Ramatsoku, Mpati Analicia
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Publication date: 2017
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Citation for published version (APA):
Ramatsoku, M. A. (2017). A Westerbork blind HI imaging survey of the Perseus-Pisces filament in the Zone of Avoidance. University of Groningen.
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Acknowledgments
Working on this PhD has been an incredible experience. I have changed in many different ways and have discovered parts of myself I did not know existed. I certainly would not have made it here if it were not for all the people who supervised, helped, supported and inspired me through this journey.
Marc, It is not possible to express my gratitude in this short paragraph. Thank you for taking me on as one of your students and for sharing your immense scientific and technical knowledge with me. Your patience is admirable, I learned a lot from your lengthy descriptions of the concepts of radio astronomy and from spending hours guiding me through the immense data reduction process. I am a better scientist for it. I greatly enjoyed the stimulating discussions we had on all other non-astronomy related topics as well, your worldly view on current events was striking. Thank you for your advise, for always listening and valuing my opinions, for your great support and for believing in my ability to produce this piece of work even when I did not believe it myself at times. I am very grateful that you and Marti welcomed me into your home and treated us to all those delicious home-cooked dinners, particularly given my not so great relationship with proper food.
Renee, I am so glad I walked into your office at UCT 10 years ago. No number of words could ever express my sincere and deep gratitude for the tutelage I have received from you over the years. You have always been there to teach, encourage and listen. Thank you for your supervision and enthusiasm for science which you also imparted on me. You shared your
Anja, I highly appreciate all the input you have had in all the work I have done over for the many years (∼7 years) that I have known you. Thank you for your patience in explaining many many times what Galactic extinction was about and how to correct for it. I missed some of our deadlines or failed to deliver on some of the things we would discuss, yet you never gave up on me. Your input and feedback on all the data analyses and written text I have done has helped me grow into a better researcher. You always paid great attention to every detail of my work and taught me to do the same. I am taking these lessons with me moving forward.
Tom, I am grateful that you adopted me into your research group. I highly appreciate all the knowledge you have shared with me as well as your input and feedback on my work. I found it easy to talk to you and come to you with any questions I had regarding infrared data. Thank you for always making the time for me and for being available to address any and all of my issues even at 1am! That is incredible!.
Thank you to my co-supervisor Erwin, for being my contact person at ASTRON and for always reacting quickly to all of my travel needs, par-ticularly during my work visits to UCT.
A very special thanks to Josh, for organising all the observations andHI
-data that made this project possible and for patiently talking me through how to even begin handling interferometric radio data.
A special thanks to Khaled for the useful discussions we had on the near-infrared photometry and for offering a lot of his time to help me greatly with it. A special thanks to Wendy for also helping with the photometry by addressing the technical questions regarding star-subtraction.
Many thanks to Ed for teaching me new and innovative methods of as-sessing completeness in blind HI-surveys and for spending many many
hours helping me through the process.
I would like to thank the members of the reading committee, C. Carignan, M.J. Drinkwater, J.H. van Gorkom and J.M. van der Hulst for carefully
reading and assessing my thesis and for their useful comments.
Thank you to Mathjis and Marti for their quick reactions in helping me with the Dutch translation. I would also like to thank Litsi’itso Pule for helping me with the Sesotho translation. I learned words I did not even know existed in my language.
Many thanks to Patrick Bos for allowing me to use this beautiful thesis template. I am told that it has been floating around the Kapteyn In-stitute for at least a decade. Its family tree consists of the PhD theses of Bruno Letarte (2006), Matias Arrigoni (2010), Thomas Martinsson (2011), Stephan Peters (2014) and Patrick Bos (2016). Cool!.
I highly appreciate all the great help I received with all the administrative things. Many many thanks to Lucia, Hennie, Christa and Martine at the Kapteyn Institute, and to Roslyn and Carol at the UCT astronomy department for taking care of the incredible amount of paperwork that was involved in making my stay and work life at both institutes possible. You all keep these places running.
Thank you to the computer group at Kapteyn and UCT for providing me with robust IT facilities to enable my work. Special thanks to Wim and Martin for going above and beyond to ensure that I had the best machine and right softwares to handle all the data I had to work with and for always being available to address all of my IT problems. Thank you to Bianca and Siphelo for providing me with the necessary support whenever I was UCT, particularly installing those seemingly impossible softwares I needed.
I have had the privilege of being part of two vibrant, dynamic and in-ternational institutes. I am very grateful to every single person I have interacted with at both these places, some of whom I mentioned here. I am certain that everyone of them influenced me in one way or another even if they are not mentioned in this text.
The office ("266 vibes!!!") was always a lovely place to work in because of the people I shared it with. Eva, I am thankful for the times I spent with you in that office. Navigating our trip together in India was a breeze because you are so organised.
Enrico, I am thankful you joined our office and brought awesome vibes with you. I have enjoyed our stimulating conversations on neuroscience, food, health and fitness, machine learning, what did we not talk about?. I quietly admired your chilled approach to life during these discussions, the office was never boring when you were around.
times of this journey, always willing to lend a helping hand or just listen. You are probably the one person who knows me better than anybody else in the whole of Netherlands. Your positive and engaging energy kept me sane at some points :). Words cannot express how thankful I am to you for not only being an officemate but for being a dear friend as well. Elaheh, without saying too much, your calm energy and positive spirit kept me going especially when the going got tough and I started panicking as I do sometimes (okay.. a lot of the times:)). Going to your office to see you or you walking into my office to ask how I was doing was always a welcomed sight. Thank you for all the delicious treats you would bring from Iran, for being a friend and my yoga partner at the back of the class at ACLO :).
Davide, thank you for your help in visualising my data cubes. Your visualisation stuff have made for great impressions whenever I was giving talks on this work.
Thank you to Maciej in Leiden for the insightful conversations we had whenever you came to Groningen, they really helped with my work. To the UCT and Kapteyn crew including those who have left; Zolile, Sam, Nagres, Iniyan, Hannes, Liz, Mariam, Marc, Marie, Brenda, Kerry, Amadou, Toky, Seyda, Dorota, Nadine, Robin, Ming, Mustafa, Avanti, Jan, Pooja, Crescenzo, Khine, Rajin, Itumeleng, Blaise, Leon, Julia, Jamie, Marisa, Francesco, Fillipo, Sarrvesh, Antonino, Laura, Khan, Pece. The Cape-Town and/or Cape-Town North people: Brad, Danielle, Kelley, Natasha. The various interactions, conversations and fun times I have had with you all made both institutes pleasant places to work in. Many thanks to Hugo at Kapteyn for sharing the amazing stories of your travel experiences in South Africa many years ago before I was born. They made for great lunch conversations.
I have had the good fortune of being surrounded by a large group of people who have all steadfastly stood in my corner.
Moeketsi, skim sa ka!! :), thank you for being a constant source of support in my life, for being an amazing friend from the day I met you and for keeping me going and encouraging me through this work and everything I have ever tried to do.
Mpheng my awesome friend, we have had amazing road trips and shared our not so great taste in pop music. Our lengthy discussions on the latest Taylor Swift songs :) were always a nice distraction from stressful thesis situations. Thank for your friendship even when I was too occupied at times.
Velile, duuude, we spent so many nights on campus together, thank you for the "good" frozen food cooked in your lab’s microwave, they made those long nights of writing text and data reduction go much easier. Thank you for being there with me in the great and not so great moments and for always willing to go for a drink whenever there was a need for it. I learned a lot from watching go through your research work and life with graceful chill vibes.
Sahba, you are one of a kind lady. I have admired your fearless and easy approach to all things and you have encouraged me to do the same (something we both know is not easy for me). Your friendship has meant a lot to me and was instrumental in the completion of this thesis. Thank you thank you thank you.
Gopolang, many thanks for always being available to talk and for the awesome Groningen adventures. The road trip through the Midwest was particularly interesting :). I was always baffled by how passionate you were about particle physics and by how much you were trying to get me excited about being at Fermilab. I am very happy to see your advancements over the years.
Priscilla, thank you for being a friend and my travel companion. The trips we took were a lovely and welcomed break. I particularly enjoyed our wine "tasting" adventures. I cannot wait for Cuba.
Nikki, you got me through the worst of times. I can never thank you enough. I will always be grateful that you are in my life and that you introduced me to the red espresso, I love that stuff. Thank you for being one of my people.
Zwido, thank you for the fun evenings, the drinks and the very much needed laughter. I still cannot believe how much you guys sucked at football, really? How is it even possible?.
way of thinking which helped me prioritise the important things. Thank you for always being there for me, to talk or just to hangout and for insisting that I remember to eat during the busiest times.
I know there are so many other people I forgot to mention. For all that you all have done and for the interactions I have had with you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
My parents have always encouraged me to fearlessly follow my dreams wherever they may take me. I would not have made it this far without them. I do not have the chance to thank my mother but I am sure she would be happiest to see me finish my PhD. I know my father is overjoyed to see me make it this far. Ntatepula, I cannot thank you enough for always being in my corner every step of the way. I know you would move mountains to see me happy, make it through and succeed at all things. Many thanks to my brother for being there when I needed him even though I had to (he would let me) use my "big-sister" card sometimes. Ho malapa a heso kaofela, Basia le Bafokeng. BoMangwane, BoRang-wane, BoRakgadi, BoMalome, ke leboha ho menahane ka ho ba teng ha lona bophelo ba ka. Ha ho mokgwa o lekaneng oo nka le lebohang ka hona ka tsohle tseo le nthusitseng ka tsona le tseo le nketseditseng tsona. Ho mme Mamoratoe le ntatemoholo Mohapi, le nkgodisitse ho tloha bonyaneng ka lerato, la nkgothalletsa thuto, la nketsa motho eo ke leng yena kajeno. Ha ho mantswe ao nka a buang a ho le leboha. Ke moo ke le teng kajeno ka lebaka la lona.
