Royal Netherlands Embassy

Tonight's event in the week of too many things to do was a talk and reception at the Royal Netherlands Embassy. The speaker was Rogier Windhorst from Arizona State University. His talk included both some of what we've learned using the Hubble Space Telescope and some of the plans for the James Webb Space Telescope. He spoke well and showed lots of interesting pictures. I was particularly amused by his comparisons of the number of stars in certain galaxies to the size of the U.S. budget deficit. The video of how the JWST will deploy was also very interesting (and somewhat frightening to somebody like me who knows a lot of war stories about deployables).

The food at the reception was better than I expected, too, including spring rolls, samosa, and satay, as well as more European offerings. The guests included a number of NASA folks, as well as the MIT attendees (which is what got me on the invite list). All of which meant that I stayed later than I'd expected to. Oh, well, I can always catch up on sleep next month.