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She has already visited Jessica Dempsey, the new director of ASTRON, from Hawaii this week. A famous female scientist with an impressive track record. But what does the native Australian bring to Drenthe?
“I shouldn’t be the one leading the way, I don’t know the way yet,” Dempsey laughs. She takes us to the large telescope at the back of the ASTRON site, which borders the Dwingelderveld. This is not the first time she has visited ASTRON in Dwingeloo. It is the first time that she will live there.
“I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a really exciting challenge and I’m extremely proud to be able to join the institute,” she begins.
The company has been on his radar for a long time. “ASTRON and I have been going back for a long time,” she says. “ASTRON designed and built the telescope about 35 years ago that I worked with for several years in Hawaii.”
Very adventurous career
Dempsey grew up in the Australian desert, was Australia’s first female scientist at the South Pole, then spent 15 years in Hawaii at the East Asia Observatory where she later became director.
“I had never seen snow before going to Antarctica,” she says. “I’m from the desert, so that sounded good. But after wintering at the South Pole for 12 months, I couldn’t see any snow.”
“Hawaii should have been hot, that was a lie”
She liked the idea of a tropical island, but nothing could be further from the truth. “They told me it wouldn’t snow in Hawaii. But the mountain the telescopes are on is what they call ‘white mountain’ in Hawaiian. They’re doing this because it’s snowing there” , she laughs. “My first week in Hawaii, I started shoveling snow. Hawaii should have been warm, that was a lie but the view was beautiful, I had no complaints.”
But isn’t Drenthe a bit boring after that? Dempsey laughs. “It’s as exciting to me as Antarctica or Hawaii. It may look different to you, but trust me, you live in a beautiful place.”
Strikingly, according to Dempsey, astronomical institutes are often located in the most unique places in the world. “You have to go somewhere quiet for radio science, so it’s often very far away. Especially now that radio technology is popular because of telephony, for example, it’s hard to hear the whispers of the radio otherwise. universe. Compared to Australia, you still have many cities in the region.”
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