Blog of my trip to Kitt Peak!
List of posts (newest first) (all times MST unless otherwise marked)
3/27/06:
10:00 AM
3/27/06: 12:00 AM
3/26/06: 1:30 PM
3/26/06: 5:00 AM
3/26/06: 1:20 AM
3/25/06: 1:15 PM
3/25/06: 12:15 AM
3/24/06: 7:05 PM
3/24/06: 12:50 PM
3/24/06: 12:15 AM
3/23/06: 5 PM
Interesting link:
Kitt Peak Web cams:
http://www.noao.edu/kpno/kpcam/index.shtml
On the top image, we're just to the left of the 4-m (HUGE) dome, right
in front of/superimposed on the one behind us
3/23/06: 5 PM
Woke up at ~6 am (EST), caught the 6:40a (EST) Red Line to the airport,
flight left
at 8:57a (EST) for Chicago
Boarded this plane in Chicago and left for Tucson! (click image and all
subsequent for full view)
After getting to Tucson, stepped out of the airport and saw mountains!!!
Prof. Mihos picked me up and we headed to a grocery store to get food
for the weekend. On the drive out to the observatory, got stopped by
"construction" - they were cleaning up loose rocks from the steep walls
along the road up there. We waited for about a half hour:
We're here!
Other telescopes (radio) on the mountain:
View to the north:
So far we've looked around at the telescope a little bit and Prof.
Mihos showed me the basics of moving it around, how to fill the liquid
N dewar around the CCD, and just the general set up. Now I am going to
compile a list of objects to observe tonight, mostly just pretty things
as the clouds seem to be just
enough to prevent 'science' observing, i.e. careful measurements of
light, but are still permissive of 'fun' observing, i.e. just looking
at pretty things without qualitative regard. It will probably be time
to cook dinner soon too.
Quick tour of the facilities to follow.
3/24/06: 12:15 am:
Just finished up dinner and started another exposure of Virgo. Cirrus
clouds appear to be mostly low and over Tucson, hopefully not messing
with what we care about. Dinner was burgers and salads - pretty good.
(the kitchen area with a salad being dressed)
(Prof. Mihos putting the cheese on the burgers)
Went outside to watch the sunset earlier - very pretty:
"Song at Sunset" - Walt
Whitman
(the same mountain as before, but with sunset-light on it)
(sunset behind one of our neighbors (SARA))
(sunset with crepuscular ray)
The mechanics of the telescope and procedures to
align/calibrate/track/etc are detailed/numerous but seem very
understandable. Details to follow.
We also saw zodiacal light, an hour or two after sunset. for more info:
http://www.spaceweather.com/
- maybe will photograph it later.
3/24/06 12:50 pm
Just woke up. There are these intensely opaque blinds over the windows
(on the outside!) that are
primarily to stop any light pollution from escaping the building, but
also work well to keep the room almost pitch black so you can sleep in
late. Last night ended up clearing up and being a really good night!
The cirrus clouds at first made it seem like it wasn't a good night for
photometric observations (i.e. varying levels of clouds = varying
brightnesses of stars = worthlessly inconsistent data), but the clouds
were gone by about 1 am or so and we were able to take enough standard
star fields and get 4 (I think?) actual images aroudn M49 in the Virgo
Cluster. The moon rose, though, at 3:17 am, so we could not take any
more real data after that and, since I had been up since 6 am EST and
it was now 3:30 am MST (aka 23.5 hours) we decided to just go to bed.
Now it's time for breakfast and maybe do some homework while it's light
out. Will also take photos/explain more about how/what we're doing with
the telescope soon.
3/24/06 7:05
pm
Just went for a walk around some of the telescopes here at sunset. Took
some more photos:
(looking back at the 4-m telescope and at Case's observatory - it's the
one just to the left of the grey/tan building right of center)
(looking south-east off the mountain around sunset)
(go away Sun so we can do some astronomy!)
Tonight I'm going to try and keep track of everything we do in an
'average' night of observing. Already today we have worked on
processing/initial analysis of some of the images we took, just mostly
to determine whether or not the data is valid, i.e. the clouds didn't
mess it up. We also refilled the liquid nitrogen dewar that surrounds
the CCD.
(gauge on the liquid nitrogen tank - we were watching in case the
pressure dropped, which would mean there isn't any more N to pump out
and instead it was just putting out air)
We just started the CCD taking zeros - that is images without opening
the shutter, in order to determine what a zero-input creates on the CCD
output. The exposure time for each is (of course) 0 seconds, but the
CCD takes about a minute to transmit all the data back to the computer.
We started the process around 6:55 pm and it will run until about 7:20
pm (we are taking 25 zeros).
The dome was opened about 6:30 or 6:40 pm, to allow it to start cooling
down to ambient air temperature.
Will continue as we do.
7:45 pm : Took off lens caps and moved telescope to vertical. Using
local sidereal time (from a clock in the observatory) we moved the
setting circle to match it. Next we looked up the coordinates of Beta
Gemini (Castor? Pollux? one of them) and set the telescope to them,
hoping it would be close. We looked (with our eye!) in the small finder
scope and moved the RA until the star was fairly well centered. Then
the setting circle was moved to match the star's (known) coordinates.
The setting circles are now accurate.
8:00 pm : We calibrated the tracking system - basically it just moves
the telescope for 10 seconds in each direction, N S E W and monitors
what happens so it knows how to track later on
8:05 pm : We took an exposure using 7 different focus settings to
determine what the best would be, shifting the image a small bit each
time and watching how the stars change from one focus setting to the
other (using the larger telescope on the
side of the main one to watch the shifts - a refractor used for
tracking, and the main scope/CCD to check the focus)
8:15 pm : Run the first star-field image, using a standard field, just
to calibrate everything (calibration actually done later, but the
images must be taken now) - 60s, 30s, 15s exposures. Repeat with
another field.
8:30 pm : Take exposure of sky around the area where Virgo will be
observed (hopefully) soon - 15 min.
9 pm : Looking cirrus-y (aka bad) so we're going to take some 'pretty
pictures'. I picked out some things to look at, M44, M81/82, and we'll
see what else.
(M81 (right) and M82 (left) - this is a completely raw image - the
.fits file came in from the
telescope, Prof. Mihos applied a log stretch to it (just a way of
viewing it) and I cropped/exported it to put on here - much work
remains to be done - also the large bar in the center is part of the
CCD's
data taking and does not actually mean we are missing any data)
(M44 - behive cluster - also raw)
~10 pm : M51 is the latest subject, taking 10-min exposures. going to
have 3 of them done by about 10:45 pm.
(M51 - example of single 10 min exposure - also totally raw image as
above)
10:45 pm : decide to (just in case) start doing real things... starting
with 2 sky images - 15 min exposures, and then moving into Virgo images!
11 pm : We start making dinner, pork chops marinated with some dressing
in a skillet, steamed broccoli and corn (warmed up from a can). Not too
bad! No pictures this time, because we ate it.
3/25/06 12:15 am
Virgo images check out - I went through and checked the magnitude of a
selected star (corrected for airmass) to see if it was as bright as it
should be, and the values are very close to the ideals. 2 Virgo images
down, 2 to go, then more skies, then, if the clouds haven't rolled in,
more everything!
4:00 am : took some more pretty pictures (details/images to follow)
since the Virgo images started decreasing in quality then packed up
(turned off the telescope/drive, covered up the lenses/etc, closed the
dome, refilled the liquid nitrogen dewar, turned off the lights)
Bedtime: 4:15 am
3/25/06 1:15
pm
Woke up! Plans for today include maybe going on some tours of
telescopes around here (especially the 2-m) and then perhaps spending
time over on the 2-m after dark since it looks potentially a little
cloudy before midnight.
3/26/06 1:20 am
This afternoon we walked around Kitt Peak a bit, hitting the gift shop
and the 2.1 m. We climbed up to the catwalk on the 2.1 m and had a
great view of the place:
(view of telescopes from the 2.1m catwalk - we are right below the big
center one (4m), first to its left)
(view of the solar telescope and the mountains/stuff in the distance to
the East-ish)
Later on (after a couple phone calls from home/school) we got back to
work. First filled the liquid nitrogen dewar again (as usual). Here is
a photo of the detector area on the telescope:
You can see the black thing with the copper fitting and rubber hose
coming out - that's what we're putting the liquid nitrogen into (note
the plume coming out) - which contains the CCD. Around it is a bunch of
other stuff.
A view of the setting circles:
Sorry they're blurry, it wasn't that brightly lit inside the dome but I
didn't want to use the flash. You can see the right ascension (RA)
circle on the right controlling rotation around the polar axis and the
declination (dec) circle to the left. The telescope is shown here in
'rest position', that is, the position it's left in when not in use.
Having it down here allows easy access up and down the tube.
More photos/descriptions to come in here, the ones I took today ended
up pretty badly blurred, except this one...
This is the control box for the focus and the guider. The focus goes
"in" and "out" by the buttons and the current position is displayed on
the LCD. The guider controls adjust (in X and Y) where the guide scope
is pointing - useful when selecting a star for it to track.
And then the sun set.
(view with SARA dome in foreground)
(view with local weather-data gathering equipment in foreground)
Tonight has been cloudy enough to make photometric data impossible, so
Prof. Mihos had me pick objects and observe them. I basically grabbed a
bunch of coordinates from the NGC catalog and bopped around doing
mostly 10 minute exposures. Images:
(NGC 2024 - FLame Nebula - above a REALLY bright star (the east-most
one in Orion's belt, in fact) )
(NGC 2841 - as before, totally raw image, with a less-than-ideal
stretch too)
(NGC 3079 - raw)
(NGC 3184 - raw)
(NGC 2903 - raw)
(NGC 2403 - raw)
(NGC 2655 - raw - and not terribly exciting....)
More fun pictures to come as time permits... started looking at some
asteroids, took a 60s exposure of 4 Vesta and 11 Parthenope and will
compare to exposures taken later to see if we can find asteroid moving
among the stars.
Oh also dinner was good tonight too, we had some pasta, salads, and
spinach (I ate the leftover corn from last night, too):
Colourful dinner, eh?
Back to real work, started taking skys again and M49 Virgo images, they
aren't looking too bad, but the wind isn't helping....
3/26/06 5:00 am
Bedtime... this big cloud rolled in and blocked
out all the stars. Hope for clear skies tomorrow!
3/26/06 1:30 pm
Wake up! Weather predictions do not look so good
for tonight... clouds and all. Keeping our fingers crossed.
3/27/06 12:00 am
It's been cloudy all day/night so far. We didn't
open the dome or anything. I did some homework and
cleaned/packed/finished up things I had been working on and using for
the last few days. Dinner tonight was good, we had chicken (we got
frozen pre-grilled stuff and just reheated it in some lemon-pepper
marinade/dressing), green beans, and rice. Forgot the picture again,
but it was good.
Overall, I had three fun nights, so one cloudy one at the
end isn't so bad. Since it's cloudy I'll give a brief photo tour of the
whole place here as a last 'real' entry:
So when you first walk in you're in a hallway that connects the
bathroom with the main room and the large room under the telescope.
Going straight takes you into the bathroom or laundry room, turning
right takes you into the little living space, and turning left takes
you into the working space. If you do turn left, there is lots of stuff
around - parts, ladders, fans, tanks of nitrogen, etc. A small door
takes you into the electronics lab, another into a computer room, and
the other door goes to the spiral staircase up to the telescope. (This
is all very fun at night)
Turning right once you come in from outside takes you through the door
pictured below:
This desk is where I've been sitting while I'm here, as evidenced by my
laptop sitting there.
Behind my chair is where Prof. Mihos has been working:
Sunlight coming in the windows!
This photo is from the other end of the area, looking back toward the
table which is right next to Prof. Mihos's desk.
Here you can also see the refrigerator and one of the chairs in front
of the TV.
Standing in the same place but turning around, you can see the doors to
our bedrooms and a bookshelf:
Mine is on the right, Prof. Mihos's is on the left.
Here's a look into the door of my room:
I slept in the closer bed. There's another just barely in view on the
right side of the room.
Turning around 180 degrees you can see the rest of the bookshelf and
the bathroom
The moose towel is mine. Shower's just arround the corner, where the
towel's on the floor, and that door at the other end there is the one
that you meet if you come in from outside and go straight.
Coming back out of this corner, here is the TV/DVD player/chairs
Ok, that's all for now. Off to bed so I can start getting on a 'normal'
sleeping schedule again... plane leaves tomorrow at 3:43p MST.
3/27/06: 10 AM
Woke up. Breakfast time and leaving for airport around noon.