Goodbye from Goldilocks

As of the morrow I cease to be in Namibia as a seconded scientist to the H.E.S.S. project and instead begin the business of closing up for Christmas sight-seeing! Part of me will dearly miss the nightly routine that goes something like: wake up at some ungodly hour; battle with the cameras until they’re persuaded to work; open the roofs of the camera huts (with brute force and a pole in the case of CT2!); find the way back through the gloom to the Control Room; park out the telescopes; cross fingers for a smooth shift! The part of me that rather enjoys sleeping at night-time couldn’t be happier. I’ll be honest. The image of myself – the shifter – trekking from telescope to telescope of a night with nothing but my headlamp and the vaguest sense of where I’m going; animal cries and the hum of insects in my ears, would not look out of place in a horror film. With this in mind, I think I’ve rallied pretty well all told!

~~~~~~~~~~~   A Sciencey Interlude  ~~~~~~~~~~~

The question of how the H.E.S.S. telescopes actually detect those precious gamma-rays has been put to me a few times since I came out here, so I thought I’d spend a few words in addressing it. Feel free to skip this section if you’re not in the mood for an Astrophysics lesson. Feel free to hum the Monty Python Intermission theme whilst you read.

As you’re probably aware, the Earth’s atmosphere shields us from cosmic gamma radiation (which is just as well!) but incident very-high-energy photons do generate a signature electromagnetic cascade of electrons, positrons and secondary photons, when they interact at high altitude. The particles in this shower are super-relativistic, and as such emit Cherenkov radiation. These nanoseconds-long flashes of blue-green light can be detected – in stereo – using the four H.E.S.S. telescopes, provided both the sun and moon are below the horizon and assuming the light pool favourably covers CT1 through 4. The images recorded by each camera allow the position on the sky of the parent γ ray to be reconstructed, and the image intensity gives us its energy! Magic, no? (Not to be confused with MAGIC – a Cherenkov telescope on the Canary Island of La Palma)

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So today I take my leave of Ferdi, Jade, Jenny and Clia (the actual names of the cameras, you understand, and nothing to do with my fancy). I have braved the cobweb-ridden huts for the last time and can marvel at the construction of CT5 (alternately nicknamed The Monster and Daddy Bear depending on my mood) no longer. In the last month I’ve been involved in real SCIENCE, but I’ve also hiked out to look at cave paintings, visited a German bakery in the desert, and read three classics (like a good girl) on mum’s Kindle. (These were Wives and Daughters, Pride and Prejudice and David Copperfield – you can check out my Goodreads page to see what I thought of them!) It has been a full and fulfilling experience, but I think I’m quite ready for a change of scene – and indeed, a change of genre. So next on the reading list is the real “There and Back Again”, and the PDF version of Machine of Death stored on my laptop, and then – after a fortnight or so – I can be reunited with paper-and-ink books, of which I miss the look and feel and smell! The “m” word is such a can of worms these days…

I miss my morning cup of Earl Grey with milk and half a sugar. I miss counting the rabbits outside Syston Train Station on the way to work. I miss swinging my brolly round my wrist when it’s not-raining-but-might-yet-rain. I miss standing my origami T-rex and Parasaurolophus back up when they are knocked down. I miss quoting A Christmas Carol/Will Hay/The Ghost & Mrs. Muir with mum at every opportunity. I miss driving to Loughborough with my latest playlist on shuffle. I miss fish and chips and mushy peas from Birstall Fisheries. I miss waiting outside the pub for Loo and Sarah; wondering how many songs it will take them to arrive. I miss Baileys and milk. I miss Orion being the right-way-up.

Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Baby Bear (CT5, 1 and 3)

Animal encounters since my last post: a jackal, donkeys, camels, squirrels, rabbits, canis lupus familiaris (specifically some very friendly terriers!) and more oryxes, springbok, ostriches and wild horses. And birds. So many birds. I’ve seen more birds than people this month.

So it's goodbye from me, H.E.S.S. 

 Namárië

Gecko in the Garden

Be welcome to another account of life in OPPOSITE WORLD, where Autumn is Spring, night is day and taps and locks respectively loosen and open the wrong way, blast-it-all! I am become nocturnal, waking a few hours before the long moonless shifts begin, and returning to bed before the sun is up. The lightproof shutters in my room go a long way towards fooling my body into sleep, where at least I can dream of daylight (that, and cannons-fired; “arcade vampires” in underground, watery caverns; rooftop journeys ‘tween London Town and Leicester, and Big Cats loose in my house, apparently!)

I’ve a somewhat gloomy countenance this week, for the Science has given way to cloud overhead, and the rise in humidity has sent the creepy-crawly count through the roof! I don’t know that you remember the Animal Ark series of Children’s books, with their quaint, alliterative titles, but here my mind dwells querulously on such imaginings as Spider in the Sink and Hornet in the (telescope) Hut… I jest only to hide my (very real, if irrational) fear of such beasties.

Geckos now, may be said to creep and to crawl, but are a whole different kettle of fish! I have such an affinity for the little dears, being I think the most draconic and endearing of reptiles alive today. One of the characters in my book is a gecko in fact, and her likeness is painted on the front of my ukulele. Of themselves by all accounts, they are such charming creatures, and a night or so ago, upon finishing the shift and making for bed, I learned a shocking lesson about them. I spotted something white writhing on the ground like a fish out of water, and immediately jumped to the worst conclusion – that this was some hellishly large and poisonous invertebrate – when in actuality a gecko had been spooked into dropping its tail. This is a remarkable defence mechanism of theirs, and all my dread-turned-horrified-concern dissolved upon hearing that they are then able to grow a new tail. This I was assured of before I could peaceably go to sleep!

One wonder (if indeed it can be called so) I’ve witnessed since these long shifts under cover of cloud began, is that of absolute darkness – the like of which can only be "seen" in the strict absence of light pollution and starlight. It is akin to blindness, and really quite disconcerting, disturbed yesternight by lightning; this morning (in the wee hours) by the storm-induced bushfire on the horizon! I can only liken this alarming sight to the scene from The Two Towers in which the hobbits have their first glimpse of far-off Mordor.

Here follows a few things I find myself missing...

             

Grass You may laugh, but last week we drove into Windhoek to buy some groceries, and I was briefly at liberty to explore a little hotel courtyard, where I was so delighted by the sight of grass I immediately had to sit myself thereupon and feel the blades between my eager fingers!

Rain There was lightning to the East even as I wrote this item, followed by a downpour-of-sorts, but this fortnight past has elsewise been dry as a bone, and the rain here doesn’t smell half so good as it does back home. 

The cats I shouldn’t wonder you think this unfeeling, when I’ve not confessed first to missing my family and friends (who of course I do!), but I’m dealing more in specifics here, and I long for a glimpse of Gump’s wonderfully expressive face; the sound of her plaintive meow, and Cully’s soft purring response to my goodnight scratch-under-the-chin. Yes – even Monty’s sandpaper tongue!

Carpet It gets sillier I know, but there’s something very clinical and uncomfortable about floor-to-floor tiles!

Gotta Catch 'em All

It is here in the Khomas highlands of Namibia – on the site of the High Energy Stereoscopic System – that my adventure begins. The shifters’ residence building was a welcome sight indeed after my 27 hour-long journey, made sweeter still by the discovery of an acoustic guitar in the sitting room, and my learning that the nest above my bedroom door is in fact home to a swallow, and not some hostile insect intent upon bleeding me dry. The abrupt change in season and altitude have had no truly adverse effects as yet, though I noticed those extra 1600 metres when I took a short bike ride on Monday, and had the winds knocked out of me. Meal times are largely a carnivorous affair (Gemsbok barbecue, anyone? My first taste of game, I rather think!) and taken outside, with the Gamsberg (Namibia’s table mountain) in sight upon the horizon and the tweeting of myriad little birds on the air.

Of course my situation this month is by no means perfect. I am the only individual on site lacking a Y chromosome, the dry air is wreaking havoc on my skin, and a good 50% of the flora and fauna pose some threat or other if I get too close, but you know, I think it’s worth it just to see the Milky Way painted gloriously across the Southern night sky of an evening, or watch the telescopes slowly parking out in unison before a shift; to witness finally the rising of the Magellanic Clouds (Big Fuzz and Little Fuzz as I've come to name them) or play spot-the-γ in the Control Room as events flash onto the monitor in real time. It’s all really quite magical.

So today I met a singing; dancing warthog who assured me in a rich baritone (in no uncertain terms) that I should adopt a problem-free philosophy from now on.

Okay, that’s not altogether true. Would that it were! I did see a warthog at the side of the road, seemingly fully occupied with grazing for it paid us little heed. I’ve seen such animal life here I hardly know where to begin! Birds of prey, Oryxes and Ostriches, Snakes and Springbok – and baboons in abundance! Nearby waterholes make such sightings frequent, and this will tide me over ‘till the safari next month.

In case you’re wondering, the title of this post alludes at once to the obvious plight of the gamma-ray astronomer, and my completing the set of naked-eye-planets-viewed-through-a-telescope at long last – with Jupiter rising even before the Witching Hour and the use of a sturdy little optical reflector living on site, I was treated to a wondrous view of the great gas giant that has eluded me for so long! Its zones and belts, and four of its satellites were also visible, and Sky View Café assures me these were Io, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede. Incidentally, Pokémon with planets rather than pocket monsters would I think be a far easier state of affairs, given there are only eight of them (sorry Pluto dearest – your ship has sailed).

So without further ado, a gamma-ray haiku, entitled Monitor Number Five:

Gamma rays, these days

Are little fishes swimming

In Cosmic-ray pools

Muons are ripples

On the detector surface

From Cosmic-ray rain

The fishes converge

On a night-sky point: Here be

Cosmic-ray dragons

Still alive and there's Science to do!