1,429,400,000 km away: January 2015

ESO Astronomy Camp 2014-2015

Or: The Best Week of My Life

All of us looking our best

I was going to write up an account of the week day by day, but due to school being something that exists and my arm still not really working properly I decided it would be a better idea to summarise it. That and you probably don't want a minute by minute account, if you do then let me know.

Having said I would summarise the experience
I honestly have no idea where to start, there are so many highlights from the week. So here are my top five (they were very, very, very hard to pick) highlights from the ESO Astronomy Camp 2014-2015.

5) Getting Up at 5 am to See Saturn:

Jupiter with its four major moons

One morning a group of us woke up at five (Ok, it was closer to six but five sounds more extreme) to do an observation of Saturn. Having put on as many layers as we possibly could, wearing four pairs of socks (or three if you were feeling particularly brave) 30 of us headed to the observatory, head torches lighting the way. We had a quick look at constellations before turning the telescopes towards Jupiter. We were able to see Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto as well as the stripes which ring around the equatorial region of Jupiter. We tried to do an observation of Saturn but due to turbulence in the atmosphere we could only just make out the planet's rings.

Quick explanation of turbulence: the Earth's atmosphere is made up of layers of different gases, the gases in these layers move around. The movement of the gas molecules distorts the image you see through the telescope. The windier it is the more the molecules move around and the more the image is distorted.

When we tried to observe Saturn, not only was it windy but, we were looking at it from an angle where we were looking through a thick part of the Earth's atmosphere which prevented us from getting a good image.

Having decided to tell everyone who didn't get up early that we saw Saturn in epic detail and they should be very, very jealous of us, we headed back to breakfast and a day of awesome lectures.

I believe this was taken just before snow started to fly...

4) The First Snow Fight

Left, right and centre I had managed to make enemies. What had started off with me and one of the other girls saying to three people 'Let's have a snow ball fight!' had turned into forty teenagers running around a snowy hill laughing, screaming and throwing colossal amounts of snow at each other.

Long distances missiles were thrown by some, a few managing to hit me right in the head. Others, like myself, went for the approach of walking up to our target, calling their name and then chucking the snow right in their face as soon as they turned. There was even one moment when one of the boys was juggling snowballs, I waited for the opportune moment and then hit him right in the face.

I do feel guilty about that.

3) New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve Dinner... Pinecones may have been thrown

Admittedly waking up at eight on New Year's Day, having slept only four hours, was a horrible feeling. But I wouldn't have spent New Year's Eve any other way. We did an observation dressed in our fancy New Year's clothes, entered the new year with three different traditions (Spain: we ate a grape on each stroke of midnight, Denmark: we all physically jumped into the New Year and Italy: we made a toast), made snow angels at midnight, set off fireworks and ran around hugging each other yelling 'HAPPY NEW YEAR!' Our four awesome supervisors had organised for everyone to have a piece of paper with their names on pinned up on the wall and as Vania (one of the creators of the rap song I previously posted) started DJ-ing we all wrote on each other's pictures.

My epic piece of paper

Prize for the best comment on my paper goes to Federica who wrote 'For your future - break a leg XD' (it's funny in the context that I fractured my arm on the camp).

2) Lectures

Standard Candles and how they're used to help calculate distances, measuring the distance to the moon, the spectra of stars, the H-R Diagram and parallaxes (everywhere parallaxes). That is just a snapshot of what we learned in lectures. Every morning when I walked into the lecture room I knew I was going to leave having learned something fascinating that I would use in the future.

Luckily Gaia didn't go wrong like the last Antares rocket

I came to have an understanding of what astronomers measure when they look at stars and how the data from these measurements helps us unlock the secrets of our universe. I learnt about how long it takes for space missions, such as Gaia, to actually get off the ground and into space. The mission was first conceived in 1997, when I was born, and was launched into space when I was fifteen. Imagine taking a machine you have spent more than a decade designing and strapping it to explosive rocket...

1) How Many Stars I Could See

On the first evening, having arrived and unpacked our bags, we went up to the observatory to have a look around. As we left the hostel I saw something in the sky out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and my jaw dropped.

The European Southern Observatory

Remember that I live in London. Where it is often so cloudy you can't see the moon, let alone stars. Where there is a huge amount of light pollution. Where, when it's really clear, you're lucky if you can see Arcturus, the belt of Orion and Sirius.

I looked up and my jaw dropped because I could see the outline of the Milky Way stretching over us. I could see Orion, Ursa Major and Sirius. Jupiter was so bright at first I thought it must be an airplane. I hadn't seen the sky filled with so much light before. It is very easy to forget about the night sky when you live in London because you simply don't see it. I felt connected to the sky and to the world around me, it was wonderful.

It is a sight I hope I get to see again one day.

So there are my top five memories from ESO Astronomy Camp 2014!

The view I woke up to every morning for a week...

And that's not including when we froze our hands off taking the spectra of stars, the trip to Matterhorn, taking a group photo and then having to retake it because we missed someone, having everyone sign my cast after I fractured my arm, trying and failing to cross-country ski, playing Chinese Snap and breaking a table cloth because the game got so violent, the ESO X Factor, marking on a map where everyone was from and trying to figure out who had come from Antarctica, playing incredibly stupid game involving standing in a circle and holding hands while trying to try each other up which didn't end very well, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with 55 incredible people and waking up to see the sun rising over the snow covered mountains.

Thank you to the European Southern Observatory for organising a life changing week, thank you to our amazing supervisors Vittorio, Emily, Tommy and Ruth and thank you to the Science and Technology Facilities Council for awarding me with a bursary to attend the camp.

Last, but definitely not least, thank you to Ramón, Gonzalo, Sophia, Andelka, Tomasz, Anga, Fabian, Camille, Diogo, Gustavo, Gonzalo, Ali, Awnit, Lena, Luka, Vania, Gianluca, Marian, Marielle, Laura Angélica, Allan, Aideen, Maja, Federica, Mikolaj, Raven, Desmond, Kuba, Benjamin, Margarida, Francesca, Eleonora, Femke, Baris, Mohammed, Jakob, Klara, Angèle, Felisberto, Gemma, Daniele, Leonardo, Baran, Klaudia, Michal, Gonçalo, Mariona, Elias, Gerard, Indira, Jenny, Nicola, Jess, Frederik, and Amy.

Without you guys this experience wouldn't have been what it was, I hope to meet all of you again in the future.

I look forward to when one of us wins a Nobel Prize because whoever does has to throw a party and invite everyone else from ESO Astronomy Camp 2014-2015!

We came from 22 countries. From Hong Kong to Brazil, from Egypt to Sweden.

Credits for the photographs used go to Amy Palmer, Awnit Singh and Allan Costa

I'm back from the ESO Astronomy Camp 2014!

It was such an amazing week, I never wanted it to end. I miss everything about the camp and I miss everyone from it.

There's so much to say that I'm going to have to go over the camp day by day, telling you the highlights. I can't go into too much detail though, I almost put my parents to sleep while telling them about the week!

So here are just a few of the highlights.

We stuck signs on each other's backs: