A glimpse of my journey from Haridwar to Hawaii

I was born and brought up in Haridwar, one of the ancient and holiest town in the Northern part of India. The population of the town is around 200,000 (only! 😉). The river Ganges flows from the western Himalayas and takes the route of Haridwar to finally merge with the Bay of Bengal (the largest bay in the world!) in North-east. Haridwar hosts the Kumbha Mela every three years which is the largest Hindu pilgrimage gathering in the world to bathe in the sacred Ganges (can you believe 8 million people bathing together peacefully in Ganges in a day!!!)

Haridwar is a small town as compared to the lengths and breadths of India. And I like being a small town girl. My strong roots keep me grounded 😌. The best part about Haridwar is that its away from the hustle and bustles of big cities! Here, you get the chance to taste the spiritual and intellectual India! Its the land of Gods!

ASTRONOMY. So my father used to work as a draftsman in B.H.E.L (he is retired now) and my mother is a housewife. Having orthodox indian family background, I wasn't really allowed to go out of the house and explore my surroundings! But thanks to my mother who gave wings to my dreams! I was drawn to the heaven since my childhood! Me and my mother used to spend most of the nights by looking up and wonder why the night sky was so mysterious! Soon Kalpana Chawla became my inspiration! At school, I used to hide books about Planets and solar system under my study table and wait impatiently to read about other worlds during lecture breaks! I used to bug my Physics teacher ( S. K. Tyagi sir) with all sorts of weird questions about Astronomy! I remember one day he told me angrily to concentrate on my high school exams instead of bothering myself about astronomy which was not even in the course! He realized later that it was rude of him and then one day he asked me if I knew who is faster than the speed of light! I looked a bit lost. And then he asked me to close my eyes and visit Saturn! I followed his advice: I closed my eyes and within a second I was in the middle of the Saturn rings! I opened my eyes and gave him a smile! My thoughts travelled faster than the speed of light! Since that day I never stopped, no matter how difficult my situations were!

After school, the real journey began! I joined an engineering college and pursued my Bachelors of Engineering (B.Tech) in Information Technology. A subject that didn't really attract me. The reason I did this course was my father. Both of us being uninformed about the career in Astronomy, my father finally convinced me to follow what the crowd was doing! But I continued my passion for Astronomy and after finishing my Bachelors I denied the offer from Larsen & Toubro and decided to go for higher studies in Astronomy!

Long story short, I got admission to pursue 2 years of Masters in Université Paris-Sud in Paris! After spending endless nights crying and fighting with my father, my mother and uncle D R Kohli finally convinced my father to let me go after my dreams if I manages to get the scholarship to cover all of my expenses. And my hardwork payed off when I got the news on my 21st birthday that I have received île de France scholarship for 2 years. My father did try to stop me one more time due to the fear of sending me alone in a strange land but in front of my dreams, he had to convert his helplessness into his strength! Today he is really proud of me. 😊

PARIS

The land where I faced biggest challenges of my life (as of 2010)! New language (knew French enough to go to a grocery shop and buy food)! New culture! Professional french astronomical world (was totally new to me)! French vocabulary for Astronomy (took me long time to adapt)! and finally the decision of being strict vegetarian (by choice)! Truthfully, the first year in France was really tough! I had to struggle a lot to get a place in the Astronomy class. What worked for me is not really the marks I was getting but my perseverance and motivation to keep fighting for a place even if I didn't knew French enough!

The course Master OSAE that I followed was very intense. It covered astronomy, instrumentation, interferomtery, adaptive optics, automata, mechanics, electronics and computer science. This course opened me to bunch of opportunities in Engineering! I decided to pursue Adaptive optics as it sounded very fascinating to me the way how an optical element can reshape a wavefront to make it flat! I will definitely recommend this course to the students who are willing to learn advance and new technology in Astronomy & Instrumentation. This course opens the doors of CNRS, ESA, ESO and bunch of other private space agencies!

Eiffel tower from different angles! The one on the right is taken from Meudon site of the Observatoire de Paris (Sacré coeur can also be seen in the background).

Observatoire de Paris at Meudon site during winter where our classes used to held! The unique look of this site gives you a feeling of antiquity.

(Acknowledgment: I would like to thank Professors Gerard Rousset, Guy Perrin and Benoît Mosser of the Observatoire de Paris to bear me at the time of conversation gap because of the language. I am grateful to all of my class mates (the OSAEians) and supporting astronomer at Meudon who helped me understand astronomical concepts in English when I struggled with the French language!)


HAWAII

My interest in Adaptive Optics (AO) led me to Subaru Telescope for my Masters thesis! One of the best decision of my life! Hawaii, being one of its own kind of a place, not only attracts tourists but worldwide Astronomers as well. The Big island of Hawaii is the home of 8 to 10-meters world class Telescopes (Mauna kea Observatories). From turquoise beaches to crazy hikes at volcano national park, Hawaii welcomed me everywhere I have been! Hawaiians are the most culturally open minded down to earth people I have ever met. According to me, its one of the best place to implement new ideas and test them directly on-sky (if you have access to the telescope obviously). And when things doesn't work, you can always go to the beach to relax. 😎

Working with Japanese community at Subaru Telescope was totally different than working with French people! Hierarchy is there just like in India. And I found that Japanese are secretive, sometimes its difficult to figure out whats going on in their mind! Delicate, helpful, very respectful and again down to earth people. I got very lucky to work with Yutaka Hayano, one of the nicest and patient AO engineer at Subaru. Hayano-san is the PI of the AO188 (adaptive optics of Subaru Telescope). Under his supervision, I saw AO in action! Working at the summit of Mauna Kea at 4,205 meters is not an easy task. With 40% less oxygen than at sea level, its hard to avoid headaches and dizziness! But thanks to Hayano-san, who taught me patiently about how adaptive optics and Laser Guide Star works! The fantastic 5 months of AO project rewarded me with very good score for my Masters.

Left to right: Summit of Mauna Kea with Subaru, Keck and Nasa's IRTF telescopes. Subaru Telescope under snow. Subaru's 8.2 meters monolithic primary mirror getting ready for inspection.

Some of the beautiful dawns while descending the summit after work! Left to right: The layer of beautiful clouds over Hilo bay! The site for upcoming Thirty Meters Telescope (TMT). The shadow of Mauna Kea with Hualalai mountain in the background.

Left to right: The Pololu valley in the Nothernmost of the Big Island. Posing in front of the Keck Telescope. Beautiful sunset in Kona.

After spending 2.5 years outside India, I came back and joined Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) as a Research associate. Situated at Manora Peak in Nainital, one of the beautiful and scenic hill station in Uttarakhand state in Northern India. ARIES is a leading institute in Observational and Atmospheric Sciences but lacks in Instrumentation (in terms of manpower and advanced technologies to correct for atmospheric turbulence). It's not an easy task to initiate a project without enough manpower. Also in India, it takes time (years) for the request to get approved and start purchasing the equipments.

With the desire of staying active in adaptive optics, I joined the inter-university center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune. IUCCA is in collaboration with Caltech for Robo-AO which is an autonomous laser adaptive optics system operating on-sky at Palomar Observatory 60-inch telescope. The unique quality of RoboAO is that its designed for small telescopes (1.5 - 3 meters) and is going to be replicated and deployed on IUCCA's Girawali Observatory. I did the case study of the Robo-AO for Girawali telescope.


BACK TO HAWAII

The desire of going back to Subaru telescope soon led me back to France where I joined the laboratory LESIA as a PhD student to work a level up from AO! The Extreme adaptive optics system a.k.a systems which images exoplanets directly! A gateway to use the diffraction limited resolution of the AO equipped 8-10 meters ground-based telescopes to search for habitable planets. Its such a challenging field that only few system exists in the world which are competing with each other to search for Earth 2.0. Just to name a few:

Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) already on-sky at Gemini south observatory.

Spectro-polarimetric high-contrast exoplanet research (SPHERE) operating on-sky at Very large telescope (VLT) in Chile.

Note: GPI and SPHERE are black boxes now. No room for testing new technologies as of now.

PALM 3000: a second generation AO facility for 5.1 meter Hale Telescope at Palomar mountain. (operating on-sky)

LBTI exozodi exoplanet common hunt (LEECH) atop Mount Graham in Arizona.

SCExAO: Extreme AO system for Subaru Telescope. In engineering phase right now! Not open for public use yet. System is adaptable and open to new technologies. Cutting-edge technologies are currently under development!

The above systems are precursors for futures extremely large telescope (ELT) such as TMT and European-ELT!
My PhD research on SCExAO is still going on and I am hopefull that my research will help the community in knocking down one of the enemy of the direct imaging which is the pointing errors a.k.a low order wavefront aberrations!

Thats pretty much the journey as of September 2014. Hopefully this journey will keep moving forward towards the search of a planet where the reality is just like a dream! 😌. As an ending note, I would like to thank my family and friends who became the part of my journey and who have always believed in me and inspired me to keep moving forward without looking back.

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© Garima Singh 2014