Tag Archives: observing

Observing diary, Day 5

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Here is the diary from my last night of observing!  I’ve had an amazing time, and even though the weather was mostly bad, we did manage to get in some observing over my five nights.
Observing Day 5 (29 July 2011):

8:06 pm: When we came out of playing pool around 6:40 pm, it was beautiful!  There was not a cloud in the sky!  So we opened up the dome early, watched the sunset, and them came inside to sit and wait for it to get dark.  A couple of minutes ago, we were called outside to look at some pretty ominous clouds over Mexico (where the weather is approximately coming from), and there was  TON of lightning.  So we’re going to start pointing the telescope now, and hopefully we’ll get some observing done before the lightning/clouds come our way!

12:22 am: We got to do some observing earlier in the night! We took some spectra of one of our fellow REU student’s objects (it was a galaxy with an active galactic nucleus) and then closed up after about 45 minutes due to lightning off in the distance.  We sat outside for a while, watching the lightning, since it was far enough away not to be a danger to us.  It was surreal, because the skies were totally clear overhead, yet there was tons of lightning elsewhere.  We could see the Milky Way, and I even saw some shooting stars!  After we came in, we watched some Battlestar Galactica, and I think the skies have cleared up and we’ll be opening up the dome again soon.  Yay!

3:40 am: Done for the night!  We were able to get in about another hour of observing from 12:45 to 1:45.  We took spectra of a variable star.  These exposures were very long – 900 seconds.  Then the clouds came back in and we weren’t able to see our guide star or our target, so we had to close.  After that we waited for a while – I tried to do some work but I was way too tired to concentrate.  Then around 3:15 it was decided that we wouldn’t get to observe anymore before the sun started rising, so we came down to go to sleep.  A little extra sleep will be nice tonight, since last night I didn’t sleep very much at all!

Observing diary, Day 4

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I’m back on Kitt Peak!  Here is my observing diary for last night (complete with pictures!)

Observing Day 4 (28 July 2011):

4:44 am: A semi-successful night!  I got up to Kitt Peak around 4 pm, and we walked around for about an hour before getting some dinner.  There are some amazing views around here, and I was happy to get to take some pictures (since I remembered my camera this time!).  After dinner the other students and I played pool in the rec room, which was fun.  We then went up to the telescope for the night.  The first thing we did when we got there was fill the liquid nitrogen dewar.  We are no longer using FLAMINGOS, which is the infrared imager we were using last week.  Now we’re using GoldCam, which is an optical spectrograph.  The liquid nitrogen dewar on GoldCam needs to be filled about every 8 hours.  After that, we went to watch the sunset.  The sunsets up here have to be some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen!

Sunset from the 2.1 m catwalk, WIYN .9 and 3.5 m telescopes on left.

After that, we hung around until 3 am because it was really cloudy, and even rainy at some points.  During that time, I did some work, then we played a computer game called Pocket Tanks, celebrated a birthday, and watched Galaxy Quest (although I slept through most of it because I was tired).  Around 3 it really cleared up, so we decided to open the dome (even though it begins to get light a little after 4).  We were so pressed for time that we didn’t really point or focus the telescope.  We got to observe M32, which is a dwarf elliptical galaxy that is a companion to Andromeda.

Andromeda and its dwarf elliptical galaxies. M32 is located just left of the center of the picture. (pic from stargazing.net)

M32 as seen on our "Object Aquisition Moniter". This is used to make sure the object we're looking at is in the dome slit, and the telescope is pointing at it.

We took three spectra of M32 (300 s exposures).  After that we took a calibration spectra of the HeNeAr lamp (this is used to find out how much wavelength is covered in each pixel), and then started to close up.  It took us about 30 minutes to complete the closing procedure.  We have to stow the telescope, close the dome, put an awning over the telescope, refill the dewar, and shut off  fans and things like that.  Now I am back in my dorm room.  I’m really glad that we got to observe SOMETHING at some point in my 5 nights at Kitt Peak.  I also still have tomorrow night, so maybe we’ll get some more observing done then!

A spectrum of M32 (the large black horizontal line)! Those vertical lines that cut across the spectrum are atmospheric lines (that is why they are found throughout the entire slit).

 

The 2.1 m telescope

Inside the telescope control room.

Observing pictures

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Here are some pictures I took while I was up on Kitt Peak.  I forgot my camera and was forced to take pictures on my cell phone, so I apologize for the poor quality! I’ll be bringing my camera along next week to take some good pictures.

Sign outside the dormitories - I became nocturnal on Kitt Peak.

View of the telescopes at sunset from the catwalk on the 2.1m telescope. They say good sunsets make for bad observing...

View of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope from the 2.1m catwalk

Observing diary, Day 3

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Observing Diary Day 3 (22 July 2011):

1:32 am: Tonight is a no-go.  We’ve been here since 7 pm, and it has been cloudy since then.  There was a big storm this afternoon, so we were hoping that the clouds would clear afterwards, but they stuck around!  We took a couple of darks, but other than that there has been no telescope action.  Me and the other students observing played a card game and then watched Contact, the movie where Jodie Foster plays a radio astronomer trying to find radio signals from extraterrestrial life.  It was a very appropriate movie to watch on an observing run!  Now we’re going to do some experimenting with the new Argon lamp I mentioned last yesterday.  That should be interesting!

3:42 am: Back in my room.  We took some darks and some spectra of the Argon lamp, but that was it for the night.  The clouds were covering the entire sky, all night.  At some point we realized that one of the Land Before Time movies was instant watch on Netflix, and decided to relive our childhoods and watch it.  I fell asleep in my chair about 3/4 of the way through.  It certainly brought back memories though!  So this is it for my observing this week – no clear skies and no nighttime thunderstorms.  Slightly disappointing, but I suppose that is how observing goes sometimes.  Maybe next week’s two night observing run will bring some clear skies!

Observing diary, Day 2

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Observing Diary, Day 2 (night of July 21st)
10:06 pm:  We’ve had more success tonight!  We opened the dome around 9 – it was a little cloudy but not too bad.  We took about an hour to point and focus the telescope.  When you ‘point’ you pick a bright, well known star, and then observe it and move the telescope little by little until the star is in the center of the image frame.  This lets the telescope know where it is.  When focusing the telescope, we take images of a star and move the secondary mirror in relation to the primary mirror each time until the image is in focus.  We’re ready to observe now, but the clouds have gotten a little worse.  They are dry, meaning they aren’t technically “threatening”, but we might not be able to see much of anything.

10:27 pm: JUST as we were about to observe a target, we got the call to shut down because of bad weather.  Arghhh.

12:08 am: Still waiting :(

3:39 pm:  I’m back in my room now – we didn’t get to do any observing tonight.  We could have opened for a couple hours, but it was way too cloudy to do any imaging.  Instead, we played around a little with a new Argon light for the telescope.  This can be used for calibrating spectroscopic images.  Basically, when you take a spectrum, you need to know how many angstroms there are per pixel (how much “distance” each pixel takes up).  In order to figure this out, you take a spectrum of light coming from a lamp filled with a gas – like Argon – with well known spectral line positions.  This allows you to figure out how many angstroms there are per pixel, which is necessary to know for the spectra you take of your target objects.  This telescope doesn’t currently have a calibration lamp, so instead, people use atmospheric absorption lines to calibrate their spectra (the positions of atmospheric lines don’t change).  Other than doing that, we waited.  A few of us played Go Fish and War.  I did some research on graduate schools to apply to.  Tomorrow night is my last night using the infrared imager – I hope we have at least one night of observations!  Next week I’ll be back for two days to use the optical spectrograph.

My summer + Observing diary, Day 1

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I decided to take a bit of a different direction and talk about the work I’m doing this summer!  This summer, I’ve been working at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, AZ, as part of their Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.  An REU program is essentially a program where a university or an organization brings in undergraduates to do research over the summer.  I did an REU last summer at Williams College, and studied planetary nebulae.

This summer, I’m studying ultra-luminous infrared galaxies.  These are galaxies that emit more light in the infrared than at all other wavelengths combined.  They obtain these extreme luminosities through bursts of star formation, active galactic nuclei (aka supermassive central black holes!), or a combination of the two.  I spent the first part of the summer finding the redshifts of a group of these galaxies – measuring a redshift is essentially a way of finding out how far away a galaxy is.  Now I’m working on measuring their emission line strengths, so that we can find out if they are undergoing star formation, if they have active galactic nuclei, or if both are occurring.

As part of the summer program, the REU students get to observe on Kitt Peak National Observatory.  Kitt Peak is about 90 minutes from Tucson, at an elevation of 6,750 feet.  They have reserved 2 weeks total for the REU students to observe on the 2.1 m telescope.  During the first week, we use an infrared imager, and during the second week, we will use an optical spectrograph.  Each individual student gets to be at the observatory for five nights.  I have three nights using the infrared imager, and two nights on the optical spectrograph.  I got to Kitt Peak yesterday afternoon, and observed for the first time last night.  I thought it would be cool to post a sort of observing diary, since I was writing about what we were doing as the night went on.  So below is my observing diary for night one, starting on the afternoon of Jul 20th, and ending in the wee hours of the morning on Jul 21st.

Some of the telescopes on Kitt Peak, including the 4 meter Mayall Telescope.

Observing Diary, Day 1

4:40 pm: We got up to Kitt Peak around 3:30 in the afternoon.  It was still pretty hot up here, but it cooled off quickly.  It’s nothing like Tucson!  The first thing we did was settle into our dorm rooms.  The dorms are nice!  After we settled in, we went up to the 2.1 m telescope to fill one of the liquid nitrogen tanks (there are two – one for the spectrograph and one for the imager).  The liquid nitrogen is used to keep the instruments cool.  We will have to fill the other, larger tank later tonight.  The larger tank is for the imager.  We’ll be getting dinner at 5 pm, in just a few minutes.  I’m excited to observe tonight! There’s been some thunder, but it seems to be off in the distance.  Hopefully the weather will hold out and we’ll get some good observations.  If not, I hope we at least get good lightning!

Me during the filling of the liquid nitrogen tank

Me on the catwalk outside the telescope dome, with a .9 m telescope in the background.

11:59 pm:  So, we haven’t done any observing of objects yet.  It was really cloudy earlier, with “threatening clouds” (this term is used for any clouds that could potentially produce rain).  Then it actually did rain.  So although we were able to take darks and dome flats, we weren’t able to do anything that requires opening the dome.  Darks and dome flats are used for reducing the images you take of objects.  I had a great time going around and setting up stuff for the telescope.  We even got to go on a dome ride!  Typically with telescopes, the dome rotates in a circle around the telescope, moving the slit.  The telescope also rotates to where the slit is, and moves up and down to take pictures of objects in the slit.  A dome ride consists of standing on floor on the part of the dome that rotates.  It totally felt as if the telescope is moving and you are standing still, rather than what it actually is (you rotating around the telescope).  It’s awesome!  So, for the past hour and a half or so, I’ve just been sitting here on my laptop.  I fell asleep in my chair a couple times.  Hopefully the rest of the night brings clearer weather!

3:49 am: Around 2 am, the clouds started to clear, so we opened the dome.  We were pointing the telescope (making sure the telescope knew where it was), and focusing it, and just when we had finished doing these things around 3 am, we got a call that more threatening clouds were coming in and we needed to close.  We spent some time closing up the dome, shutting everything down, and filling out an observing log, then returned to the dorms.  I’m in my dorm now, but I feel strangely awake.  I’m going to watch a tv show on my laptop until I finally fall asleep.  I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get to observe any science objects, but taking darks, flats, and pointing the telescope are all important parts of observing.  So it was definitely not a waste of a night.  I feel like I learned a lot!  Here’s hoping tomorrow brings better weather (or at least some sweet storms and lightning).