Sunday, June 12, 2022
By:
This week was full of exciting events. I met John Mathers, a Nobel laureate, watched a national baseball game, and saw a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was a hectic week at work, and having fun with the other interns.
On Monday-Wednesday, I spent the day reading research papers assigned by my mentor. The readings were meant to help me deepen my understanding of how integral field spectroscopy works and its applications. Integral field spectroscopy measures the chemical ratio inside an observed galaxy. We can determine specific characteristics based on the ratios like metallicity and chemical composition. The readings will help me understand the data analysis I will be doing in later weeks. I look forward to applying all the information I have learned from the readings over the past two weeks. Thursday and Friday were spent collecting data from other papers and recreating a graph. Most of the time was finding programs that could collect all the data from a table I was using since the papers I was referencing were PDFs.
On Thursday, we met with John Mathers at lunch and spent a couple hours interacting and asking him questions. It was amazing to hear him talk about his career and the work he put in to get the Nobel prize for help proving the Big-Bang Theory. He mentioned staying flexible and always volunteering for research experience, even if it’s something you don’t have much experience in. He told us how always being eager to explore new opportunities helped make his career. Afterward, we all went outside and took a group photo with Dr. Mathers. Later, I was able to get a picture with just the two of us. It was a fantastic experience I will not forget.
On Friday, two significant events were happening. First was the Brewers vs. the Nationals baseball game that all the interns went to as a group. We got to explore the stadium in D.C. and spend time together as a group. I sat with Brad for most of the game, and he gave me a refresher on the rules of baseball. Brad also bought us pretzels and popcorn, which was incredibly generous of him. At the end I went with Taylor to the top of the stadium to see the Washington Monument from a high vantage point. It was really cool to see it from a more leveled vantage rather than looking up.
After the ball game, most of the interns went to a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was my first time watching the movie and experiencing a live showing with a shadow cast. It was an amazing experience and was wildly entertaining. Since the live showing included an interactive shadow cast, a lot was going on, and it was hard to follow the plot of the movie if there even was one. However, it was such a fun time that I plan on going to a live showing of the movie again. This week was full of excitement, and I look forward to more good times with the rest of the interns next week!
Anthony Olguin