Saturday, December 6, 2008
Well, that's it.
We've done it. The last of our images are in, it's 3:49am, and we're cleaning up to leave the control room one last time. Stay tuned as time rolls on for updates on processing images and cool things of that nature. Ciao for now!
A horse in space.
Hi everyone,
Happy 1:38am MST! The skies are dark and clear, and we've been bringing in images all night thus far. We have about an hour and a half of time left tonight, but then we have to pack it up because it's an early morning (relatively, of course ~ leaving the mountain at 10am is very early for astronomers who've been up all night) at the airport. For your viewing pleasure, I've attached a copy of one of our very own images. It's raw/unprocessed, so, yes, it kinda looks icky. Yes, it is a black, white, and gray blob in space. But it's also a black, white, and gray blob in space that sorta looks like a horse.
Happy 1:38am MST! The skies are dark and clear, and we've been bringing in images all night thus far. We have about an hour and a half of time left tonight, but then we have to pack it up because it's an early morning (relatively, of course ~ leaving the mountain at 10am is very early for astronomers who've been up all night) at the airport. For your viewing pleasure, I've attached a copy of one of our very own images. It's raw/unprocessed, so, yes, it kinda looks icky. Yes, it is a black, white, and gray blob in space. But it's also a black, white, and gray blob in space that sorta looks like a horse.
Friday, December 5, 2008
An Astronomer's Dinner
Good Evening!It's currently 7:27pm MST, and we're in full picture-taking mode. The sky is clear, the telescope is working properly, and we're rolling along with our final night of imaging here on Kitt Peak. To finish out the set of 3, I've included this evening's sunset image of Kitt, as well as a photo of our telescope preparing for the night's observations. Not to be outdone, however, I've also included a photo of tonight's dinner, as prepared by Emily. 5 stars, no less. Vegetable stew and Cous Cous. Not to mention cookies and chips and sandwiches! Okay, it's going to be a long night, I'll be back later with updates. Ciao!
Sidenote #2.
So...even here on Kitt Peak, we're not immune to telemarketing. The phone just rang here in the control room, and I felt all important answering it: "0.9-meter, this is Seth" ...and sure enough, it was a computerized voice asking if I was happy with my mortgage rates. Unbelievable.
Telescopes!
The 4m scope, largest on Kitt Peak.
Looking out across Kitt, from the base of the 4m. Our telescope is just right of center, on the ridge line.
The 90" Steward scope, flanked by the 4m on its perch in the background.
Afternoon, Day 3
Hi everybody~
Sorry for the lack of late postings last night. Clouds, no clouds, clouds, dome shut, dome open, no clouds....it was a goofy night. In the end, we ended up finishing a run on the Triangulum galaxy, M33, that we had started the night previous. Additionally, we nabbed an hour and a half worth of Hydrogen-Alpha (a special filter) exposure on IC434, or, more famously, the Horsehead Nebula. We're running some flats in the dome right now, and trying to sort out our data so we can back it up onto our drives for the journey back to Wisconsin. Tonight's target is going to be the Helix Nebula, a large planetary nebula where we can go back to our original goal of examining structure using the OIII filter. But for now, we're going to go walk around, and I'll grab some photos of the other telescopes on the mountain. More later, Ciao!
Sorry for the lack of late postings last night. Clouds, no clouds, clouds, dome shut, dome open, no clouds....it was a goofy night. In the end, we ended up finishing a run on the Triangulum galaxy, M33, that we had started the night previous. Additionally, we nabbed an hour and a half worth of Hydrogen-Alpha (a special filter) exposure on IC434, or, more famously, the Horsehead Nebula. We're running some flats in the dome right now, and trying to sort out our data so we can back it up onto our drives for the journey back to Wisconsin. Tonight's target is going to be the Helix Nebula, a large planetary nebula where we can go back to our original goal of examining structure using the OIII filter. But for now, we're going to go walk around, and I'll grab some photos of the other telescopes on the mountain. More later, Ciao!
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Sometimes, it's good to be wrong.
Update!
I lied. My previous remarks about weather and cloud cover have been proven false, as the clouds seem to have dispersed for the time being! Better yet? The telescope doesn't seem to be angry about pointed where it should! As such, it took about 20 minutes to open the dome, vent the air, and test some exposures, but now we're already taking science images. Hoo-rah! ...Of course, this means we'll have to stay up until 4 or 5am again...
Here's two bonus photos for your viewing enjoyment: The McMath-Pierce Solar Observatory, located across the mountaintop from our dome. The "leaning tower" extends even farther into the rock below, and sunlight is bounced down the tunnel to a suite of instrument stations.
In the second photo, you can see the mirror assemble that does the light-bouncing, as seen from down in the tunnel.
I lied. My previous remarks about weather and cloud cover have been proven false, as the clouds seem to have dispersed for the time being! Better yet? The telescope doesn't seem to be angry about pointed where it should! As such, it took about 20 minutes to open the dome, vent the air, and test some exposures, but now we're already taking science images. Hoo-rah! ...Of course, this means we'll have to stay up until 4 or 5am again...
Here's two bonus photos for your viewing enjoyment: The McMath-Pierce Solar Observatory, located across the mountaintop from our dome. The "leaning tower" extends even farther into the rock below, and sunlight is bounced down the tunnel to a suite of instrument stations.
In the second photo, you can see the mirror assemble that does the light-bouncing, as seen from down in the tunnel.
Thwarted by clouds.
Hi All,
It was another lovely day on Kitt Peak this afternoon, save for the clouds. 290 days of sun per year, and we had to get lucky enough to experience cloud cover. It's okay, there's still work to be done. We're currently letting the computer take some dome flats, which are images where we aim the telescope at a white sheet inside the dome, turn on some lights, and take short exposures. The goal is to create a series of exposures where we evenly illuminate the CCDs (make the image uniform or "flat") to correct for non-uniformity in the sensor and electronic read-out. Just another step in making nice, useful science images. Pending cloud cover, we may not get to open the dome tonight to take sky images, but maybe we'll get lucky. The forecast says we may get some clearing for a couple hours between 10pm-12am. On the plus side, tomorrow looks like it's going to be clear, still, and just perfect for imaging.
Additionally, we met some people (on the left in the red coat, Travis, from the University of Alaska, Anchorage) who are working just down the road from us at the 2m dome, on the spectrograph there. They took us over and gave us the semi-VIP tour of the spectrograph room, where the public certainly isn't allowed to go. Very cool machines over there, too. The whole room is one big, isolated instrument, where light enters through a little hole after bouncing around some mirrors outside. Below is a picture of the grating that spreads out the starlight into its rainbow for analysis.
It was another lovely day on Kitt Peak this afternoon, save for the clouds. 290 days of sun per year, and we had to get lucky enough to experience cloud cover. It's okay, there's still work to be done. We're currently letting the computer take some dome flats, which are images where we aim the telescope at a white sheet inside the dome, turn on some lights, and take short exposures. The goal is to create a series of exposures where we evenly illuminate the CCDs (make the image uniform or "flat") to correct for non-uniformity in the sensor and electronic read-out. Just another step in making nice, useful science images. Pending cloud cover, we may not get to open the dome tonight to take sky images, but maybe we'll get lucky. The forecast says we may get some clearing for a couple hours between 10pm-12am. On the plus side, tomorrow looks like it's going to be clear, still, and just perfect for imaging.
Additionally, we met some people (on the left in the red coat, Travis, from the University of Alaska, Anchorage) who are working just down the road from us at the 2m dome, on the spectrograph there. They took us over and gave us the semi-VIP tour of the spectrograph room, where the public certainly isn't allowed to go. Very cool machines over there, too. The whole room is one big, isolated instrument, where light enters through a little hole after bouncing around some mirrors outside. Below is a picture of the grating that spreads out the starlight into its rainbow for analysis.
Good Morning
It is morning, right? Close enough. After a long night (in bed at 5am), we all got some needed sleep, and woke up this afternoon to....clouds. Let's just hope they move out of the area by this evening. I thought I'd spend some time this afternoon talking about Kitt Peak, and, more importantly, showing you around our facility. Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is located 56 miles southwest of Tucson, Arizona. It is at an elevation of ~6800 ft, and there are over 20 telescopes on the summit. KPNO has been contributing to astronomy and astrophysics since 1958....No, the dome stairs aren't creepy at 3am.
For three nights, we're operating the 0.9m (36") WIYN telescope, which was actually the first (1960) major telescope to be operational at KPNO. We operate from a [heated!] control room downstairs from the dome, scope, and camera assembly. That's it on the right, relaxing during the afternoon. The camera assembly is the jumble of cables, wiring, and such mounted underneath the telescope. The camera is called Mosaic, and it's a compilation of 8 CCDs matched up into one giant imaging sensor, 8192 pixels on a side, 64 Megapixels in all.
The black oval-ish casing around it holds all the different filters we use, and they rotate around into position above the sensors when we're ready to use them. The silver cylinder (the "Dewar") in the center holds the CCDs, along with the liquid nitrogen needed to chill them to -100 degrees Celsius. (Definitively colder than a Wisconsin winter!) We need the sensors to be super cold in order to minimize noise in our images. When taking pictures of extremely faint objects in space, any stray signal can disrupt the image. Keeping things very, very cold helps the electronics operate with minimal noise.
Oy. 3am.
Oy. It's 3am.
New target: M1, the Crab Nebula. We're going to take some RGB images and make a nice, pretty picture. IRAF is currently fighting us. Oh.....IRAF.....sometimes....
I've got a pretty good feeling this is going to be the last blog of the night, we're going to start another run of images and then go outside to look around and get some air. We'll probably close up shop around 4:30-5:00, and then get some sleep. Back at it tomorrow night! Tomorrow afternoon, we'll walk around Kitt and I'll get some photos of the other telescopes ~ "virtual tour" style. Until then!
New target: M1, the Crab Nebula. We're going to take some RGB images and make a nice, pretty picture. IRAF is currently fighting us. Oh.....IRAF.....sometimes....
I've got a pretty good feeling this is going to be the last blog of the night, we're going to start another run of images and then go outside to look around and get some air. We'll probably close up shop around 4:30-5:00, and then get some sleep. Back at it tomorrow night! Tomorrow afternoon, we'll walk around Kitt and I'll get some photos of the other telescopes ~ "virtual tour" style. Until then!
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Happy 12:30am MST!
Here's another photo taken this evening, it is actually the triangular shadow cast by Kitt Peak on the leeward plains and haze at sundown. Kinda nifty. We just came in from an hour of binocular-observations, and the Arizona skies are certainly a far cry from Kenosha. M31, M44, the Double Cluster, all easy naked-eye objects. M33 and M81 with binoculars. Lots others, too! And lest we forget, the Milky Way from horizon to horizon. On a science note, it seems as though our nebula is a bit small for observations, considering our fancy camera has an enormous field-of-view. So we're continuing to take OIII images of M33. Oh? Even though it's past midnight and we're up at 6800 ft, it's still warmer than Wisconsin.
Stand back, I'm going to try Science!
Update!
...So it took over 3 hours to point and focus the telescope....no big deal, it works now. It's time to try some science. Our target nebula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2371) isn't high enough in the sky yet, so we're taking some (an hour's worth) pictures of M33 (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080913.html) in OIII. It's really quite amazing, all the technology and automation. We're warm and toasty in the control room, and a couple of clicks of the mouse fire off a sequence of guided, filtered, digital pictures. Just as a point of reference, our camera is a bit more advanced than the typical vacation point-and-shoot. We're rolling with 64 Megapixels, and each picture is a whopping ~120 Mb. I'll post some pictures of the equipment and control room tomorrow, after I get some daylight to work with.
UPDATE: First image just came in! It looks like....well...nondescript fuzziness. But that's normal. Fuzzy blobs in space.
...So it took over 3 hours to point and focus the telescope....no big deal, it works now. It's time to try some science. Our target nebula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2371) isn't high enough in the sky yet, so we're taking some (an hour's worth) pictures of M33 (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080913.html) in OIII. It's really quite amazing, all the technology and automation. We're warm and toasty in the control room, and a couple of clicks of the mouse fire off a sequence of guided, filtered, digital pictures. Just as a point of reference, our camera is a bit more advanced than the typical vacation point-and-shoot. We're rolling with 64 Megapixels, and each picture is a whopping ~120 Mb. I'll post some pictures of the equipment and control room tomorrow, after I get some daylight to work with.
UPDATE: First image just came in! It looks like....well...nondescript fuzziness. But that's normal. Fuzzy blobs in space.
First Post (First Light?)
A happy evening to everybody!
Welcome to the Astronomical Adventures, a diary of an observing run at Kitt Peak National Observatory (Arizona!). My name is Seth, and I'm here with Professor Doug Arion, Erin Martin, and Emily Schiavone, all of Carthage College in Wisconsin. The flight out of O'Hare this morning was long, but nonetheless uneventful. And it is just so very disappointing when you get off an airplane and it's 70 degrees out...
It's currently 7:19pm MST here on Kitt, and we're setting up the telescope for tonight's work. We're having a bit of difficulty making it point at a target accurately....but that's why we start early. Our overall "science" goal on this trip is to take OIII (that's Oxygen-3) images of planetary nebulae, in hopes of learning more about their structures. If that makes absolutely no sense to you, rest assured, I'll explain it better as the night and days go on.
Additionally, I promise to spend some time in later posts to talk about Kitt Peak, what's going on here, other stuff.....etc. Also? Pictures!
As a first post, I apologize that this is short, but the night is young! 7, 8-ish hours until bed time....Until next time, Ciao!
Welcome to the Astronomical Adventures, a diary of an observing run at Kitt Peak National Observatory (Arizona!). My name is Seth, and I'm here with Professor Doug Arion, Erin Martin, and Emily Schiavone, all of Carthage College in Wisconsin. The flight out of O'Hare this morning was long, but nonetheless uneventful. And it is just so very disappointing when you get off an airplane and it's 70 degrees out...
It's currently 7:19pm MST here on Kitt, and we're setting up the telescope for tonight's work. We're having a bit of difficulty making it point at a target accurately....but that's why we start early. Our overall "science" goal on this trip is to take OIII (that's Oxygen-3) images of planetary nebulae, in hopes of learning more about their structures. If that makes absolutely no sense to you, rest assured, I'll explain it better as the night and days go on.
Additionally, I promise to spend some time in later posts to talk about Kitt Peak, what's going on here, other stuff.....etc. Also? Pictures!
As a first post, I apologize that this is short, but the night is young! 7, 8-ish hours until bed time....Until next time, Ciao!
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