of a bunch of local college students who find my nationality and ethnicity reasons enough to ask questions and crack jokes nonstop? Five years from now, I doubt I'll remember what I learn in class here, but I will never forget the hilarity of almost falling off the back of a speeding truck or the absurdity of starting the day on bike in the middle of Santiago and ending it in a lodge on top of the Andes. I can only hope for comparable adventures during the two weeks I have left.

Fotos del Norte

Huge picture post, as promised. Stay tuned for a detailed account of yesterday's ridiculous biking/hitchhiking/snow adventure.

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Gateway to the North.

Dramatic back-to-back camera pose at the VLT.

The VLT as seen from below.

You haven't seen a telescope enclosure until you've visited Paranal.

Lifting a "Hollywood rock" from Quantum of Solace. Or Bijan is much stronger than he looks.

Haunted train station. I wish.

The Milky Way from San Pedro. See tree in lower right for scale. Photo courtesy of Joey Brink.

A praying dinosaur, according to Professor Maza. Somehow I doubt the native people knew about dinosaurs.

Sand dune and light circles for dramatic effect.

Llama.

Dan searching for brine shrimp (a.k.a. Artemia salina) (a.k.a. sea monkeys).

Picturesque. But much much much colder than it looks.

Alpaca wool loom at an artisan shop in San Pedro.

Warning: children here lose their balls easily.

I guess obscene graffiti is pretty ubiquitous after all.

Silhouette of the 4 m telescope at Cerro Tololo. And a smiley moon.

Spelling out "Yale" in front of the Yale telescope. Aren't we clever?

Long exposure photography of the sky from inside a dome. Photo courtesy of Joey Brink (again).

Alma Libre

First update in a week. I haven't actually been slacking--though I admittedly haven't done any real work in a while either. My housemates (program-mates?) and I have been on a midterm excursion of sorts to northern Chile since Saturday, and the internet access has been spotty at best until now. Here's a summary of the trip to date:

Touring this part of the country has been quite an experience, from both the cultural and the astronomical point of view. We flew into Antofagasta and, after a quick stop at an enormous sea arch called La Portada, drove down to the aptly (and very creatively) named Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in the middle of the Atacama desert. Operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the VLT is composed of four 8.2 m optical telescopes at an altitude of 2,600 m and is one of the most powerful ground-based research telescopes in the world. It was an awesome privilege to be able to tour the facilities and see the telescopes up close, especially since I may end up working at the VLT at some point in my life.

Incidentally, the Atacama desert is the driest desert in the world and was used for the filming of the desert scenes in James Bond: Quantum of Solace. Not that we recognized any landmarks in the barren nothingness.

One anecdote worth mentioning from the VLT trip. A large group of high school girls from Colegio Antofagasta happened to be touring at the same time as us, and while we tried not to pay attention to them at first, this proved to be more and more difficult as they started to take photos of us and laugh as they passed by. By chance, we ended up in the same building later, and they started asking us about ourselves in broken English. Of course, we tried to respond in our broken Spanish, and after a bit of dialogue, they began asking for photos with Victor, Joey, and me (the three tallest guys in the group). That wasn't even the strangest part though. Later, while our group was watching an educational video about the VLT, the girls came back and began demanding photos with--you guessed it--yours truly. I indulged them of course, but I was truly perplexed. Perhaps I was the first Asian they had seen in person? In any case, it was an interesting and humorous experience, but one that I would rather not repeat.

After Paranal, we passed through Calama and went straight to San Pedro de Atacama, a small town of a few thousand inhabitants at most. All of the buildings were made out of adobe bricks and straw, including the hotel where we stayed, and it pretty obvious that most of the town's income came from tourists visiting for the local trekking, archaeology, sandboarding, lagoons, and volcanoes. We stayed in San Pedro for a full two days while visiting local cultural sites, including salt flats, el Valle de la Luna, and villages even smaller than San Pedro with nothing but llamas and artisan shops. The most memorable experience, though, was the stargazing session that we held on the first night. All of the aspects that made San Pedro inconvenient during the day--high altitude, thin atmosphere, and lack of modern facilities--made it an amateur astronomer's paradise at night. In particular, the Milky Way, which looks like a pale whitish blob from even the clearest sites in the northern hemisphere, stood out like pure spilled milk on a pitch black piano. (Excuse me as I wax poetic.) It was quite possibly the most beautiful sight I have ever witnessed.

Today, we visited two large radio telescopes: the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), both located in the middle of the hellishly dry desert that is northern Chile. It was cool to see the radio antennas just because they were so enormous, but it was even cooler to talk to the astronomers from all over the world who work there and spend their entire lives solving the mysteries of the cool (temperature-wise) universe. They almost made millimeter and centimeter astronomy sound exciting. Except for the whole altitude sickness at 5000 m part.

Anyway, if you've read this far, congratulations. The internet at this hotel is not permitting any image uploads, but I promise many pretty pictures with my next update. Bye bye!