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The Magellanic Clouds over La Silla

The Milky Way, our home galaxy is not alone in the Local Group of galaxies in the Universe, there are several smaller or larger satellite galaxies orbiting around it. Two of these are visible to the unaided eye, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (the LMC and the SMC). These are both irregular galaxies, both only visible from the Southern hemisphere.

First, here is a wide angle view of the sky towards the southern celestial pole. (Canon EOS 7D + Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens @ 15mm, f/3.5, ISO1600, 69s.)

Then from a few hours later, here is another shot showing the Magellanic Clouds next to the dome of the ESO 3.6 metre Telescope. The strong green and orange glow above the horizon is airglow. (FUJIFILM X100S, 23 mm, f/2, ISO 3200, 15s.)

The following two shots are both made from 10 individual images by calculating their average to achieve a better signal-to-noise ratio (a.k.a. to have nicer images with low noise). Each individual frame was taken with a Canon EOS 7D + Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens, f/2, ISO1600, 20s.

The Milky Way over La Silla

One of the nice things about the Southern sky is the ability to see the brightest, central parts of our own galaxy – the Milky Way – spreading across the midnight sky, from horizon to horizon, through the zenith. You can see four photos below, each stacked together from several individual exposures. (Click on the images for the – very much larger – originals!)

First, here is the brightest part of the Milky Way, looking towards the centre of the galaxy (and the Scutum, Sagittarius, and Scorpius constellations). The green glow towards the bottom is airglow near the horizon. (From 27 images with a Canon EOS 7D + Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens, f/2, ISO1600, 10s.)

Here is a zoom-in on the galactic centre (average of 20 individual exposures taken with a Canon EOS 7D + Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens, f/2.8, ISO1600, 10s).

Then here is the southern part of the Milky Way which is not visible from the Northern hemisphere, looking towards the Centaurus, Crux, and Carina constellations. (From 10 images with a Canon EOS 7D + Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens, f/2, ISO1600, 10s.)

And at last, but definitely not least, here is the Milky Way from horizon to horizon (from Cygnus to Carina), with a bit less post processing. Do yourself a favour, and really click for the large version! (From 21 images with a FUJIFILM X100S, 23 mm, f/2, ISO 3200, 15s)

And remember, these images are just for fun, my observing run only starts tomorrow, and while it will produce a lot of interesting data, it will not result in pretty images like these!

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La Silla – before observing

If you love rocky landscapes, mountains, and deserts, then La Silla is for you. I am only at the beginning of my stay here, but I have seen so many beautiful things, that it was really difficult to make a selection from all the pictures I took. We had a small hike after lunch to a nearby place where several petroglyphs (rock engravings) can be seen on boulders lying around the slopes of the mountain. It was still almost fully overcast when we left, but by the time we had to turn back, the sky cleared up and the desert showed its colours. Here are the best shots from the afternoon, tomorrow I will come back with some pictures of the Southern sky! Then as the day (night) after tomorrow my observing run starts, I might have to spend some time on actual work too ;)

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Chile, here I am!

After a short TGV ride from Brussels to Paris on 1st class (and almost getting chased down by the French border control after not wanting to stop for their undercover agent at the train station – yeah, sorry, but anyone can wave in front of you with a fake ID…), and a flight of 14 hours and 35 minutes (I had the same flight duration from Abu Dhabi to Sydney last year), I arrived to Santiago de Chile. I came to South America for the first time in my life, and I will be observing at the Swiss 1.2 metre Leonhard Euler Telescope at the La Silla Observatory (ESO).

The flight was really long, and with much more turbulence above the equator upon entering the airspace over Brazil than what I am comfortable with. Anyway, these Boeing 777s are luckily pretty flexible. Among others, I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which I found a really nice feel-good movie, with a great soundtrack. Unluckily I did not manage to sleep much, partly because the Air France economy class is simply crap, but mainly because while other people fell asleep almost immediately after take off, I wanted to sleep only after shifting to Chilean time, which coincided with others waking up and turning their reading lights on… Anyway, I got picked up at the airport by a taxi arranged by ESO (which by-the-way stands for European Southern Observatory), and after a short drive, ended up in the ESO Guest House in Santiago. It was quite an experience driving past dirt an poverty around the outskirts of the city, then the modern financial district, and ending up in the very green area of the guest house. The building itself is a colonial hacienda, with an inner garden, a nicely furnished living room, and very friendly staff. More importantly, with great food! I have not done much on the afternoon and the evening besides posting the two previous blog posts, simply because by nine I was so tired, that I had to go to bed. I did not take more than 5 seconds to fall asleep.

The next morning I finally made it to the shower, then after a quick breakfast my taxi came and I took the plane to La Serena. With its 1h 15m flight time, it was nothing compared to the more than two hours I spent afterwards in the ESO transport driving up to the Observatory of La Silla. But at least I finally saw the blue sky (the weather in Santiago was pretty rainy and windy), and the Andes. The roads here are generally not the best, but the last section towards the observatory before the gate of the ESO was simply missing (only gravel), while after the ESO gate, there were more potholes than road around them. It was really bad, not only compared to the smooth roads of Mallorca… I was seriously worried about my photo equipment.

Then upon arrival, I was immediately taken to my room. End that was it. No reception, no check in like on La Palma, nothing. I was still in time for lunch, where I ran into the current observer and a few other young astronomers (and by young I mean more or less my age) too. Since I had nothing better to do, I joined them for a small excursion to the nearby (dried out) oasis and a small copper mine.

As you can see, this is a pretty dry place, a rocky desert. But a very colourful one! Now I am at the telescope, but the sky is cloudy, so we are not working tonight. Also, my run only starts on Monday, so I still have some time to walk around, and take some pictures of the Southern sky, if it clears up. Many more posts to come!

Cycling holidays (a.k.a. training camp) on Mallorca

It might sound a bit strange, but the goal behind all my training this year (so far) was to get myself into a good shape for the upcoming cycling holidays. While most of my cycling buddies (and here I mean those who are also taking part in amateur – but quite serious – competitions, known as the toeristenkoersen) went to Mallorca to put the last hundreds of kilometres into their legs before the competition season stars, I went there knowing that this might easily be the week where my season peaks (since now, two weeks later, I am not going to be able to train for almost a full month), so I wanted to be in top shape.

A few years ago I probably would have said, that I did a quite amazing amount of training leading up to Mallorca, but now, having many friends both in real life and on Strava who are at least as crazy about road cycling as I am, and who might have twice as many kilometres in the saddle by the end of the year, now I can only say that I did a quite respectable amount of training, but nothing exceptional. Time changes your perspective… Also, everything is relative. If you look at people who do not race, then this mileage is very good. It’s just that I know, that to be able to keep up with the best amateurs and race, I would need to train twice as much as I do, and I just don’t think I could do that and still enjoy it. And at the end, that is what matters to me.

I want to be able to keep up with the stronger guys, but I must respect my boundaries. The key is finding the right balance between how good I wish I was, and how good I can be without an overwhelming training load. Especially that training is not only physical, but also a psychological challenge. It is not easy to go out every day, in bad weather, alone against the strong wind, especially when in the middle of February you feel weak (or, to be honest, you feel like a piece of crap), and to skip the afternoon snacks just to loose those two extra kilos after Christmas. It is mentally difficult. Telling yourself day after day, that you put yourself through all this pain to be good somewhen in the future (no pain no gain, as we all know) – which at that very moment in the middle of February seems extremely far away. Planning your days such that you make time between work and family for training, in one way or another, is not trivial. But then, after many cold and dark winter rides spent swearing into the headwind, usually around mid March, when it finally becomes warm enough to go out in shorts (even if with the extra protection of arm and leg warmers) for an intensive ride, you start to feel strong. And that ride, that ride is worth training for. Because after that ride you start to believe that you can do this, that given three more weeks of training you will kick ass. And that’s always a nice feeling. (Long transatlantic flights are good for letting your mind go.)

So this year, we (a few people from WTCOOL – my local cycling team – and some girlfriends, most importantly Clio of course) spent a week on Mallorca with the Fred Rompelberg Cycling team. In practice this meant that around a hundred cyclists occupied a significant amount of the Grupotel Taurus Park, and each day we had group rides to choose from matching our individual fitness levels. Also, there were rental bikes provided on spot (Isaac Graviton Ultegra), so we did not need to go through the hassle of travelling with our own ones. After the first five days, based on the ridden kilometres, they gave the title of kilometre-king and kilometre-queen to the most worthy riders, which came with a small trophy too. I can already tell you, that the author of this post brought home a shared (with another Peter from WTCOOL) kilometre-king title! So how did that happen?

For this achievement, we – first of all – always went with the fastest group (the speed group, or the fast tour group), and if the daily distance was less that 150 kilometres, then we (Peter and I) did a bit of extra. Then on Wednesday – which, by the way, was supposed to be the rest day – we did over 200 kilometres over a scenic route I planned across the island all the way to the northeastern cliffs. And to have a nice ending, on Saturday we did another 150 kilometres, which had more elevation gain than any other ride before. So actually the two hardest rides were the ones we made for ourselves. Although in terms of intensity, the first day was quite brutal. Then we went with a speed group of only 5 people, and thanks to the low number of riders, the crazy pace, and my rear brake rubbing for a half hour, we were all happy the next day to join the larger tour group instead… This training volume and intensity combined meant that we had to eat every evening as much as possible, which turned our dinners into quite a struggle too… (Same goes for the breakfasts…)

In terms of form, I did well, although there were a few guys (especially Peter) who were better (especially climbers). But I was in the top 5, and I was very much satisfied with that. I finished the week with 962 kilometres, 9939 meters of elevation gain, and 34h 52m in the saddle, which if by far my best week on the road bike ever. At the end of the week, I was in the top 10 of Belgian Strava users! This of course made this April my best month on the bike too (1532 km, 11371 m+, 53h 53m).

We know that all nice things must come to an end, but when we arrived home we encountered something worse than expected. While we were on Mallorca, some people broke into our storage room in the basement, and stole our mountain bikes… (We got to know this from a mail in our mailbox – you can imagine how we felt: just arriving home, putting down our luggage, and reading our post…) Luckily it turned out, that thanks to someone reporting suspicious activity during the night when all of this happened, the police caught the bad guys, and had our bikes waiting for us to collect at the police station. So everything ended relatively well, the bikes were more or less unhurt, and soon we will have more secure doors installed (which by the way we have already ordered before all of this happened). As one would say in Hungarian: “Itt sincs kolbászból a kerítés“…