Astronomy Buff

More Annoying Hints About My Life Changes

by Tony on November 13th, 2007

Time to move on

This last year has been, without a doubt, one of the strangest in my life. Starting at about the time I posted my Hubble Deep Field video in September 2006, my life started a slow change that has culminated in these past weeks.

It’s so strange how events transpire, one can never predict where one may end up.

For example, I never planned to go into solar physics. In college, I was certain I was going to end up in grad school studying cosmology. That never quite happened because one fall day in 1993 I applied for a student assistant position at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to process solar images from Mauna Loa Solar Observatory.

I remember they were impressed that I could recognize an h-alpha picture of the Sun when they showed it to me.

“That’s a nice h-alpha image.”, I said off-handedly.

“Wow! Yes, yes it is! Very good. When can you start?”

Let that be a lesson, kids. You never know what tidbit of information rolling around in your head can make the difference, my experience as an amateur astronomer really comes in handy a lot.

So started my illustrious career in solar astronomy. A couple of years later, before I had graduated, I was encouraged to apply for an associate scientist job that had opened up. I did and they hired me on the condition that I graduate. I found out later how unprecedented that was.

Fourteen years later, I’m leaving studying the Sun to go into cosmology, where I was initially headed.

I don’t consider the detour a bad one though, far from it. I have learned more at HAO than I ever could have anywhere else. My colleagues consistently and enthusiastically allowed me to pursue whatever interested me, and this lead to my gaining some rather remarkable skills for someone without a graduate degree.

So, for those playing ‘Where the Hell is Tony Going?’ bingo:

• The University of winner-of-last-Saturday’s-Illinois/Ohio State-game offered me a job.
• It seems every skill I’ve ever developed in my life has lead me to the most perfect job I could imagine for myself.
• It’s in cosmology, specifically a very interesting dark energy project.
• It involves a 520 megapixel camera! (62 image and 8 guide/alignment, 2kx4k CCD’s)
• By the time it’s over there will be close to 2.4 petabytes of data.

Stay tuned for more cryptic posts as I drag this out as long as possible. If you didn’t care before, you REALLY won’t care by the time I finally announce it.

But, come on, all the other bloggers do it. And you know how much I wanna be like everyone else…

Technorati Tags: cosmology, dark energy

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