Friday, 14th of January

We came down from the mountain today. After we finished working around 4:30am, we slept in until around noon. Then, sleepily, all packed up and piled into the car and van. It was bittersweet. I had such a high from working with the telescopes, but night shifts are rough to adjust to. Anyways, after we made it back down the mountain and back to the hotel, I took a nice long shower. We hadn't been able to really wash up on Mt. Bigelow due to water conservation. So it felt great to finally be clean again. Then we got dressed and went to dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant with Mrs. Staubitz, who sponsors Carthage physics and with our trip to Mt. Bigelow/Arizona. A shout out to her for being great and a super nice lady! It was kind of a short day, afterwards we looked at more Jupiter images we had captured the night before and stacked some. Not soon after we all were knocked out from a tiring trip on the Mountain.

Seventh Day: Back to Tucson and Relaxing

Today was a very short day, so this will likewise be a very short post. We got everything packed and managed to head out from the dorm on Mt. Bigelow before 2. Our car almost got hit by a diving Harris' Hawk at the bottom of the mountain, but it narrowly missed us. It was really cool to see, but I'm really mad at myself because I missed getting the perfect picture of the bird because my dang camera had gone into power-save mode and took too long to wake up. Once we were checked into our hotel I think everyone, myself included, thoroughly enjoyed a long shower, and we had an hour or so to relax before going to dinner at a great Mexican restaurant with Mrs. Staubitz, who donates generously to our physics department to fund this trip. Since I'm a photographer at heart and can't resist taking tons of pictures, I included a couple from the drive down Mt. Lemmon.

Jenny

Back to Civilization

Woke up around 11:30 this morning & went through the "morning" routine up here for the last time, since today was our departure from the observatory and Mt. Bigelow. After getting cleaned up, I quickly packed all of my stuff in the dorm, and brought my bags loaded onto the car, after which we were on our way down the mountain. Along the way, we stopped at one of the vistas to get some pictures on the way down. I managed to get pictures of some small waterfalls on the side of the mountains, along with the rusted wreckage of a large van that had an unfortunate accident on the mountain road years ago. Then, as we made our way to the bottom of the mountain something amazing happened, a hawk, like the ones that were in the "free flight" at the desert museum flew just a few inches over our Town & Country mini van! Unfortunately, since it happened so quickly, nobody was able to get a picture of the hawk as it flew over us.

As we made our way back into Tucson, we checked into the La Quinta Inn as we did the first day here, only with different rooms. A couple of hours later, we went to dinner at a nice Mexican/seafood restaurant, where we met Mrs. Stelbic, whose incredible generosity made it possible for us to be here in the first place, and for that we are all very thankful of her. And now, we will spend the last several days here in Arizona finishing up our data/image processing, and visiting a few more attractions.

Out of the Mountains....

We have returned to the hotel after our observatory runs at last, but I wish we could have stayed. I have truely sealed my interest in astrophysics and astronomy as I suspected since I was younger. The combination of the night shift which I became attracted to recently and the childhood love of the universe combines in an extraordinary way in the observatory. I have finally found my calling.

But none of you probably care to hear about my new found calling, so I shall discuss the happenings of today...
We woke up at about eleven or noon and left Mt Bigalow. Soon after we found ourselves back in La Quinta and I immediately went to the hot tub to relax my knee. After relaxing the group went to meet our benefactor Mrs Stelbic? I am unsure of the spelling of the last name... In anycase, it was nice meetimg her at a very exquisite mexican restraunt where I had probably one of the best meals of my life.
Now, I am in bed, ready to have a nice long sleep to finish out the week. Tomorrow I am unsure of the plans, but I am confident Dr. Arion has something else absolutely amazing to compliment the first half of the trip, and of course some data.processing will be in order.

~ZT

Last Day on Mt. Bigelow

1/13: Today, I woke up around noon, ate breakfast, and got ready for the day as I did each day up here. But today was the last we are going to spend here in the observatory, so to make it especially memorable, we went on a special trip to nearby Summer Haven on Mount Lemmon. While there, we went on a nice long hike up towards the highest areas of the mountain, while appreciating the great scenery and beautiful homes along the snowy trail. After the hike, we all went down to the Mt. Lemmon General Store/Gift Shop, and partook in the great Carthage tradition of buying some delicious fudge from the general store. We then headed back to the observatory for the last night of observations.

During the night, everyone finally had a perfect opportunity to get quality images of the galaxy/nebula that they chose to view, along with some additional images of Jupiter & Saturn that unfortunately weren't as good as the previous nights, due to approaching air masses that caused some interference with the telescope. But other than that, it was a very productive final night at the observatory.

Sixth Day: Last Day Observing (Jan 13-14)

Our last day on the mountain was jam-packed with activities, including a short but extremely strenuous hike, tourist-y shopping, really good pizza (and HUGE cookies!), and a good night of observing. The day started with a trip to the town of Summerhaven to do some hiking and stop at a couple gift shops. The hike from the town up the mountain to the water tower was VERY steep, and Dane and I admitted defeat to the altitude and stopped about 2/3 of the way up to wait for the others to finish. The walk back down was easier, only slightly complicated by the ice and snow drifts and the loose gravel of the road. I had suggested that we get pizza from the Cookie Cabin while we were on the mountain, and we decided to get some to take back to the dorm for lunch/dinner. The Cookie Cabin is famous for awesome, plate-size cookies but has delicious pizza too, and I ate there last J-Term so I knew everyone would love it. We were also told that it's a tradition for astronomy students to go to one Summerhaven gift shop that sells homemade fudge and we definitely continued it, with the 11 of us purchasing somewhere around 8 pounds in total.

After dinner, thoroughly worn out and well-fed, we were ready to get back to work. Between the Jupiter and nebula groups' work times we set aside an hour or so for us to take images of an object of our choosing, and although most people chose planetary nebulae or galaxies, I chose the star Epsilon Aurigae because I am analyzing changes in it's spectrum for my senior thesis. The images turned out well, and then I settled in to wait for the Saturn group's turn at the telescope. A couple videos of Saturn look promising, but my computer is still not running correctly and I may have to wait until after we get back and I can get it checked out before I can do any stacking myself. We called it quits early and headed back to the dorm to get packed and get some sleep before moving back to Tucson early Friday afternoon, and that was the end of our last day on Mt. Bigelow.

Jenny

The picture above is the view from where Dane and I stopped on the hike in Summerhaven, and the one below is looking up from that point to the water tower everyone else hiked to.

Slow Day Culminating in Another Food Coma!

Sadly, today we left the observatory and headed down the mountain. It was disappointing to not be able to stay longer but I will never forget the things we did and saw. As we made our way down the mountain we spent most of the time in silence listening to relaxing music and reflecting on the past three days.

The first priority when we got back to the La Quinta hotel was to shower! A little bit of laying in the sun and swimming and our mood was lifted. We then went to our dinner date with Ms. Staubitz. She was a wonderful lady and I thank her very much for her donations and choice of restaurant, the food was amazing! We reminisced with Ms. Staubitz and I ate so much I almost immediately fell into a comatose state.

Returning to the hotel I immediately fell asleep due to being exhausted from staying up until almost 8 AM watching the stars the night before. This was a much needed day of rest and I wish I could say more about it but it was just a slow day.

Day 7: R&R

The trip down wasn't nearly as friendly to me as I was hoping. It wasn't 1,000 feet down before motion sickness began to set in, much to my great distress. Of course, this can be in part attributed to professor Arion's "remarkable" driving, combined with me being in the back seat of the van. Luckily, we stopped part way down to admire the view. A few moments rest, and my stomach was settled enough to get us back to the hotel without incident.

We are in new rooms, although I am not terribly upset by this. Denny's is a stones throw away from mine and Justin's room - something I fear I shall be taking advantage of for teh next week.

There was a bit of a virus scare on the mountain; a Trojan showed up on one of the student's computer. As such, most of today was spent scouring my computer for virus' and the sort. In doing so, I came to the horrific realization that this power cord, like so many before it, is beginning to become defunct. Hopefully this one, unlike the last, does not catch fire. [No virus' found.]

Regardless, today is our recovery day. I have very little planned. I am currently resting before we travel to have dinner with our benefactor. Afterward, there is an equal chance of me being productive (i.e. analyze images of Saturn and the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024)) as there is a chance of me being apathetic, and enjoying the conclusion to the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

Day 6 - Last observation day

I overslept. I'm ashamed of myself, but i woke up at 1:30 pm. For shame, me. For shame. I didn't miss anything important; in fact, I even had time to grab a small breakfast before Arion rounded us up to bring us to Summerhaven. A lovely little town, although scarred by an unfortunate, uncontrolled forest fire a few years back. The view was nice, although I was cursing it about two roads in. I am ashamed to say that I was ready to quit and head back long before we even reached half way up mount Lemmon. Luckily for me, Arion told us we could head back any time, which (of course) means that I set my brow and forced myself on. Three times throughout the hike up the mountainside, he told me and Melissa to head back, and three times we went "NO!" and Force-Of-Will'd ourselves on (although with frequent breaks). We did eventually make it to the top, although at least 10 minutes later than the rest of the class (sans the students who were smart enough to head back). Arion expressed frustration and concern over Melissa and I, specifically that the trip down would go over a lot of wet, slippery snow. As he put it, "Nobody get's hurt on the climb up."

Luckily, I was able to return to the bottmo of the mountain without incident. In fact, I felt great once I reached the bottom, save a cough that has been developing over the last few days. The only person to slip significantly on the way down was Justin, who I made sure to mock mercilessly. Once we returned to Summerhave, part of the class left to order pizza, the other half (myself included) hit up he local gift shop(s). I purchased a pound of fudge, along with a few other knick-knacks, doodads, and the sort, but I shan't bore you with the details. We gathered up and returned to the dorm to enjoy pizza.

Jupiter team started and finished without incident. I jumped in after and imaged NGC 2024, the flame nebula. I had to win it from Ryan in a FIGHT TO THE DEATH!! (read: coin flip). The images came out fantastic in spite of being black and white, and I'm hoping that it will be a fantastic image.

Saturn imaging also went well; we took 11 videos, ranging through numerous focus'. Three of these videos were longer, two at 1000 frames, and one at just over 3000 frames (1 minute of exposure). It is my hope that Registax will let us pull out the handful of good frames; seeing was rather abysmal tonight. It is currently 4:35 AM, and I am proud to say that I am packed up and ready to leave. I'll be sad to leave Kuiper Observatory, but ecxtatic to return to the reasonable 3,000 feet Tucson.

Fifth Day: More Kuiper! (Jan 12-13)

The second day at the observatory went much better than the first, and we were finally able to get our first videos of Saturn! Team Saturn doesn't get to start working until around 3 am, so for most of the night we just hung around the control room and helped out the other teams when possible. Several people went for a hike this afternoon before we started work, but I took a day off from hiking (my lungs do not appreciate the thin air at 9000 feet) and did some other work. Even though we did get some good videos, I don't have any stacked images of Saturn to post yet because somehow the computer I was going to use for data got a virus (even though it hasn't been connected to the internet in months) and is still not quite up to speed. Either way, we had a great night and good weather, and the Jupiter and nebula teams both got a ton of images too. We did find out that we need to use a different camera lens for Saturn because with the current lens the planet's rings don't quite fit in our screen, but it was a minor problem and easy to correct for tomorrow night.

While the Jupiter team worked earlier in the night I took my camera up in the dome and out on the catwalk around the outside to take some pictures of the telescope in action and the beautiful night sky, and here are a couple of my favorite pictures. I was also able to get a couple good shots of Saturn through the telescope viewfinder, and I included the best one.

Jenny

SummerHaven, Mountaineering, and Craters.

Today I awoke at 1 PM, this is much too early. I rushed through a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and suited up for another day of adventure. We made our way to the mountain town Summer Haven and during our brisk walk through the town I couldn't help but notice the unique arcitecture, it was picturesque. Once through Summer Haven we began a trek from the town up to the peak.

The peak we climbed is behind the two circular houses in this picture:

Surprisingly I made it all the way up with no pain in my ankle! The view was amazing, if you look closely just below the top of the mountain on the left side of the picture you can see a white dot. This is Sterward Observatory the observatory we have been staying at.

The way down the mountain my muscles began to fatigue and my ankle was on the verge of pain but I made it down with no accidents. Our reward for making it to the peak was pizza and fudge from the local shops in Summer Haven. The pizza itself was well worth the trouble after 2 days of cereal and pasta! At around 4 PM we left and drove back to our observatory to begin preparations for our last night of imaging Jupiter, Nebula's, and Saturn. We filled the telescope with liquid nitrogen to keep it the proper temperature then aligned the telescope with Jupiter. This 3rd night we flew through our imaging due to all of the practice we had the previous two nights. After about 2 hours of imaging we stowed the telescope so the Nebula group could prepare for their imaging. Next it was on to video analysis and image stacking, this proved to be a tedious effort with the images we captured tonight.

As you will see by this next image it was difficult to come up with a good image.

We also took some of our leftover observing time to image some craters on the moon, these stacked up pretty nicely after we analyzed them. It was a cool recess from all of the serious work we have been doing.

Here is the final image of one of the craters:

I am thoroughly exhausted from these past three days but it was definitely a highlight of my life thus far. It put a lot of things in perspective for me and I hope to have another chance to do some observing later in life! The next few weeks will be rewarding to perfect these images and show them to all of our followers, to say that I am excited is an understatement!

Day...5? (It's all starting to blur)

Mt Bigelow (Day 2)
First, I would like to apologize for any spelling errors or confusing sentences. The best time to write my blog is at 3am. I woke up around noon after having a late night observing for the first time at the Steward Observatory. I had some great cereal for breakfast. Half of the crew went to go hiking while the rest of us stayed in the dorms and recuperated from the night before. Group Jupiter (Eric, Ryan, and myself) got right to work around 6pm and continued imaging until 8pm-ish. We had to do this because Jupiter rises mostly during the day, so we had to wait until the sunset but before Jupiter set. The night before we had used a smaller lens to capture images, but tonight we went for larger images and changed over to a new lens. In hopes of better resolution in order to see the features more clearly. After we had finished collecting our data, we got right to work on stacking the images in a program called Registax. Unfortunately, my computer isn't the best and couldn't handle the program and all the data. Luckily everyone else's (except Melissa's of course) could. So I then reviewed some Registax tutorials so if I got the chance to use it i'd be prepared. I then took images of the IC466 Nebula, I couldn't get the horsehead nebula like I wanted to the night before because it was too low in the sky.

(Picture of IC466 after some color adjustments in SAOImage)

Then I helped saturn's group some set up and get started. After we had finished with them I immediately crashed. Apparently there was some chaos in my room about a giant spider. However, I was too zoinked out to even notice. I slept real well, hard and long day's work.