Roughin It

Jan 13th

Today was a day where we were outside and doing some Real archeology. We were outside in the Real desert, not this Desert Museum stuff...the REAL desert :D It was about a 2 and a half hour drive out to the area. Even once there, we took some "roads" to go further out. These roads were just paths wide enough, Barely, for a car to fit.
We went to different excavations site that, unfortunately, were not kept up. At each site we were able to see, pick up, and collect pottery pieces left behind. One thing about going to these excavation spots was it wasnt a casual walk to it, we had to do some mini hiking/climbing to get there. For one of the sites, in particular, we had to climb up a dirt mountain, climb up a hill of rocks, and walk across the desert some more. It was By Far my favorite site to get up into :D And it wasnt just fun getting there but Better coming back down :D The rocks, since loose, made it Very interesting to get down...sometimes had to use hands/be on all fours. Even once down, we werent done roughin it.
Once on the road, maybe 10/15 mins in If Lucky, I heard a "psst psst psst". About 2 secs after that an exclammation point showed up on the dash, a tire was loosing pressure. We pulled over and sure enough, we had an Extremely Flat tire. Lol, it took a bit for D.A and Patrick to figure out what to do but they managed to get the old tire off and new tire on. Once they removed the old tire, we looked at it to see where the hole was. It took us a bit but Adam found it and it was a Decent sized hole..no Wonder why it didnt take too long for it to be completely flat. Anywho, everything was put back in place and we were back on the road again..seeing 4/5 Roadrunners along the way :D
Once back at the motel, we relaxed a bit then congregated to discuss food situations. We agreed on Chinese and some went to get it while the rest of us stayed back to relax more. From there, we watched "400 Years of the Telescope". I thought it was a decent show but the others didnt seem to care for it much.
Oh also, today while going to one of the sites, we encountered a cow. The cow wasnt sitting in the pasture, it was IN the road. We would try to go out and around it but everytime we tried, it would move. Eventually we just pulled off to the side and waited for the cow to get off the road. A car from the other way scared it off so we were good to go.

What is this?

So today is about living the astronomer life. Went to bed at 4am and was expecting to sleep in till noon, but body hasn't adapted to it just yet, so I woke up at 10. Ended up getting the eagles cardinals game in for about a half. Headed to a place called summerhaven, which is an oxymoron since there was actually snow on the ground. Came back to the scope and prepared to take some individual images for ourselves. I took images on NGC2419 and I had the luck of going last which meant dealing with the haze and overcast conditions. Got a few ok images, but nothing special. So you could nearly say that this night is difficult to stay awake for waiting for the clouds to move along. Perhaps they might, we shall see.

Dave is exposing himself...

sunspots and craters oh my!

1/18 Kuiper Day 2

We hiked around the little town of Summerhaven today. After two or three years, the mountain is still all burned up. Most of the dead trees have finally started to fall, and the town has rebuilt itself. There are all of these cute little cabins nestled in the hills and ridges. We got fudge.

We came up with an idea for a new SPS/astronomy t-shirt... Big letters: "Expose yourself" small letters: "in astronomy" or "Expose yourself every night" "in astronomy" with a bw picture of one of our images on this observation run. hehe.

I got to image the reflection nebula surrounding the star Merope in the Pleiades constellation (aka: the Seven Sisters or the Subaru). I can't wait to start stacking and processing my data. The nebula has a well defined pattern. It will be interesting to look at the structure after image processing.

Everyone else has chosen an object to look at tonight. I'm really impressed with all of the images so far.

I'm much more awake tonight and thus, much cheerier and excited about what we are doing.

There are some clouds to the west... I hope the weather holds out for us tonight.

First night at the telescope

1-18-09

Today was our first day at the telescope. When we first arrived here we sat around for a while looking around and getting comfortable with everything. After that we went on a little bit of a hike through the mountain where there was snow! When the night started Erin controlled the telescope but after she was done she taught me how to run the program. I was then able to run it and it wasnt as hard as i thought it would be. My first ever image was of ngc2440 pretty exciting i know!!!! Over the coarse of the night I was able to learn a lot of the things that were going on and got a fairly good handle on how to run most things. When there was time where i wasnt doing any thing i spent it on the catwalk looking up at the stars. I was able to see 5 or 6 shooting stars which i was really excited about. Erin, Isa, Adam, and I spent a lot of time out there looking at the stars and talking and in gald that i got a chance to get to know them all better. After we shut the telescope down for the night i went to bed n slept till 1pm whoo hooo!!!!

actually posting on the right day

Actually slept til 1... there's something wrong about that... Went up to Mt Lemmon and got fudge. Don't really know why, it's ok, but I have a lot at home. But I did get my obligitory shot glass, so I feel a little more complete about this trip. The walk around the town did bother me a lot though, my back is really cramped up and tight. Tonight we might not get anything worth while, but at least we got a lot of good pics last night. I hope that if we don't get anything done we can go to bed early...

1/17 Kuiper Day 1

Was locked out of dome by Adam.
Trapped outside in cold on catwalk w/ pretty stars.
Afraid of bears.
Please send help… and food… and interwebz.

Very sleepy.
A ten hour nap would be pleasant.
Looking forward to fresh mountain pine scented air tomorrow.

Observations are going well. Telescope and systems are performing fabulously.

It is very warm in the control room, so I sat out on the catwalk for a while to take a look at the stars. I saw more than a dozen meteors... mostly quick green flashes, but one large orange fireball. It's nice and quiet up here. I'm still afraid of bears and mountain lions/cougars/pumas... and accidentally eating a spider in my sleep. I'm sure no one will be seriously mauled on the trip.

I really do not know how much longer I can stay awake... four hours till sleepin' time.