Esther Buenzli, a Steward post-doc, won the poster prize in the 2nd session at PPVI! That means she had the best poster out of over 300. She presented her work with Daniel Apai on time-resolved variability in Brown Dwarfs, in which they used HST to track the changes in brightness of a couple of BDs. Cool stuff, and as a reward she got to give a talk to 900 people with 18 hours notice. Even more amazing, she managed to keep her trap shut about it at dinner last night, on conference orders to not tell anybody.
It was a really good talk. Esther is actually leaving us — has left us — to come work here in Heidelberg at MPIA. We’re still proud. Congrats to her and everybody who worked on this.
Quote of the day: “We have an important announcement. We found a passport, for Kate Follette. If you’re her and you’d like to leave the country, please go to the information desk”
I admit that I immediately checked my passport when they said this.