Other Astronomical News Fellows at ESO Rubina Kotak pher the physics of thermonuclear super- novae (SNe). Partly as a result of the Although I spent the first two years of my numerous side-projects that sprouted out life in the south-western corner of Tanza- of this, two of my current preoccupa- nia, I grew up near the equator, in Ken- tions are the characterisation and use of Photo: G. Dremel, ESO ya. Having obtained my Masters degree circumstellar matter surrounding SNe from Canterbury (Kent), I decided that to determine the nature of the progenitor it was time to venture somewhere a little star(s), and whether core-collapse SNe more exotic. Hence I moved north, to are able to produce significant quantities southern Sweden to start a PhD at Lund of dust at all redshifts. Observatory. I arrived at ESO-Garching less than a Here I worked on time-resolved spectros- year ago and am still negotiating my way copy of cool white dwarf pulsators with a around the intriguing maze of corridors, view to simultaneously tapping their as- doors, and dead ends, making navigation teroseismological potential and constrain- using images e.g. of the Horsehead ing the properties of the convection zone Nebula, a necessity! My duties at ESO in- Rubina Kotak in a novel way. Having (temporarily) ex- clude working in the PR department hausted all the targets that could be ob- which is both fun and stimulating. Being served in this way, using the largest at ESO gives that child-in-a-sweetshop come. My time at ESO is sadly coming (optical) telescope on the planet, it was feeling: lots of interesting talks, experts in to an end, but I’m looking forward to tak- time to move on. So I found myself at every field, and a general feeling of be- ing up a staff positon at Queen’s Uni- Imperial College London, working as part ing at the hub of events and decisions versity Belfast. Definitely time to invest in of a concerted European effort to deci- that will shape the future for decades to umbrellas! The Starburst Galaxy NGC 908. Im- age based on data obtained with FORS2 on the VLT, using B, V, and R filters. North is up and East is to the left. The data were extracted from the ESO Science Archive and further processed by Henri Boffin (ESO). More information can be found in ESO PR Photo 27a/06. Corrigendum The caption of the second photo in the re- port on the Walloon Space Days in the last issue of The Messenger mentioned Mme Simonet, Minister for Science, New Technolo- gies and External Relations of the Walloon Re- Photo: S. Tarquinio, AMOS gional Government, while the photo showed Dr. Monnik Desmeth, Belgian delegate and Vice President of the ESO Council. The picture here shows Mme Simonet at the press con- ference at AMOS. 58 The Messenger 125 – September 2006.