Nothing unusual for Chile, actually. Just some 4.7mag close to Santiago. But the first one in the new house (Yes, we moved!). And it feels much “better” than in the 11th floor of the old appartment. The response of these towers is rather soft. Surely safe, it should do that, but still: That soft shaking feels much worse than the actual waves of the eathquake. The Chilenos even have two words for it: “Temblor” (or “shaker”) for what we had today, and “terremote” for a big earthquake with damages.

Well, Paranal observatory is one of the most advanced astronomy sites on the planet, and it is run by an international organization. Hence we get a lot of visits up here that are not related to immediate observing: Politicians, diplomats, journalists, science administrators, and delegations from universities and other observatories worldwide.

Tonight a journalist from DW Radio is here, interviewing German speaking astronomers on the mountain. Deutsche Welle is an international radio broadcaster, sort of an equivalent to BBC World Service. Great thing for those being far from home, but also for foreigners who want to learn about Germany beyond the usual cliché.

I’m on the mountain, nightshift. A long one, 12 nights in a row, and it is going to make me miss the Iron Maiden concert in Santiago this weekend. Claudia bought a ticket for herself and will be going with some friends. Sigh. But then, I’ve been there last year.

Worse, though, right now I’m here doing nothing: bad weather, and we’re only half through the night yet. Boring. The humidity is pretty high for the desert, so high that the telescopes are not open, were not opened after sunset, and probably won’t be opened before sunrise.

Sorry. When we we’re starting the hot phase of the workshop about two and a half weeks ago, I wanted to keep this blog up to date pretty much every day. Well, maybe every other day. Still, it didn’t work out. But the meeting did. Linda was there, directly down from Paranal (where I am now), as well as Gerard, coming from Garching, together with about 80 other participants from almost every continent (and the countries in the image are only the ones where these participating scientist are affiliated; if I added the actual home countries the map would get a lot redder):

Hey, already two weeks since the last post. But then, it appeared like two months to me. All the stuff with the new house and getting the conference preparations ready merge together to fully busy days.

The Meeting is on a good track: There are 87 registered participants, hotel and trips are being booked, and even the budget looks as if we could make it just so without touching the reserves. [...]

Back in civilization after a nine-day turno in the desert. Now I’ll be doing nothing for one or two days. Not only no work, but really nothing. Maybe I’m too old, but after nine days in the desert I find the hustle of Santiago confusing and need to get used to it again. Although Paranal isn’t exactly lonely it has nothing of the usual chaos in real-life places: We’re on Paranal to work together towards a single goal, while in real urban life people have different agendas, and often enough work against each other.  Need an example what I mean? Urban traffic. Next then is our house!

There are more than 100 people working on Paranal at any given time. We have a few dozen cars, and the base-camp and the telescopes are about seven kilometers apart. So it is very unpleasant if you have a car assigned, but find someone else doesn’t care about.

Back in the Atacama, since a few days already. This time I’m here as shift coordinator. The SC is the boss-on-duty of the astronomical part of the observatory operation. Other operational branches are engineering and logistics. This turno now is nine nights.

The good part in being the shift coordinator is the flexibility of doing the things you think need to be done whenever you want to do them. Or sometimes even better, tell someone else to do it. The not so good part [...]

That was actually yesterday, but it was busy until bedtime for me, so the post’s late. The day started with the conference talks in the morning, but in the afternoon, when the SOCHIAS had the member assembly (I’m not) I concentrated on organizing our own conference, the IHOT09. At 16:00 we had a meeting of the organizing committee, where we finalized pretty much of the non-scientific part of the program and had budget overview. Kind of expensive, such a conference. [...]

Last post I’ve been talking about coffee and astronomy, which is kind of a legendary combination. Some news today, though, urges me to clearly state that I adhere to what is called the scientific method. Even if the results are strange, funny, and sometimes colorful.

PS: About real life [...]