Due to day being Martin Luther King day, the facility we had intended to tour was closed. As we didn't have another facility immediately lined up, we had a day to do whatever we wished. While others went on trips, a worsening illness and desire to get some image processing done led me to spend the day at the hotel working.
Much to my distress, however, MaxIm didn't feel like cooperating with me. One of my first orders of business was to attempt to create Master Frames for the darks, flats, and biases. After going over the help manual in the program and checking online for how to use this unfamiliar program, I spent most of the afternoon cursing as the program continued to lock up, making it necessary to close the program and try again. In an effort to actually have something to show for the day, I eventually stopped trying to make Masters and started playing around with other settings on the images in order to familiarize myself with those aspects of the program.
That evening we had take out Wings (they were ok) and watched a movie about Hays and the developments that led to the first 200-inch telescope. It was fascinating, although it seemed at times like Hays was just obsessed with building things bigger. To me the video also highlighted the huge advances in technology over the century, both those spurred by these telescopes and in other pursuits. The telescope we used a few days ago blew away anything in existence for most of the century, and the largest telescopes today completely dwarf what we were using.
I got the same feeling from Hayes, but if we, as scientests, are content with what we have, then we're not being very good scientists, now are we?
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