New Year, New City

Happy New Year!

I hope that your first few days of 2014 have been wonderful and full of keeping those new resolutions. The New Year is usually a time for new beginnings, outlooks and fresh starts and I began 2014 with a flight to my new home for the next few months, Munich! 

On New Years Day, I flew 1 hour and a half away from my home city of London to Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria. It is also home to the world's most productive intergovernmental astronomy organisation and my new work place, the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Comprised of 15 member states, ESO operates a suite of the world's most advanced telescopes in the world which scan the Southern skies and probe the Universe for untold stories waiting to be discovered. With telescopes in three sites in Chile - La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor, ESO is working on painting an ever growing picture of the cosmos. 

It is vital that the findings revealed from the hidden universe are communicated to the public and this is where my department comes in. I am a Science Communication Intern within the education & Public Outreach Department (ePOD) of ESO. You can read biographies of the department members, including myself on the ESO website here. It is within ePOD that I am learning more about the science communication process and working with the team to produce press releases, popular articles, image/video captions and scripts in order to effectively communicate scientific information to a broader audience.

I'm very happy that I'm working in a field that I've pursued since a young age and I hope I can inspire others who have similar aspirations to continue to strive to achieve them. 

Auf Wiedersehen!

-Nikita