Hello, there!

Hi. I’m Patrick. Right now I work as a computational astrophysicist, but I am also in the middle of a career transition. I am starting a blog to find ways to connect in this new normal, write down my thoughts, and document things about my work in and outside of academia that I’m proud of or think might help others.

I’m choosing to call my blog Voorwerpjes, which is a Dutch word that translates into ‘little things’. But it is also the name of the class of the astronomical object pictured below, Hanny’s Voorwerp. Voorwerpjes are echoes of supermassive black holes, an anomalous astronomical object discovered by a citizen scientist in the Netherlands, Hanny van Arkel. She was volunteering as part of the Galaxy Zoo project when she saw something new. It turned out to be a whole class of objects no one had seen before.

Galaxy Zoo is a wonderful project that has lots volunteers who donate their time to categorize hundreds of thousands of galaxies based on their shape. It always gives me a fuzzy feeling to think about—the project combines the best parts of big data and technology; using the internet to build community and collaboration between experts and non-experts.

I hope to fill up this space with little things.

Credit: NASA and the Galaxy Zoo Team