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Sky
High Scientist
Marton Hidas
The
true high point of my day was the evening, when I finished
work and went to my usual Wednesday-night choir rehearsal.
We'd just had a performance the previous week, and were about
to take a two-week break, so we weren't really rehearsing
anything, just having a good ol' sing-along.
Let me say something about the rest of my day too, for I am
an astronomer, and I did exhibit some particularly astronomer-like
behaviour on this day.
It all started at midnight, when my alarm woke me. I booted
up my computer, logged on to the Internet, and checked on
the sky conditions at Siding Spring Observatory, 350km from
my home in Sydney. Since the sky was clear, I typed a few
commands and the telescope at the observatory swung into action,
taking picture after picture of a patch of sky. Our aim is
to find planets around some of the stars in that patch of
sky.
From then on all I had to do was occasionally check that everything
was running smoothly. I did this until the morning twilight
made the sky too bright, then I shut down the telescope and
got a bit more sleep.
During the day I was working on an article about an interesting
object (not a planet, but two stars going around each other)
we had found in our search. If all goes well this will be
published in a British scientific journal within a couple
of months, and someone who knows more about this sort object
than we do might take an interest and study it more closely.
We will still get some of the glory for discovering it.
The observations I did this morning are part of the regular
routine for my project. In order to maximise our chance of
finding planets, we try to observe on every night when the
sky is clear and not too bright due to a Full Moon.
Luckily we have a team of 5 dedicated observers, and we share
the load, splitting each night into two shifts (dusk to midnight,
and midnight to dawn). I usually take the second half of the
night, which results in more sleep-deprivation, but at least
I get to enjoy my social life in the evenings.
Writing articles (or "papers" as we call them) in
scientific journals is an essential part of any career in
research. Scientists are largely judged by the quality (and
quantity!) of their publications. For someone like me, who
has just finished his PhD, it is very important to get as
many published papers out there as possible, because these
will help me get my first "real job" as an astronomer.
At high school, I was mostly into computers (especially computer
games). Towards the end of year 12 I was considering studying
computer science or engineering and becoming a programmer.
However, I had always had a broader interest in science, and
especially astronomy.
I had a very enthusiastic teacher for the astronomy elective
part of the physics course. I also attended the two-week International
Science School at Sydney University during the winter break,
which opened my eyes to other possibilities and made me realise
that I really wanted to be a scientist.
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/astro/research/planetsearch.html
Me with my cool sunnies and my favourite telescope.
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