Elliot Cantor: Astronomy/Astrophysics, Week One

I am Elliot A. Cantor and I am currently interning at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. That’s quite a mouthful so people there just call it the CfA. I am working with Dr. Gonzalo González Abad. He moved to Boston from Spain some years after getting his PhD in England. He works mainly in the fields of spectrometry, microspectrometry, and atmospheric science.

OK, I don’t really know how to write/type a blog so I’m just going to explain my first week in Boston and at the CfA. I arrived in Boston on the 20th of June at about 10 PM. I took a cab to the house of the host family I am staying with. About 10 minutes into the ride the driver promptly got lost and asked if I knew how to get where I was going. I said,”No.” and just let him figure it out. Luckily he turned off the billing meter so I didn’t really mind the extra wait too much. After hopping out of the cab to look at the address numbers on the nearby houses. I concluded I could walk the rest of the way, and got to the house after 10 minutes. The family I am staying with are a family of four with an nine year old boy and a 15 year old girl. The father is a physics professor at Boston University as well. They are very friendly, have accommodated me well, and helped me learn how to make my commute the CfA in the morning.

Me and Leo (my host family’s 9-year-old son) standing outside their home.

The next day was a Sunday so I went to the science museum with my host family, which was very interesting. After that and dinner I passed out very early, still recovering from the slight two hour time difference Colorado has with Boston. I woke up at around 8 AM and gathered everything I’d need for the day, which included my computer, mouse, mousepad, and my wallet. I ate my breakfast and was directed towards the nearest T-Station by the mother of the host family, (the T is what the train system is called in Boston, I think). I bought a card with 30 dollars on it, and proceeded on the train, which is on the Green-Line. After taking that train for about 40 minutes I got off at the Park Street Station and proceeded to the Red-Line which would bring me to Harvard Square. After another 20 minutes I got off at Harvard Square, and walked, only getting lost three times, to the CfA. Overall, my commute is about 1 hour and 10 minutes one-way, so know I how Blake feels when he has to drive to Telluride from Ouray every morning and afternoon.

The CfA is a very large and old building that fits a very large number of PhDs behind its walls. Because I was lost, I got to the CfA from the back entrance, and, unable to find a lobby, asked a guy walking around where to go and he directed me to the front. I met Gonzalo there, who eagerly greeted me, and he showed me where I would be working from and where his office was. To my surprise I got my own office, with a full side being windowed, which from what I noticed, was much better than what many people in the building had, as they shared an office of similar size with two other people. I soon learned that I would be sharing the office with other interns after they arrived in a week. Gonzalo showed me some papers on spectrometry and the instrument from which I am getting my data and gave some time to read them. They were very dense and had many words which required Googling to understand. A direct quote from a paper I read was: “Double-sided interferograms are Fourier transformed on the ground to obtain the desired atmospheric spectra”. I understood double-sided and atmospheric spectra, but I soon learned how Fourier transformation is a method of getting spectra that involves using instruments to limit the type of light that an instrument receives. I began to use the programming language Python to develop a program to read data from the ACE-FTS instrument that was onboard a satellite 600 km above Earth. I would then turn this data into an organized array and then plot it, removing the noise in the data, all while in Python. This took quite a while as for every file of data there were nearly 600,000 data points.

A spectrometer graph I made from one file of data, or about 600,000 data points.

On another note the CfA building itself is very large, and this caused me to get lost on multiple occasions. Most of the floors are all identical, causing me to walk into the office on the floor above or below a couple times each, creating an awkward conversation or two. There is also a massive computing room, full of servers used to run simulations. There is also a laser room I have not yet seen, (It is locked so I am very intrigued) and there is a very large refractor that I have not yet seen either but will soon. Lunch is great at the observatory as there is a market/cafe close by, where I would buy my food then go back and eat it on the roof on a picnic table next to massive telescopes. Once thing that I find great about the CfA, is that it is an actual working environment for people. So I am able to see what sort of stuff I will so if I decide to go into Astrophysics. It is kind of scary though, being surrounded by so many PhDs.

On Thursdays I work in the telescope lab with a man named Frank who repairs telescopes and all sorts of technical equipment, and a women named Mary who works in the science education department and is using me to test a curriculum created by them. The telescope lab was great.  There were a couple decently large mounted telescopes in there all being repaired. They are all automated and take pictures of certain parts of the night sky. Nearing the end here, I joined a summer band program at Harvard which takes place every Wednesday and takes place in the Sanders Theater (It is a very nice theater from what I’ve seen). It is conducted by the Harvard band director, and luckily for me, Gonzalo let me borrow one of his spare clarinets, so I go and play awesome music with about 70 other people, including my mentor, as the band is for all ages. The practices started my first week here, and the concert will be the week before I leave, so the dates I’m here work surprisingly well for this.

Final comments, on only my third day here, on my 1 hour and 10 minute commute, one-way, a man began screaming at the train driver, and then got forced of the train by police. I got it on video, so I’m very stoked about that. The front camera on my phone is broken so if I want to take pictures they all have to be selfies, which is not the best scenario to be in, as I forgot my selfie stick in Telluride (just kidding I DON’T have a selfie stick). Overall, Boston is pretty awesome, as Coolidge Corner is great for some good food, and the CfA and my mentor and host family, are everything I could have hoped for and more.