Tag Archives: photo

Holidays in Boston – Part 1

Since I have nothing to do right now as I am sitting in the middle of the worst weather I have ever seen on La Palma, I have some time to write about our trip to Massachusetts. (By the way, this is my 200th night ‘working’ at a professional observatory!)

We spent 7 full days (20-26 September) in and around Boston, enjoying a really nice Indian summer. As the hotel prices in the area are totally insane, we stayed in an Airbnb apartment in Cambridge just 5 minutes from the Central station of the subway. This was quite convenient, not only because we could reach downtown Boston in no time, but also because there was a very nice sushi place (and other restaurants and shops) just a few minutes from our door.

We arrived with an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin on the evening of the 19th, and thanks to the very smooth US Preclearance back in the Irish capital, we could immediately just pick up our bags and take the shuttle bus/subway to our apartment. The 20th was a Sunday, and we spent the full day in Cambridge, mostly in and around Harvard University. We went on a very nice and unexpectedly informative guided tour of the campus, then after lunch from the Au Bon Pain (hmmm, really nice BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich), we visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Thanks to Clio’s amazing organisation skills we had pre-purchased (low price) tickets for everywhere with a custom Go Boston card, so we did not have to pay entrance fee (or wait in line) on the spot anywhere that week. The museum was interesting, especially the Glass Flower collection of “over 4000 models – some 3000 on display – that was created by the glass artisans, Leopold Blaschka and his son, Rudolf. The commission began in 1886, continued for five decades, and represents more than 830 plant species.” At the end of the day I bought a pair of trail running shoes (which are since then very much approved), then we walked back home following the Charles River.

On Monday the 21st we got to taste how crowded the morning commute can be on the subway, so we tried to avoid the peak hours afterwards (with quite some success). We spent the day walking along The Freedom Trail, passing by most of the historical spots of Boston. Although non of us is really interested in this part of the US history, the architectural beauty of some buildings and the atmosphere of old Boston is well worth the visit. Boston is luckily much more compact than New York for example, so we did not feel completely dead at the end of the trail. On the contrary, we kept walking further across the green streets of Bacon Hill, then along the green riverside of the Esplanade before heading home.

To be continued!

Leave a reply

Four planets and the Moon over the Mercator telescope

I am back on La Palma (again), supervising our Master students at the telescope (again). Although I did not bring the ‘big guns’ from my photo gear this time, I still have my small camera with me. The first night of this observing run was my 100th night at the Mercator telescope :) To celebrate this, here is a picture I took of the beautiful planetary conjunction before Sunrise on the morning of the 11th with my FUJIFILM X100S camera (with an equivalent focal length of 35 mm) set at f/2.8, at ISO 800, and using an exposure time of 10 seconds.

Although the Moon looks full, it is just a thin crescent (which is better visible after clicking on the image), but the dark side is quite strongly lit by light reflected back from the Earth. This is called earthshine. (At the same moment, Earth looks almost full from the surface of the Moon, so there is a lot of Earthlight even on the dark parts.)

Leave a reply

Summer observing run on La Palma

I am sitting at the airport of La Palma waiting for my hopefully not very delayed flight to Madrid (a bit of delay is ok, but I still want to make it home today), so I have a bit of time to post. I spent the previous almost two weeks (officially 10 nights) working at our Mercator Telescope, and as this time I did not come without my photography equipment, I also took a few nice pictures in my spare time. It has been so long since I took proper pictures here, that I finally had some new ideas and it did not feel like a burden to take photos. So please enjoy the following selection, and should these be not enough, head over to the full gallery on flickr.

Flying to La Palma, if it’s not on a day when charters fly, you will most likely catch a connecting flight in Madrid. I like the colours of this airport a lot. then after landing on La Palma, it’s a one hour taxi ride up from sea level to 2145 meters to the Observatory. The amount of curves along the way is just crazy, so you should keep your eyes on the road…

At the observatory astronomers stay at the residencia. It is basically a small hotel with cozy rooms that can be made totally dark even during daytime (which is pretty much the most important thing when you need to sleep during the day).

This is the first time that I came here at the beginning of the summer, so I finally got to see the sea of yellow flowers on the mountain. Especially in very clear days (so, basically every day here), they are really beautiful against the deep blue backdrop of the sky.

I made an improved version of my famous transparent dome photo, which took a lot of preparations, and running between the control room an the camera. You can read more about the process in my blog post for the old picture.

I was lucky because Venus and Jupiter came unusually close to each other on the evening sky during my stay, so I had something special to put in the background of the telescope (or the building). Note our new simultaneous three channel (hence the three colours on its sides) photometer (MAIA) on the side of the telescope.

I also got to see the laser of the WHT in action. This was actually already the second time that I saw it, but last October I had no camera with me to take pictures. Also, now I could put the Milky Way in the background :)

When I said Venus and Jupiter had a pretty close conjunction, I meant they had an apparent distance less than the diameter of the Moon! It was an amazing visual sight.

Then of course there is the famous caldera of the island, which is usually filled with a sea of clouds, but there are also a few rare days, when you can see down all the way to the bottom.

On one of the last nights I had some fun with light-painting, writing the telescope’s name with a flashlight on a long-exposure image. BTW the rest of the scenery is lit by moonlight.

Then on the last day, I could still catch our home galaxy rising behind the telescope building in the short dark time between sunset and moonrise.

I will be back in October with the Master students as usual, but probably without photo-equipment. I have taken enough nice pictures for a while.

Leave a reply

Holidays in Copenhagen, conference in Aarhus

Five years after the hugely successful Third Kepler Asteroseismology Workshop, the annual KASC meeting (or to be precise, the KASC8/TASC1 Workshop) was held in Aarhus once again. Before going to the conference, we had taken a few days off to visit Copenhagen. We had very nice weather (especially compared to what I had had to endure later in Aarhus), and a nice airbnb apartment (if you don’t count the lack of dark curtains in the bedroom, which can be a bit annoying around the summer solstice in Denmark) not too far from the centrum. Most of our time was spent walking around in the city, especially on the 2nd day which we finished with more than 36000 steps, so we could spend all the money we saved by not using public transportation on nice food here and there (Luna’s Diner for breakfast, PapirØen for all the different kinds of street food, and Bertels Salon for the best cheesecakes). At the end, I think Clio liked the Tivoli Gardens the most, while I really loved Grundtvig’s Church.

Then while Clio flew home, I took the train to Aarhus. It was a long ride, but comfortable, and there was also free wifi, so I guess I have no reason to complain. Then in Aarhus I had the most cozy and clean airbnb apartment ever for less money than what the most crappy hotel (which I have already tried 5 years ago) would have been, and only a 5 minute walk away from the conference venue. The meeting itself was good as usual, and I again got the opportunity to present my (and my collaborators’) results in a 15 minute talk (‘Scanning the seismic barcode of SPB stars – Asteroseismic fingerprints of rotation and mixing in the slowly pulsating B stars viewed from space’), which went also fine. Due to the horrible weather, I did not attend the excursion (to climb one of the highest ‘mountains’ in Denmark), but as soon as the sun came out (and the temperature climbed to 14°C) I went for a 10k run. The conference dinner was served in The Old Town, a nice open-air museum of old Danish buildings.

Since the coffee breaks were filled with cakes, I gained a bit of weight (almost 2 kilograms to be precise), but with all the cycling (and running), this should not be a long-lasting issue. For even more pictures, click here.

Leave a reply

Partial solar eclipse at work

There was a solar eclipse visible from Europe today, and while it was a total eclipse on the Faroe Islands and the Svalbard, it was a partial eclipse here in Leuven. At maximum, more than 80% of the Sun’s disk was covered by the Moon, and thanks to the beautiful weather (a.k.a. massive fog and low clouds), I managed to take a few pictures even without a filter. I was too lazy to put on a bigger lens, so I went for a more interesting composition with a normal lens instead of a huge crescent filling half the frame with a tele.

The next noteworthy (so not some puny, tiny thing) solar eclipse near us will be in 2026, when if we travel to Spain, we can witness a total eclipse right before sunset! (We should definitely start booking this holiday around 2023, if not earlier.) Until then, nothing interesting on the Old Continent… Only a bunch of lunar eclipses.

Leave a reply