Air and Space goodies

As part of my trip to Arizona, I visited the Pima Air and Space Museum twice, once as part of the ADASS conference dinner and once with my family. I'd never visited before, so it was pretty neat to see all the various things on display. I took too many photos to share them all, but wanted to share a few highlights:

A reproduction of the original Wright flyer, from the first December 17, 1903 flight.

The Bumblebee, officially the smallest plane ever flown. I'm not sure I'd fit inside, honestly.

SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, a flying observatory.

As part of the ADASS dinner we got an exclusive tour of SOFIA, which was retired in 2022 after twelve years of operation. (Fun fact: Bill Vacca, SOFIA's head of operations for around twenty years, moved from there to become my current boss at Gemini.) This photo is from my second visit, however, as by the time my group got to visit the interior it was dark outside.

SOFIA interior.

I couldn't get the best photos inside due to the dim lighting, but here you can see the modified interior with the seats for the mission directors. The blue thing in the background is the interior side of the telescope mount, which observed through a hatch cut in the side of the airplane. I believe the intention is to eventually open it to the public, and with ADASS we were basically given a sneak peak.

There were so many more planes that I saw, and even more that I only barely got to see; the number they have on the grounds outside the hangers is truly incredible. If you visit Tucson, the Air and Space Museum is definitely worth a visit – though it's probably worth bringing sun protection if you want to spend time looking at all the planes outside. There really are a lot of them. A hui hou!

New year, new beginnings

I've been sitting on this for a few weeks now, but with the turn of the new year I finally feel up to writing about it. Near the beginning of December, I learned that my three-year contract with Gemini, which ends in October, is not going to be renewed. As usual with me, funding seems to be the issue; I started on a fixed-term contract because that was all that my team could get funding for, with the hope that perhaps it could be extended in the future. The Powers That Be don't seem inclined to fund data reduction for Gemini, however, so as of October I'll have finished my employment there (unless something changes between now and then, of course).

Objectively speaking, I don't think bringing someone in to work on your highly specialized software for three years and then letting them and all their acquired institutional knowledge go is a particularly far-thinking move, but them's the breaks. Personally speaking, I had been hoping to finally be able to work at a job for more than three years, but that remains an accomplishment beyond my grasp. (Graduate school is similar-to-but-not-really a job, though it does remain the longest I've worked at a single place, at four years.)

So, as I write this on the first of January 2024, I have no idea where I'll be or what I'll be doing a year from now. Time to start polishing my résumé and checking the job market again. (I do, at least, appreciate being given a ten-month advance warning.) We'll just have to see where I end up in twelve months. A hui hou!