By Matthew Wilkinson
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Earlier this year I was lucky enough to be one of just 7 students selected from a field of almost 350 applicants worldwide to be part of the first cohort of ESO Summer Research Students. This new program provides the opportunity for students who have yet to commence a PhD to spend 6 weeks in the European summer working alongside ESO astronomers on a research project at their headquarters in Garching, Germany.
My project on the “Dark matter content of galaxies from globular cluster kinematics” was supervised by Prashin Jethwa & Laura Watkins. ESO paid for my travel costs, arranged accommodation, and paid me a stipend. You can read some of the experiences of me and my fellow students at ESO’s own blog.
The experience was fantastic, there are so many talks and I was exposed to so many areas of astronomy to a depth that is not possible at my home university. The photo above is of me on a tour of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) test construction workshop. We students were shown one mirror segment in place out of the 798 total segments and we were given a demonstration of some of the control systems and sensors that keep the segments aligned. As much technology as possible is sourced and developed in ESO member nations to try to give back to the member economies. Even having been there, it is difficult to keep a sense of scale of the enormous 39.2 meter primary mirror!
The pictures below show some other memories of my visit, including:
