There was sporadic talk of a pre-SPIE summit of Leiden and Arizonan and New Yorkian and Albuquerqueño MagAO-X users, but it seemed a distant dream until Asst. Prof. Sebastiaan Haffert said those four words we all long to hear:
Ultimately the visiting delegation was comprised of myself, Dr. Lauren Schatz (Space Force), Eden McEwen (UArizona), and Josh Liberman (UArizona). Lauren was there to give a talk. The rest of us were there to collaborate. (Josh was there for cheese research as well.)
After an inauspicious start in JFK Terminal 1 and a connection in still-heatwave-addled CPH airport, I made it to Amsterdam. From there, it was just a 25 minute train ride to Leiden. The convenience was sickening.
Reader, I live in New York City and I have no airport a 25 minute train ride away.
Dr. Schatz arrived shortly after and we had a nice juice (not pictured) with Dr. Haffert (not pictured until later). Then we had a nice dinner by a canal.
Then the jet lag hit.
I’m not sure if it’s age or simple weakness of will, but jet lag hit us both like a ton of bricks. For my part, I woke up at 3 A.M. with all the lights on in my hotel room and my laptop still open, having just time-warped a solid six hours from bedtime. Worse, this happened the next two nights as well.
The next day we met up with the Leiden crew, many of whom have bloggéd in the past (see posts by Adam Taras, Elena Tonucci, Dr. Matthijs Mars). The Gorlaeus building at Leiden University is so spacious and light-filled that Sebastiaan admitted he sometimes wears sunglasses inside. My current workplace is pretty nice, as office buildings go, but even we can’t claim to have a cat planter.
Sebastiaan gave us a tour of his lab spaces, including his remote MagAO-X MegaDesk and the adorably named BabyCAT coronagraph testbed and demonstration for public outreach.
We even got a tour of the lab that will integrate METIS for the ELT and saw the cryostat it’s going in. Truly, science is everywhere in Leiden.
We got dinner with Adam… and apparently failed to notice María Eugenia Redondo González (another previous blog contributor) at the next table. To be fair, she didn’t notice us either—but then, she probably wasn’t expecting us to pop up so far from Chile.
Leiden is disgustingly cute (as usual).
Josh’s cheese research bore fruit (or at least bore cheese).
Sebastiaan invited us over for a backyard party à la Jared. No grilled burgers, but there was a surprise guest: the No. 1 Cheese of 2026.
A lovely time was had by all, and I only asked Sebastiaan when he would be putting in a swimming pool once.
