Top-Hat or Down-Hat? Remote teaching!

To set priorities: an important lesson

Important lesson 2: As a researcher, you never know what will come across your path. Every week is another week where we have to look again at what has top priority at that particular moment.

I took this lesson quite seriously. On the first Monday of February, I broke my arm and I knew I had to work with one hand for at least another three weeks. The conclusion: no instrumentation in the month of February, working less efficiently and asking more help from others. Fortunately, as a researcher, there are always things you can do (with a little help)! An important example is: teaching!

Over the past four weeks I have been standing in front of a classroom for the first time. Or rather... More... Sitting in front of my laptop? It is so fascinating and exciting to be on the other side of the classroom for the first time in my career. Suddenly, you are the teacher explaining and not the student asking the questions. I was nervous, but in the end it turned out not to be necessary.

What does my schedule look like now I am also helping with teaching? On Mondays from 08:00 to 13:00 I start with correcting the students' homework. I then take until 13:30 to put all the marks with their feedback online. After a break from 13:30 to 14:00, the lesson begins and then from 16:00 to 18:00 students can ask for help with their homework. In addition to these Mondays, I spend about an additional day per week preparing and answering questions.

The course: High Contrast Imaging • How can we observe a small planet that is next to a super large and bright star? We can do this by blocking the light from a star. This month we looked at how we can do this using the computer and at the telescope. Using the computer, we can, for example, reduce the star's signal with a kind of filter: a 'Top-Hat/Down-Hat Kernel'. At the telescope it is possible to use a coronagraph to reduce the signal coming from a star during an observation.