The Lorentz Centre workshop experience

Leiden University hosts the Lorentz Center. In fact, it is (partly) one floor below the astronomy departement. The idea behind the Lorentz center is simple: rather than having researches re-invent the wheel for the logistics of a workshop, a dedicated institution will run the whole thing for you. Your idea is judged on merit and off you go. The LC will provide a cool meeting space, generate and host the website, provide some funds for travel, free lunch for all participants, prints posters, nametags, organizes a conference dinner (ours was on a boat trip!!), has free bikes on hand and helps with every other logistical aspect.

They do, so the workshop organizer does not have to. I cannot overemphasize how stupendously awesome this is. It means professional workshops, no dropped logistical balls, and a workshop organization that can focus on the topic and science, not whether there are enough seats at the conference dinner or if the Hotel still has space.

I have been trying to organize a workshop for a while now. In South Africa this was stymied because I had no idea where to even begin to ask for money. Or what a half-decent venue was. At ESA, it died in bureaucratic BS about the actual rooms it had to be held in. At the Lorentz center, it was a breeze...

So. I will be doing this again in the remaining time I'm at Leiden. Or perhaps afterwards.

False Crisis

I reacted to a post in the Astronomer section on work/life balance (to paraphrase Ghandi on Western Civilization "that would be nice"). The term I coined was "false crisis" and it has been something I noticed at UCT and Leiden: there is a continuous sense of crisis working at a University. Not only are you trying to keep up with any given deadline (ESO, HST, ALMA, funding!) but also any and all little crises thrown your way. Most people seem to be working in permanent crisis mode. But it is a false crisis: inevitably is it because someone (possibly you yourself) have started too late. In real life one would simply hear "that is too little time to do it well, sorry, better luck next time" but not in the macho world of academia where an all-nighter is a badge of honor. And 60+ hour workweeks de rigeur.

and another flip phrase I thought of:

"Not working 60 hours a week. I did it right the first time. And mulched the paperwork".

But I am opting out of the false crisis. Or trying to. Then I submitted the paper on Saturday while Mister M was taking a nap...

Proposelating

The ESO proposals are in.

Got two in. Hectic. Of course I had plenty more ideas. Most productive thing I did was kill one off. Straight down. It was technically feasible but I could not fathom a good scientific reason to do it!
This often happens; there is a good project but not a clear scientific reason to do it. Then one should not write the proposal of course.

Now it is back to high-redshift galaxies. And I shaved off the proposal beard.

ESO, TOP, ERC and HST applications/proposals

There are some opportunities coming up: TOP grants to get 2-3 years of postdoc funding, European ERC funding for same and then I will need to apply for ESO and HST observing time.

So. gimme cash and gimme time!

quite a number of these new pieces of prose are about occulting galaxies. Matt is pushing me to publish some of this as the white paper on what we'll do with all these overlapping pairs. I just might. A&A? Just plonk it on astro-ph? no idea really.

SOFIA in the hangar good/bad?

Part of the NASA FY2015 budget is more priority for WFIRST (yay) and the plan to put SOFIA into a hangar for most of the year following its upgrade this summer (boo?).

I'm still in two minds about this. In some ways SOFIA is deplorably late in getting started. Much of the low-hanging fruit science was done with Herschel and done well. On the other hand, it is still very much growing in capability and we certainly have not explored far-infrared discovery space enough.
Plus I would like to see my NHEMESES follow-up program with SOFIA get done.

Preferably with me in the guest observing chair.

But a useful titbit to know is that SOFIA costs about 300k/hour of observing. You can get to space for that. Suddenly rolling it into a hangar and not having it cost this much sounds way more sensible.
However, the NASA budget is not a zero-sum game. And that 300k needs to come down. Maybe the threat of mothballing will get that done.

Also: move over, I want to fly this thing!

Spring Cleaning of the Hopper

There are still several papers in the Hopper that need to get out. I was very happy that the M-dwarf/BoRG paper appeared. It feels like the last word on star-selection with sextractor in HST imaging. And it might be. Who knows? And the idea-that-went-in-a-drawer-for-years is now a manuscript and off to MNRAS.

But still, there is the S4G morphology paper part II to rewrite, there is a cool paper with Rychard approaching completion, I have a draft(ish) thing for using the M-dwarfs to register JWST imaging, the Dustlanes in GalaxyZoo paper needs a final check and it can go off, the Andromeda Project background galaxies paper needs an update and collaboration feedback, and the NHEMESES and LADUMA survey papers need one final push. Oh and I have a paper on NGC 891. Like you do.

So yeah. those are all at the 90% level. Just need to do the "other" 90% of the effort. Time for some spring cleaning!

The SNIa prior

Finally completed a project I had in the back of my head ever since I heard of the SDSS-II Supernova program. The idea was: can you use the inferred extinction (AV) from SNIa lightcurve fits to probe the dusty ISM of the host galaxies. It is tied to the prior for the AV in those lightcurve fit.

I explored how the AV distribution depends on host galaxy properties and one thing pops out immediately: the host galaxy disk's inclination is IMPORTANT! Other properties not as much.

Well the paper is done. Off the MNRAS. Hope my point is helpful for future supernova work.

In other news: Lorentz Center SED workshop is taking off. hurray!