Tonight we are finishing our imaging of Saturn, Jupiter, and NGC 2022. Last night, the processing of preliminary results of the exposures of NGC 2022 were promising. I was the first to get my hands on the raw data, and the first to expose in detail much of the outer shell; that was an experience I am quite proud of. There is a lot going on in the Football Nebula. It certainly a promising object.
On a less formal note, I enjoyed our visit to Summerhaven. Although my bad knee gave me problems today, the sight seeing was amazing, and I managed to find a few nice souvenirs to take back to Wisconsin and also another gift for Danielle.
I took a few exposures of NGC 1409/1410 for personal enjoyment, I look forward to processing them. I will post them as soon as I can.
I can't wait until I can get my 14 hours of sleep again...
~ZT
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Another Planet
Yesterday, I got up close to 13:00. After breakfast, we went to the observatory quickly to prep for the night. Once that was done, most of us went for a shorter hike to Mt. Lemmon. I left with Eric about three quarters of the way there, because I had something to do and his ankle was hurting a bit. Nevertheless it was an enjoyable hike, and as always there was a great view.
As 18:00 rolled around, we began to track Jupiter again. This time, we used the larger 105 mm lens. Jupiter instantly looked better, though not too much; I think some of that had something to do with us looking at a larger image. We got some nice images; collectively we are getting better at using RegiStax courtesy of reading the entire manuel. This has allowed us to make stacked images with some more detail.
The nebula and Saturn teams were able to use the telescope since the viewing conditions were much more clear. I helped out the Saturn group since I had experience in planet imaging from Jupiter. We started off with some trouble locating Saturn, because the coordinates listed out in the computer were a bit off. After an hour or so of circling the area, we were able to find it. Saturn looks pretty cool; it looks like someone made a fake object, took a picture of it, and called it a planet. It simply looks surreal. We have yet to do much with imaging Saturn, but they should look pretty cool.
As 18:00 rolled around, we began to track Jupiter again. This time, we used the larger 105 mm lens. Jupiter instantly looked better, though not too much; I think some of that had something to do with us looking at a larger image. We got some nice images; collectively we are getting better at using RegiStax courtesy of reading the entire manuel. This has allowed us to make stacked images with some more detail.
The nebula and Saturn teams were able to use the telescope since the viewing conditions were much more clear. I helped out the Saturn group since I had experience in planet imaging from Jupiter. We started off with some trouble locating Saturn, because the coordinates listed out in the computer were a bit off. After an hour or so of circling the area, we were able to find it. Saturn looks pretty cool; it looks like someone made a fake object, took a picture of it, and called it a planet. It simply looks surreal. We have yet to do much with imaging Saturn, but they should look pretty cool.
I stole a rock
After our morning grogginess subsided, we ventured out once again for a hike around Mt. Lemon. This time, we all piled into the cars and drove to Summer Haven. We began our ascent on a slushy, muddy trail. About half way up, DA advised that a few of us taxed, slower hikers turn back. Again determined to reach the top with the reward of a wonderful view, Don and I kept trucking. About three quarters of the way up, DA again urged Don and I to turn around. I took an extra puff from my inhaler and a 30 second breather before Don and I again decided to defy our professor's warning. It took a while, and two breaks before we reached the top and exhaustively peered out over the horizon and were again flabbergasted by the view we had come across. Our lungs were on fire and we probably should have turned back, but I stand by the decision to keep going as the scenery was well worth taxing our out-of-shape bodies once more. On the way back down the mountain, i decided that, similar to the stick from the top of Mt. Bigelow, I'd like to have something to commemorate my hike and found a nice rock to carry with me. Once we came off of the summit, we stopped for pizza and headed back again to start off tonight imaging. That night, we took one last look at the sky. The jupiter team got another video, our team got almost three more hours of NGC2022 and each of us chose a piece of the sky we wanted to image. I chose M1, the "Crab Nebula". The image I took turned out absolutely amazing and I can't wait to calibrate it and see what the final product looks like. We finished off the night with some blurry footage of Saturn and called it a night.
Complain blog is full of complaints.
Day 5 will mark a new writing style. As I'm more or less constrained to my computer whilst working on the data, I shall be writing the blog as a running internal mono-/dialog. As such, expect there to be some discontinuity betwixt paragraphs. [Note: After finishing this blog, I find this style to be abrasive, childish, and prone to me generally not liking it. As such, Day 6 and on shall return to my former All-at-once writing style. But, as all good scientists, I must report my experience with this experiment; even though it's a terrible, terrible result.]
A plague o'er both their houses! Their, of course, being altitude and snow. As I mentioned in the comments of Day 4's blog, I was rather hurried to finish it before the hike. I must say, I succeeded, but the hike ultimately destroyed me. If it were lower atmosphere, or if the snowdrifts didn't range from ankle to (once) knee deep, then I would have been in a much better mood at the end. But these are a minor price to pay for the absoultely amazing pictures I snapped at the top of mount Biggalow. We could see, according to Arion, 100 plus miles with surprising clarity. I am, once again, completely flabbergasted by the quality of the air up here. If only t'wasn't so thin..
But I am done complaining. [Note: This is a bold-face lie] A gallon of water and some pop-tarts later, I felt much better, and returned to the observatory to prepare for Jupiter imaging. Through a therapeutic chain of events, I ended up learning how to operate Registax, with limited (read: limit as x->0) success. I was able to create a semi-decent picture, but I'm too ashamed of it to post here. But I'm glad I've had the practice; it will certainly help when I start working with Saturn imaging. Let's hope this extensive tutorial of Registax will help!
Time: 6:40
And it did, at least in some ways. Using the tutorial, I've created a series of reference points, and from that I hope to get a much much much much much much clearer image. Unfortunately, in the time it took Registax to completely work before, it has completed... 12% of the first step. The time loss may very well be offset, nay! I dare say it will DEFINATELY be offset by the sheer level of clarity that this new method will create. I will make a gentlemanly bet with anyone who disagrees! Except Zach, who as already done this with a different set of data.
Time: 7:00
It was of... limited success. The image was resoundingly mediocre, and only marginally better quality than the original (the one created by using the most basic settings of Registax.) I shall try once more with a different set of reference points, but seeing as how I have more than enough time to experiment around with this, I can spare the time sink this method creates. At this point, it's just a matter of trial and error until I figure out if this method is beneficial enough to warrent it.
Time: 7:45
I was a fool! My greed for scientific advancement has created a beast that cannot be contained! Registax has taken on a life of it's own, and is now terrorizing the countryside! Luckily, me and a band of adequately trained students were able to contain, and with skillful use of task manager, the threat was eliminated.
Translation: I set Registax to work, and left to use the bathroom. When I got back, it had frozen up, and I had to hard crash my computer. At least I got a great imag- oh wait, no, it too was mediocre.
Time: 8:30
All efforts to get Registax to perform at ahigher level have been unsuccessful. Frustration has mounted, as each new step I take serves only to make the images worse. I am setting it asside for a moment and allowing myself a blissful reprieve. With that, I set out for the dorm with a few others; a change of scenery to stir the creative juices - to grant me the keystone, NAY, the rossetta's stone to understanding this complex monstrosity that is Registax!!
Time: 10:45
Fail. Trial 2, fail. 3, fail. 4-fail. Trial... trial 27 fail. Trial 28 fail! Every picture comes out blurry! Even the one that I placed umpteen dozen points to compare against, I got a blurry picture. This particular one had black splotches, uneven texture, and burning frustration. At least tonight is nearly over.. Oh wait, no. It's going on 11. Saturn team doesn't even start for another 4 hours. I find myself becoming rather discouraged...
Time: 12:00
An hours rest, and a new days' determination. I woke up at midnight exactly to a large plate of spaghetti with meatballs and red sauce. We somehow managed to forget parmesean cheese, but it was still fantastic. I'm finishing up another Registax; t'was running whilst I slept. Initial observations lead me to believe it too is goin to be trash. We will find out when it finishes stacking.
Time: 12:30
Success! The dishes were a success! What? Registax? No, the image was even blurrier than normal. I know! I thought I had it that time too. I really, truly, completely believed this image would be better than mediocre! Sarcasm? Never, I say! I am appalled that you'd suggest such a thing! I say good day, sir. I say, Good DAY sir!
Time: 6:00
Another nap, and I was nice and refreshed for Saturn imaging. We aligned the telescope, spotted Saturn beautifully in the view finder, and were ecstatic to see... absolutely nothing. Blank screen. 3:30 am, using the given catalog values, we got a wonderful view of open space. It took until 4:15, with some help from Arion doing voodoo-mirror aligning in the control room, we found Saturn. A focus was ascertained, and then we took 10 short exposures over a range of focus' to find the range for focus'. A series of 5 more slightly longer exposures cemented a small range of ideal focus values. As the day wrapped up, we took four 2000 frame exposures, which shall be what we analyze. A shame we didn't get anything on day 1, this promises to yield at least decent images.
A plague o'er both their houses! Their, of course, being altitude and snow. As I mentioned in the comments of Day 4's blog, I was rather hurried to finish it before the hike. I must say, I succeeded, but the hike ultimately destroyed me. If it were lower atmosphere, or if the snowdrifts didn't range from ankle to (once) knee deep, then I would have been in a much better mood at the end. But these are a minor price to pay for the absoultely amazing pictures I snapped at the top of mount Biggalow. We could see, according to Arion, 100 plus miles with surprising clarity. I am, once again, completely flabbergasted by the quality of the air up here. If only t'wasn't so thin..
But I am done complaining. [Note: This is a bold-face lie] A gallon of water and some pop-tarts later, I felt much better, and returned to the observatory to prepare for Jupiter imaging. Through a therapeutic chain of events, I ended up learning how to operate Registax, with limited (read: limit as x->0) success. I was able to create a semi-decent picture, but I'm too ashamed of it to post here. But I'm glad I've had the practice; it will certainly help when I start working with Saturn imaging. Let's hope this extensive tutorial of Registax will help!
Time: 6:40
And it did, at least in some ways. Using the tutorial, I've created a series of reference points, and from that I hope to get a much much much much much much clearer image. Unfortunately, in the time it took Registax to completely work before, it has completed... 12% of the first step. The time loss may very well be offset, nay! I dare say it will DEFINATELY be offset by the sheer level of clarity that this new method will create. I will make a gentlemanly bet with anyone who disagrees! Except Zach, who as already done this with a different set of data.
Time: 7:00
It was of... limited success. The image was resoundingly mediocre, and only marginally better quality than the original (the one created by using the most basic settings of Registax.) I shall try once more with a different set of reference points, but seeing as how I have more than enough time to experiment around with this, I can spare the time sink this method creates. At this point, it's just a matter of trial and error until I figure out if this method is beneficial enough to warrent it.
Time: 7:45
I was a fool! My greed for scientific advancement has created a beast that cannot be contained! Registax has taken on a life of it's own, and is now terrorizing the countryside! Luckily, me and a band of adequately trained students were able to contain, and with skillful use of task manager, the threat was eliminated.
Translation: I set Registax to work, and left to use the bathroom. When I got back, it had frozen up, and I had to hard crash my computer. At least I got a great imag- oh wait, no, it too was mediocre.
Time: 8:30
All efforts to get Registax to perform at ahigher level have been unsuccessful. Frustration has mounted, as each new step I take serves only to make the images worse. I am setting it asside for a moment and allowing myself a blissful reprieve. With that, I set out for the dorm with a few others; a change of scenery to stir the creative juices - to grant me the keystone, NAY, the rossetta's stone to understanding this complex monstrosity that is Registax!!
Time: 10:45
Fail. Trial 2, fail. 3, fail. 4-fail. Trial... trial 27 fail. Trial 28 fail! Every picture comes out blurry! Even the one that I placed umpteen dozen points to compare against, I got a blurry picture. This particular one had black splotches, uneven texture, and burning frustration. At least tonight is nearly over.. Oh wait, no. It's going on 11. Saturn team doesn't even start for another 4 hours. I find myself becoming rather discouraged...
Time: 12:00
An hours rest, and a new days' determination. I woke up at midnight exactly to a large plate of spaghetti with meatballs and red sauce. We somehow managed to forget parmesean cheese, but it was still fantastic. I'm finishing up another Registax; t'was running whilst I slept. Initial observations lead me to believe it too is goin to be trash. We will find out when it finishes stacking.
Time: 12:30
Success! The dishes were a success! What? Registax? No, the image was even blurrier than normal. I know! I thought I had it that time too. I really, truly, completely believed this image would be better than mediocre! Sarcasm? Never, I say! I am appalled that you'd suggest such a thing! I say good day, sir. I say, Good DAY sir!
Time: 6:00
Another nap, and I was nice and refreshed for Saturn imaging. We aligned the telescope, spotted Saturn beautifully in the view finder, and were ecstatic to see... absolutely nothing. Blank screen. 3:30 am, using the given catalog values, we got a wonderful view of open space. It took until 4:15, with some help from Arion doing voodoo-mirror aligning in the control room, we found Saturn. A focus was ascertained, and then we took 10 short exposures over a range of focus' to find the range for focus'. A series of 5 more slightly longer exposures cemented a small range of ideal focus values. As the day wrapped up, we took four 2000 frame exposures, which shall be what we analyze. A shame we didn't get anything on day 1, this promises to yield at least decent images.
I stole a stick
Today we woke up around noon, ate breakfast and immediately headed over to the dome to check on everything. It wasn't long before DA asked how many of us would be willing to hike to the top of Mt. Bigelow. I, of course, was eager to join. It was a bit slow going for a few of us following the (in shape) leading group. The sites were quite astounding, and the trees were incredibly tall. Two of us turned back about half way up, but Don and I, although behind, decided to continue on. I'm glad we did because once we reached the top, the view was like nothing I'd seen before. And the fact that we were able to persevere against our out-of-shape bodies fighting back was incredibly rewarding. And the top, Don handed me a twig he found on the ground and informed me that "this is your happiness". After carrying it back with me for a majority of the hike, I decided it was a nice souvenir from the top of the mountain. We then ate a second breakfast, or lunch, and trudged back up to the dome to assist the Jupiter team if needed. We collected a large amount of planetary nebula NGC2022 data and images, and other than not being able to run a sequence instead of exposing one at a time, the collection process was relatively uneventful. Once the Saturn team came up to relieve us of duty, Justin, Dane, and I headed back down to the dorm to catch a few z's, a catnap if you will. Justin said he would be setting his alarm to allow for roughly 310. So I asked if he wouldn't mind waking me up at the same time. At 445, I woke up and was at first really angry because I thought he had gone back up to the dome without me. It wasn't long before I realized that he never even woke up! So, our 30-40 minute nap that we had intended turned into roughly 90 minutes. To quote my favorite phrase, "shit happens." I feel I must apologize to my colleagues for my crankiness in the past couple of nights, I think I'm going to be fine now!
Up on the Mountain
Day 1 (1/11) : After a frantic effort to quickly pack up and leave the hotel, we all arrived at Safeway to get all of the groceries that we needed for our time at the observatory. Once we had everything that we needed, it was off to the 90 minute trip up the mountain road. On the way, we stopped at a few points of interest, most notably being the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site, which was formerly a work-camp during WWII. The story behind it is that Hirabayashi was one of the prisoners there as a result of the Japanese internment during the war. While there, he, and the other prisoners there, had to build the mountain roads by hand, without any vehicles or machinery. Years after the war ended, Hirabayashi helped the successful effort to make the government apologize and correct the injustice of the internment of Japanese Americans, and as a result of this, the work-camp that he was imprisoned in was converted into a public park and named in his honor.
As we continued to make our way up the mountain, we stopped at a couple of scenic vistas, where I was able to get some fantastic pictures. Just a few minutes later, we finally made it to the observatory, and got orientated to the dorms, the telescope, and its operation. After everyone finally had their dorms taken care of, we set up our equipment in the observatory and began our first observations of Jupiter and planetary nebulae. throughout most of the night, things were going really well (except for fighting off the urge to fall asleep, for most of us) Jupiter was looking incredible through the 61" telescope, and the nebula images were consistently excellent in clarity.
Unfortunately our luck ran out shortly after midnight, when for reasons unknown to us, a power outage that blacked out a nearby town caused us to cease operations for the night, and we all headed into the dorms where we tried to pass the time until around 4:00 AM when we decided to call it a night and hope things go better the next day.
Day 2 (1/12): After a (somewhat) good sleep on the box-spring of my dorm bed, I woke up around 11:45 AM (the longest I had ever slept 'till at that point) and I got ready for the day. First, I went on a scenic hike with D.A. to the top of Mt. Bigelow. Walking up the snow-covered trail surrounded by tall evergreen forest made me feel like I was back in Wisconsin, I found it hard to believe that I was still in southern Arizona while walking up a snow-covered mountain! Along the way up, I managed to take some great pictures of the northern mountains and valleys. When we returned to the observatory, we got the telescope ready for Jupiter & nebula observations like we did yesterday (just without the power going out) all going off without a hitch.
Then around 3:00 AM, we finally got our first look at Saturn and it was spectacular! The planet itself, and its magnificent rings showed up with great clarity on our camera setup as we began our series of recordings before retiring to the dorms around 6:00 AM. Thus bringing a very productive day 2 to a close.
Day 4
Today I woke up very excited, to get the day rolling. We were to start our observing tonight and everyone was excited. I got up early and ate, then sat in the hot tub for awhile waiting for everyone to get up and get ready to go. We all loaded into the vehicles and headed for the mountain. Our first stop was the U of A campus to pick up some parts and then we stopped for groceries. I got to drive up the mountain today and the drive was beautiful. We made two stops along the way up the mountain. One was an old Japanese prison camp that was built during WWII to house Japanese American prisoners. The road that we took up was built by hand by these prisoners during this time. Once up at the observatory we had to load our O3 filter as well as top off the camera with liquid nitrogen. Then we had to wait till Jupiter was up so we could start imaging. As darkness fell we started taking video of Jupiter and then were able to start stacking the frames. Once Jupiter went down we were able to start taking images of NGC 2022 and we took our bias, filter flats. The night was going really well up until we had a power outage on the mountain. This shut us down for the night and we proceeded to bed.
A great and productive night!!!
Our second night on the sixty one inch was a great sucess. I learned much not only in the operation of Maxim DL but in a quick pseudo lesson on quantum mechanics from DA and a little insight in building telescopes.
We managed to process pictures of NGC 2022 using the oxygen three filters before closing down. They revealed what we suspected to exist: an outer most shell of gas exceptionally farther from the white dwarf than any visual photo on the internet showed. We also managed to get higher resolution photos of Jupiter which revealed an odd storm system not present yesterday. Our first pictures of Saturn have been taken and are waiting to be processed. Saturn gave us trouble once again; we had to manually find it since the database did not give us the correct coordinates. It's almost as.if Saturn is living up to it's pagan name sake....
We managed to process pictures of NGC 2022 using the oxygen three filters before closing down. They revealed what we suspected to exist: an outer most shell of gas exceptionally farther from the white dwarf than any visual photo on the internet showed. We also managed to get higher resolution photos of Jupiter which revealed an odd storm system not present yesterday. Our first pictures of Saturn have been taken and are waiting to be processed. Saturn gave us trouble once again; we had to manually find it since the database did not give us the correct coordinates. It's almost as.if Saturn is living up to it's pagan name sake....
Catchin up...
We’ve been posting on this blog for days, and I realized that anyone reading our posts probably has no idea what it is we’re working with. This is the giant 61” Kuiper Reflector Telescope. The 61” refers to the diameter of the huge paraboloid mirror housed near those large orange supports, facing skyward. The telescope itself tilts up and down, and the orange support frame rotates to sweep the sky. That dome in the background rotates to follow the telescope as it slowly tracks objects across the sky.
There is no way to describe how elegant and massive this thing is. Standing underneath it on the work platform is humbling. The weight of all 5 tons is balanced so exactly that the motors to turn it are no more powerful than a lawnmower, and have such precision that a laser fixed to the end could trace the text of a billboard on the moon.
I didn’t post yesterday as my laptop has become a bit of a town bicycle in terms of capturing video and such. The Internet is constantly monopolized. This reminds me NOT of how “wired in” we are to media, but rather how good humans have become at using the tools available to us. Many problems have come and gone quickly while on this trip thanks to the resourcefulness of a young Carthaginian. Speaking of solving problems, tonight marked some VERY good footage of Jupiter. Zach has posted some of those photos already, so go check his profie. Coty and I cooked up a delicious Spaghetti and meatball dinner complete with garlic bread and dead scorpion. There were compliments all around.
Saturn hasn’t risen yet, so while I blog I have only to play the waiting game. Preliminary ring photos to come soon!
Night 2 - Exhausted and Crabby
The day began with a great hike up to Mt. Lemmon Peak which I decided to participate in to give my leg and ankle a little workout. The hike was amazing regardless of the fact that I turned back about halfway up due to soreness. I took a couple of pictures at the point where I turned around, you be the judge:
After an afternoon of preparations, we changed our web cam attachment to the 105mm lens and began imaging Jupiter for the second night. We started by finding our focus value by taking 5 second videos from 17900 to 17800 dropping ten units each time. After stacking these images it was determines the optimal focus value was between 17840 and 17870. We then took about 10 videos ranging from 1800 frames to 2500 frames. This took us about 2 hours. Once we had all of our videos it was time to begin stacking frames in an attempt to get one sharp picture, this tested my patience. I read through manuals, looked at online tutorials, and played with Registax for a couple of hours and came up with a pretty good image. I then proceeded to save an empty file somehow and lost the image. #@$%!!!! In lieu of this loss I doubled my research efforts and started over with the 17855 focus video. A good focus combined with lots of trial and error yielded my personal best image yet, here it is:
With my interest in Jupiter exhausted, I took 3 exposures of the Ghost of Jupiter Planetary Nebula for personal studies. I am excited to develop these and see how it turns out. About five of us got to pick personal stellar objects to image tonight, once all of those were done we began preliminary imaging on Saturn. As I was working on Jupiter Image compiling I did not get to see much of Saturn but I am excited to see the others results.
On an interesting side note: while Coty, Ian, and I were cooking dinner we were surprised by a little friend hiding in our spaghetti pot!
(Its a scorpion, I am breaking the story to the rest of our classmates on this blog... They will have no idea until they read this!)
p.s. tempers are getting short due to lack of sleep, hopefully nobody does any lasting damage by speaking before they think.
KAF
After an afternoon of preparations, we changed our web cam attachment to the 105mm lens and began imaging Jupiter for the second night. We started by finding our focus value by taking 5 second videos from 17900 to 17800 dropping ten units each time. After stacking these images it was determines the optimal focus value was between 17840 and 17870. We then took about 10 videos ranging from 1800 frames to 2500 frames. This took us about 2 hours. Once we had all of our videos it was time to begin stacking frames in an attempt to get one sharp picture, this tested my patience. I read through manuals, looked at online tutorials, and played with Registax for a couple of hours and came up with a pretty good image. I then proceeded to save an empty file somehow and lost the image. #@$%!!!! In lieu of this loss I doubled my research efforts and started over with the 17855 focus video. A good focus combined with lots of trial and error yielded my personal best image yet, here it is:
(Its a scorpion, I am breaking the story to the rest of our classmates on this blog... They will have no idea until they read this!)
p.s. tempers are getting short due to lack of sleep, hopefully nobody does any lasting damage by speaking before they think.
A rough night of imaging :(
I’ve been working with the Jupiter group a lot, and tonight yielded less impressive photos than the first two nights. We switched to the 55 mm lens for the sake of fitting Saturn’s rings completely in the frame later in the night. This cut the image size by about half for Jupiter, and changed the requirements for the levels. Because we have to use the lowest exposure time possible to freeze out turbulence, the images turned out darker than last night. The contrast is worse, fewer details are visible, theres some visible bias noise, and Registax is having a hard time aligning features. I don’t know whats going on, but hopefully my group (Saturn) will have better luck getting data.
UPDATE. Saturn showed up just about as clear as on the 105mm lens, but the seeing was noticeably worse. Registax will be the final judge of quality in that regard. No images from me tonight, the atmosphere has me in a bad mood. I need a hug and a comfy bed :(
Day 4: Mt Bigelow (First Day)
At 8am I woke up and traveled on down to the hotel breakfast for my regular waffle meal. We packed up and headed out around 9:30am, our first stop was at U of A to pick up the OIII filter we had forgotten back up at Carthage. I walked around and found the Chi Omega house, so cool it looked like a giant mansion.
Unfortunately no one was home. Our second stop naturally was the grocery store in order to pick up some snacks and items for our meal plan for the next three days/nights. There were a few disagreements and we might be a little short (because we all have a soft spot for indulging ourselves), but it’ll be fine. Afterwards, we trucked ourselves on up a long windy road to the Steward Observatory. Along the way we made two stops. Our first stop was a memorial for a WWII Japanese Camp. It was amazing to remind ourselves about how blessed we are in our lives to live in times that are not as difficult. The second stop we made was at a Windy Viewpoint, some other people got some beautiful pictures of the point we stood at. I, however, don’t have a picture camera, only a video cam, so take a look at theirs. We finally made it up all of the windy roads, from which I think we all were a little nauseated. Once at the top, it looked a lot more like home (plus some gorgeous mountain views) with snow and chilly weather. I pulled out my winter coat and we started right away. We got a quick tour of the telescope and how to fill the liquid nitrogen container. The telescope is has a 61’’ mirror and is completely fascinating. Especially after taking telescope-making with D. Arion last J-term. That night we started by collecting data for Jupiter (the group I’m in). It was probably one of the most fun things I have ever done as a scientist. A couple computers in front of me and a giant machine (slightly resembling an oversized laser) I am one mad scientist.
-- Sidenote: Ian and I have decided that it would be prolific to create a laser approx. the same size and shine it over the city in order to watch all of the cats in the town assemble –
After we finished gathering our data, it was time for “midnight supper.” Ian and I played house, or I should say Henry and Meredith respectively and cooked a bratwurst and ramen noodle meal to feed our ten children. It was a good time. I think everyone enjoyed the nighttime flavors. Once we resumed our research it was time to get some nebula images. Everyone was taking turns practicing using the equipment and getting images of different objects. Finally it was my turn and I was all about the horsehead nebula. I set up everything and the program had finally finished running and reading the image when BOOM! Power out. Steward Observatory and the city below us lost all power. Reason is still unknown. It may have been the Horsehead Nebula was just too much. Maybe Wednesday night, hopefully it will work. We meandered on back to the dorm and I passed out around 4am. I’m excited to continue working on Jupiter these next few days.
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