A great spot for morning coffee, looking south from the Settlement Centre at Borgarnes. The back wall of the gift shop is made from some of the oldest rock in Iceland, around 13 million years old. After treating myself to a geological map of Iceland, we got into conversation and received recommendations to stop at a waterfall, cinder cones and lava tubes on our road ahead.
Having thought we just had 500 km of road planned today, we enjoyed the Glanni (meaning “shining”) waterfall on the Norðurá River, near the small hamlet of Bifröst and the Grabrokarhraun lava field. This extensive lava field, formed 3000-4000 years ago, is likely a result of the two cinder cones below.
We stopped to climb the 170 m high Grábrók cinder cone, formed ~3400 years ago in a fissure eruption, part of the volcanic system of Ljosufjoll which extends 90 km to the west. We circled the rim before picking a good lunch spot.
From the rim, there was a spectacular view of the neighbouring Grábrókarfell cinder cone.
Next, lava tubes! We had the area to ourselves, as there were no signs about them, despite several coaches full of tourists stopping 300 m away to climb the cinder cone. We explored and found five tubes of varying sizes to go inside. Top tip: never go anywhere volcanic without your head torch. This was my favourite, the entrance was so narrow we nearly didnt bother, but once I wriggled through the gap, the tunnel was huge inside.
This was one of the larger easily accessible tubes, but we could only get about 20 m before it was impassable.This shows the texture of the roof and upper walls.
3.30am alarm. Time for the next adventure, a 1,300+ km road trip around Iceland!
It felt like a day later, but by 11am we were exploring Reykjavik, starting with a walk along the seafront.
Top tip: we found you can get free coffee at the tourist information centre and also at the Aurora Reykjavik.
The view north from Reykjavik harbour:
The Maritime Museum, with one of the boats, Gullborg, outside.
We had a recommendation to try the lobster soup at the harbour, but it was packed at 1pm so we returned a while later.
The modern city hall (left side of photo below) is on the edge of the beautiful lake, Tjörnin.
After spending some time in the National Museum, learning about the settlement and history of Iceland, we walked up to the church, Hallgrimskirkja.
One cinnamon bun later, we got to our last stop, the “Sólfarið – Sun Voyager”.
“We all have our fantasy boats, vessels that we dream of sailing away in, into the dream. In my ships I unite my own fantasy, precision and the knowledge that boat builders have developed through the ages. The sun ship gives us a promise of a primeval land.” Jón Gunnar Árnason
How would you like to travel to 5000m altitude to see 66 radio telescope antennas, discover a blizzard on top, use the safety truck to help the two 4x4s out of snow drifts, watch a 130 tonne antenna transporter being driven by remote control, see 2 antenna up close and inside, tour the Operations Support Facility (OSF) including the control room, speak to astronomers and operational staff? Given the excitement, it’s surprising any of us passed the medical (blood pressure & blood oxygen) to be allowed up to that altitude!
Transporter selfie! With 2 antennas in the background. (Credit: J. MacArthur)
I was selected as one of eight lucky active and engaging social media users by the European Southern Observatories (ESO), to visit their Paranal and ALMA telescope observatories in the Atacama desert, Chile.
“Giant array of 66 antennas”
ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array, is a giant array of 54 x 12m and 12 x 7m antennas. This allows us to probe some of the earliest stars and galaxies from the cosmic “dark ages” at the furthest distances from us, as their light wavelength has been stretched by the expansion of the universe.
ALMA image of the planet-forming disk around the young, Sun-like star TW Hydrae, with the dark circles suggesting planet-forming regions. Credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
Closer to home, these wavelengths allow us to see through the dust clouds of new star and planet forming regions to help understand these processes, which are otherwise obscured to optical telescope observations. The ALMA project is a partnership between Europe (ESO), North America (NRAO) and Japan (NAOJ) in cooperation with Chile.
The ALMA antenna array on the Chajnantor plateau (Credit: J. MacArthur)
The main antenna Array Operations Site (AOS) is situated at 5000m altitude on the Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama desert, Chile, where the average annual rainfall is less than 100 mm. The high altitude means there is less of Earth’s atmosphere to pass through, and low humidity means that the radio waves are not scattered much by water vapor in the atmosphere, so we can obtain good quality observations.
“Snow on the mountain”
Around 8.30am we arrived at ALMA, where we signed in and watched the safety video, before continuing up to the OSF at 2900m, where the majority of the work is carried out. Here we heard the disappointing news that the weather had been bad at the AOS, and the safety teams were clearing the roads and assessing if anyone would be allowed up. We proceeded to the medical anyway, which everyone passed, so we knew that if conditions on top improved, we wouldn’t be leaving anyone behind. The planned OSF tours were swapped to the morning and we awaited updates about the AOS.
“Different groups of antennas can be used simultaneously for different science”
ALMA can operate 24 hours a day (constrained only by weather, not needing night time like optical astronomy), so the OSF employs 300 people and deals with 600 GB of data collected each day. I was surprised to learn that usually 36-40 antennas are used for any individual science proposal; astronomer Tomasz Kaminski did not recall all 66 being used simultaneously in his time there. Thus, often more than one science question is being probed at once, with different sub-arrays of antennas being used to optimise output.
Astronomer Tomasz Kaminski telling us about ALMA in the control room at the OSF. (Credit: L. Bommersbach)
Astronomers ask to use ALMA for their science by writing a proposal, which are then peer-reviewed by specialists, and the top ranked ones are selected and scheduled for time. However, many factors come into play during this process such as the minimum number of antenna needed for required sensitivity and resolution, whether the observations are time critical, and then also the overall ALMA time is divided fairly between the member countries.
Software helps to manage all these parameters, and to define backup ‘filler’ proposal observations: if the observing conditions are not good enough for the primary target observations at any particular time, then observations will be made of a different “filler” secondary target (which has less constraints). Astronomers are generally remote observers and do not visit ALMA, as their observations are carried out by the OSF staff according to conditions.
“New residency to be completed later this year”
New ALMA residency, with the Atacama salt flats in the distance. (Credit: J. MacArthur)
We saw the current small buildings that ALMA staff currently live in, next to the new, more comfortable, residency currently under construction due for completion later this year. The new building has deliberately been put a bit further from the OSF to make people walk a little, as being sedentary is an issue for a community living in such isolation. Three other large buildings are where the three partners (ESO, NAOJ, NRAO) finish their antenna assembly; each build their share of the antennas to ALMA’s specifications that are then tested, calibrated and handed over to ALMA.
All data collected is routed by fiber optics to San Pedro de Atacama and through to Antofagasta, whereby it connects to the university network and is stored at all three of the partner sites (ESO, NAOJ, NRAO) for security and redundancy. Argentina are constructing a new fibre optic link to enable ALMA to have further redundancy; during one freak weather incident, one of the main backbone cables in Chile broke which took 3 days to fix.
(Credit: R. Timmermans)
The “front end” of the OSF deal with the antennas and their receivers, whereas the “back end” deal with the correlator that brings all the separate antenna signals together; many electrical engineers of varying backgrounds drive the array. Every antenna contains a receiver unit which detects the radio waves, which is kept cryogenically cooled to 4 K (-269 °C). These are serviced regularly at the OSF. The overall 70 blue units as seen in the above video were built by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK and then shipped internationally for different partners to contribute towards the contents and cryogenics etc.
Lo and behold, at 10.40am we got the all clear for the AOS! We were given bottles of oxygen and bundled into three vehicles.
Oxygen bottles, for the journey to 5000m altitude. (Credit: J. MacArthur)
We were warned to only expect 10 minutes on top instead of the original planned 2 hours and that the final road out to the antennas was not clear, but we would be able to see the array well from about half a km away. Given we had been bracing ourselves for not going at all, we took this in our stride.
(Credit: J. MacArthur)
The 25km road to the top is 12m wide, to accommodate a transporter carrying an antenna; these have a max speed of 5km/hr and take 6 hours to reach the top. The road is not banked on the bends, as it has to stay even for a loaded transporter. After half an hour we saw the first snow on the roadside; it took about 50 minutes to reach the top.
The array of antennas were all in the “survival” position, pointing away from the wind. The conditions on the Chajnantor plateau when we first got out are best demonstrated in this video:
(Credit: R. Timmermans)
The indoor version, about the science done using ALMA, is more audible.
(Credit: R. Timmermans)
Helping one of the 4x4s through the snow drift when nearly at the top. (Credit: R. Timmermans)
We were glad to enter the second highest building in the world, the AOS Technical Building, to warm up and see the amazing correlator super computer, similar to the power of 9 million laptops, which receives and aligns all the signals from all the antenna, before transmitting the data down the mountain to the OSF.
The correlator at the AOS Technical building. (Credit: J. MacArthur)
We were very grateful that our ten minutes extended far longer. In the end, we spent about 90 minutes total at the top though some of this was due to the vehicle problems in the snow. Our two guides said it was the worst conditions they had experienced, and we were impressed with how efficiently the drivers dealt with the problems and kept everyone safe.
Back down at the OSF, we got to see inside one of the 70-100 tonne antennas. This is where the analogue signals from the receivers are processed and digitized before entering the data encoder and then being transmitted to the correlator.
Front of an ALMA antenna. (Credit: R. Timmermans)
Back of an ALMA antenna. (Credit: A. Grudzien)
ESO provided the two 130 tonne antenna transporters “Lore” and “Otto” as part of its contribution to ALMA. We got to see one of them driven by remote control, and were allowed up onto it afterwards.
(Credit: J. MacArthur)
The #MeetESO lucky 8 with an antenna at the OSF (L-R): Karina, Lorna, Loic, Anne, Jane, Remco, Cristian, Ian, Alex (Ian’s cameraman from Discovery Space). (Credit: F. Rodriguez)
We all had a spectacular day, learning about the ALMA project, which is the largest ground-based astronomical project involving wide international collaboration and participation.
On the afternoon of Monday 15th February, I happened to notice the tweet below from @ESO, advertising a social media gathering. Little did I suspect how my enthusiastic response was going to change my life. (The competition details can be read from clicking the ESO tweet).
In the first week the competition was a little slow to get going, but later on, the competition details were retweeted by Brian Cox and Phil Plait which ensured a lot of entrants and and a lot of activity on the hashtag.
As the competition heated up, I installed Hootsuite in order to spend my evenings scheduling tweets for the next day, so that I could still focus on work, and came up with series of tweets such as #MyTopTen ESO images, #MyTop6 ESO STEM resources, and #MyTop8 Chilean meteorite, strewnfield and impact crater tweets.
There was also this lovely Facebook post written by Adrienne Macartney and elaborated on by Geoff Notkin and others and shared 78 times on facebook to demonstrate I also have an active social network there.
Dear Friends: My excellent friend and colleague Jane MacArthur currently pursuing her doctorate in meteorite studies, is…
During the three weeks,my campaign gained over 1000 RTs (re-tweets), over 3000 favourites, and over 70 personal endorsements from around the world, which can be seen in the storify below, and for which I am forever grateful. Special thanks has to go to Geoff Notkin, who tirelessly retweeted me every day once he discovered my posts, and also Rob Garner, Indhu Varatharajan and Mark Redgwell who appeared on the top ten people retweeting at different stages – at one point 8 of the 10 were all supporting me!
The result is, I will be heading to Chile in May and hopefully live-tweeting the #MercuryTransit for you all from Paranal! Thank you all so very much for helping me gain this wonderful opportunity, and thank you to @ESO for selecting me!
On Friday 26th February, representatives from over 15 schools in Norfolk gathered at my old school, City of Norwich School (CNS) for an all day event, culminating in a ten minute amateur radio contact with British ESA astronaut Tim Peake, on board the International Space Station.
Keynote speaker Mark Thompson got the day off to a rousing start with several successful live demos to keep everyone awake and entertained. This one showed hydrogen peroxide mixed with potassium iodide, breaking it down into water and oxygen, producing heat and force.
I spent 3 hours showing meteorites and answering questions from over 400 people on a stargazing night, organised by RAL Space and the Diamond synchrotron.
The Campaign for Science and Engineering put together another excellent debate with the Minister for Universities, Science and Cities, Dr Greg Clark and the corresponding representatives from the Labour Party, Liam Byrne; and the Liberal Democrats’, Dr Julian Huppert MP. This panel was chaired by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
I received an invitation to the Christmas Parliamentary Reception organised by the Society of Biology on behalf of the science and engineering community. Awards were presented to David Willetts (former Science Minister) and others, and it was a good opportunity to meet scientists from different disciplines and engineers, as well as talk to our politicians and policy makers.
I attended and helped to live tweet the Campaign for Science and Engineering’s 24th Annual Distinguished Lecture, “A Journey to Mars”, by Dr Ellen Stofan, NASA’s Chief Scientist.
The event was fully booked, and a reception afterwards allowed me to meet Dr Ellen Stofan and NASA’s Chief Technologist, David Miller, who kindly gave me an MSL Curiosity pin badge!
The audio of the event and further information can be found on these blogs by CaSE and the Science Museum.
I helped to chair the RAS200 “Sky & Earth” Townhall Meeting at the National Space Centre, Leicester. This education and outreach initiative by the Royal Astronomical Society aims to award £1million to 10-12 projects over the next 5 years leading up to the 200th anniversary of the society. More details are available here.
A great spot for morning coffee, looking south from the Settlement Centre at Borgarnes. The back wall of the gift shop is made from some of the oldest rock in Iceland, around 13 million years old. After treating myself to a geological map of Iceland, we got into conversation and received recommendations to stop at a waterfall, cinder cones and lava tubes on our road ahead.
This shows the texture of the roof and upper walls.
