Disco Inferno

Well. I think I've outdone myself this weekend! I foresee this post being pretty long and detailed... so beware! But oh man, do I have a story for you.

This weekend has been pretty tame, and Sunday we went to the Inner Basin to do some easy day hiking. The San Francisco Peaks here used to actually be one big volcano that blew its top a long time ago, and now there is a basin you can hike into. We planned on going about ~4 miles round trip or maybe more if we felt up to it. The hike was really pretty because there were trees besides ponderosa pine in the basin! I'm not sure what they were- birch? sycamore?

The hike through the Inner Basin.

At about an hour into the hike we saw snow! I was really excited to see snow in June! A little further into the hike, I saw this neat mountain to our left. I turned to the rest of the group and asked if anyone wanted to climb up it. Only two other people agreed. The other four decided they would continue on the Inner Basin Trail and if they got back before us, would just leave because we had 2 cars. So, together myself, Teresa, and Eric decided to hike off-trail literally up the side of a mountain...

We're about to climb up there... Sounds like a good plan, no?

The first part of our epic day began with scaling this mountain, which we would later find out was called Fremont Peak. At the time, the hike didn't look too bad, but as we started to ascend, I quickly realized it wasn't nearly as easy as it looked... The hike up consisted of three terrains. The first was the brambles. This was a little painful, but easy. The next was the loose rocks. This was by far the worst and slowest. Every step forward you would slide backwards. It was steep and hard to ascend quickly. It looked as if there had been a landslide recently so that's probably why it was so loose. Plus, underneath all these small rocks was snow! If you slipped enough to move the rocks, you could see snow under them. Loose pebbles on slippery snow = a slow and tiring hike. Eventually we made it to the third tier of the climb: the big yet still potentially loose rocks. This was probably the easiest, but most dangerous. There were lots of big boulders stacked on top of each other, and if you stepped on an unsteady one, you would cause a huge rockslide below. Yeah, okay, not much of a problem for one hiker, but when there's two people behind you... At one point I dislodged a huge rock and saw Teresa's life flash before my eyes as it barreled down towards her about 10 feet below me. Luckily she is nimble on her feet and jumped to avoid it. #1 of near-death experiences (you can tell this is going to be a good story now!).

The view about halfway up Fremont.

Ok, so about 3/4 of the way up this peak, I see a big cloud to the east. Whatever, a big cloud. Weeeell... about ten minutes later we all sort of realize this isn't really a cloud.

Hmm... That's a suspicious looking cloud. Bottom right is where we saw huge flames!

Turns out it's smoke. From a huge forest fire, that's... oh, I don't know, about a half-mile or mile from us. Uh-oh! Well, our options were this: go down the way we came up or climb to the top. I think we would have killed ourselves going down those boulders and loose rock, so it was up we went. Besides, there were less trees the higher we got. Finally we get to the top of the peak. WOWEE! As we look down to the east, we see some scarily huge flames billowing over the ridge below us (sadly I didn't get any photos of the flames). I guess this qualifies as #2 of near-death experiences, even though we weren't ever in thaaaat much danger.

Luckily, the wind is blowing away from us, but we still don't know what to do. I called 911, but kept losing signal. As I'm trying to call in, I notice a bottle behind a rock- as I look at it, I realize it's a message in a bottle! I opened it and everybody who had made it up there had left a message. There were no trails up to this peak, so only really crazy/masochistic people would have written in there. In the panic, I didn't have much time to read them, but Teresa left our names and date and 'NAU REU 2010'. On my third 911 call I get through long enough to ask what we should do. The operator asks where we are. We had no idea what peak we were on (there are 4). She asks which fire we're near. My first thought was 'There's more than one?!' Oops- did I forget to mention that there was a small forest fire south east of Flagstaff on Saturday? Well, in the panic I had just assumed it was the Hardy Fire from Saturday, but if I had thought, then it would have occurred to me this was a different fire as we were 15 miles north of Flag. Suddenly Teresa says to me 'We're on Fremont Peak!'. Turns out someone had written it down on the message in the bottle! How neat! We were partially aided by the proverbial message in a bottle! We were told to climb down the mountain on the side opposite the fire (no duh), so off we go.

The hike down was, when I start thinking about it, pretty rough. But in the heat of the moment, we just wanted to get the heck off the mountain as quick as possible so all the adrenaline was dulling the rough terrain. Today I have lots of cool battle wounds from rushing through the pine forest. At one point I fell into this crevice in between some boulders. My foot got stuck under a rock in a really painful position, but after some panicked shrieking the other two got it off of me. #3 of potential near-death experiences, but I wouldn't have died, just hurt myself. Lucky for us, Eric is an experienced hiker, so he was leading us the most promising direction in hopes of finding a trail. Surprisingly, the snow was the worst thing to hike on: it was incredibly slick and even when I made footholes, I still occasionally slipped.

Smoke, Fremont, and Waxing Gibbous Moon.

Finally we found a trail!! Hooray! Later we would find out this trail was the Weatherford Trail (5.7 miles). It goes two ways: up Agassiz Peak or to Schultz Pass, where the fire was. Hmm, hard choice which way to take it, eh? Unfortunately it was out of the way, but it was the only trail in the area. We hiked up and up Agassiz, but we were making really good time with all the adrenaline. Eventually I saw a sign up ahead (we had no idea where we were or where we were headed). I ran up to it, read the sign, turned around, and started laughing. Turns out we were at a 'dead end'. The trail ahead was closed, although we didn't know why. Well, what else could we do besides continue on? So onward we went, climbing ever higher. We found out why the trail was closed pretty quickly. Parts of it were covered in a thick layer of snow/ice! Climbing on the snowed-over parts was pretty frightening. You had to be really careful not to slip. One wrong step and... well, it was a long way down. You had to lean over and brace yourself against the snow with your hands as you walked, so after we made it across, my hands were numb. Reminded me of the times when Sarah and I would see who could stick our hands into a bucket of ice the longest, except worse! (I always lost)

Snow/ice traversing. This makes it look way easier than it was.

The snowed over trail we just crossed!

Ok, so a little more snow traversing, and at last we find a real sign! Woohoo! We found out we were on the Weatherford trail that would eventually take us to Humphrey's (the highest point in AZ). We saw two hikers ahead, sitting down and taking photos of the fire. We were so happy to see other people! At least we knew we were headed the right way! We stopped to talk to them and we told them about our crazy story. Now, this is the kicker: Monday morning at work I received an email with a link to a blog about the fire. Turns out it was written by one of those guys we met! What luck?! The guy, Dan, works at Lowell! Here is a link to his blog... I thought they guys looked familiar, but I was certain it was the hikers we met when he wrote of the 'trio of students'.

~12,000 feet. The Snow Bowl below!

So, now we are on our way down to the Snow Bowl! It's a long ways down, but at least we know where we are, and the other REU students who didn't go up Fremont with us are going to pick us up at the bottom. It should all be downhill (pun intended) from here, right...? Well, about 10 or 15 minutes down the descent I begin to feel a bit funny. I had had a headache for a while, but I thought it was just from the adrenaline and the quick pace we were keeping. As I went further and further down the trail, I started to feel progressively worse. My head hurt somethin' nasty, and at some point I started feeling a bit light-headed and my fingers were getting tingly like when they fall asleep. Turns out I had altitude sickness! This made the hike down pretty slow because I had to keep taking breaks. We were low on food and water (this was supposed to be a 4 mile hike after all) so this didn't really help either. We passed more hikers on this trail, so that was encouraging. Finally we made it to the ski lift that takes people up the mountain! From here we just walked down to the Snow Bowl parking lot! We were so happy to see everybody else! Woohoo!

In summary: we stared at 9AM and finished at 6:30PM. I'm guessing we hiked about 15 miles throughout the day. At our highest point we were at 12,000 feet, starting from 9000 in the Inner Basin. Who knew forest fires could cause such a ruckus?! After we got some water/food/jackets, we all went back and showered/decompressed. As celebration for such a day, all the students went out to a local restaurant called Beaver Street Brewery and ate good food. It was a crazy and long day, but quite an adventure! It's taken me a long time to write this in free moments at work, but three days later here is my recounting of the event! This article is out of date now, but we are those hikers they refer to... I had to call the Sheriff back when we got back to let him know we were alive! (Search and rescue kept on texting me throughout our hike to see where we were or if we needed help out). Teresa's car is still in Lockett Meadow where we parked in the Inner Basin, and we're all crossing our fingers in hopes that the fire doesn't get there. She is currently on her way to pick it up hopefully!

This is the path we think we took...??

The state of the fire as I write this: 14,000 acres have been destroyed and the fire is at 20% containment. It's been determined that an abandoned campfire started the fire. No sign of rain this whole week, so hopefully things will slow down on their own and with the help of the firefighting crew. Last night some southeasterly winds came in and now some of the smoke has settled on the city. You can smell the lingering scent of smoke outside now.

PS- I can't get the photos to enlarge when clicked on... I've spent forever writing this, so maybe I'll fix it later!

Picture this: we hiked the pointy peak third from left!

A Day In The Life (Good Morning Good Morning)

I have been asked to report on my day-to-day life here in Flagstaff. Sorry if this post is not very thrilling!

So, most of the time, I don't even do anything during the week. Usually I go out/hiking on the weekends, so the weekdays is when the downtime happens. Lately I've been getting into a morning running routine (experimenting to see if I like morning or evening more). The only downside is that I have to get up at 6 or 6:30 if I want be done in time. Luckily I have no life and go to bed at about 10:30 or 11 (I only say this because even during the school year I go to bed later). Running here is great, and I'm trying out all the nearby trails.

I work 9-5, save for a few days here and there. Since Lowell is about 2 miles from where I live, the three other REU students who work there plus myself carpool. It's not a bad walk, but it's all uphill there, and it takes about ~45 minutes. I don't really like arriving to work all sweaty.

What do I do at work? Well, I'll keep it simple: I sit on my butt in front of a really big mac screen. I think I posted a picture of my office before, so scroll down to refresh. I analyze data and write lots of code in Fortran (I like to compare it to Latin- a dead programming language save for astronomers...). I actually enjoy coding; of course, what I mean to say is that I enjoy it when I can get it to work. Debugging is not my favorite task. I am doing lots of cool things research-wise though. I'm not going to go into detail, but all you need to know is that I'm working with spectra of short-lived massive stars (F-G yellow supergiants to be exact).

I usually take a lunch break with my advisor and/or officemate(s). I think I've brought cheese sandwiches every day thus far. Is this enough detail? :)

I get back to my apartment about 5:15 and usually find ways to entertain myself the rest of the evening. Here are some photos of my apartment.

My bedroom... dramatic lighting.

Teresa in the kitchen.

I don't know if I've said so yet, but the apartment is really nice. Everything looks brand spankin' new and it's really big. It puts my soon-to-be apartment in August to shame... We are slowly making it homey by bringing random junk in. All the pictures I tried to take of the living room were ruined by the bright rising Sun, so maybe I'll put some up later.

I have to find creative ways to entertain myself, so I've recently taken up the harmonica. It was the only instrument I had that was small enough to travel. Suffice to say it's going slowly... all I know is 'The Saints Go Marching In'. I have high hopes though. I am currently reading 100 Years of Solitude, as well as My Antonia. I write lots of letters to people, and now that Teresa arrived, we have a TV! It's great! We get free cable, so I can sit around forever and entertain myself! We even get NASA TV, which is the most boring thing I've ever seen. It's exciting when they are launching things, but other than that I can understand why nobody wants to give NASA money.

Today is sort of a day off for me. A few of the other students drove to San Carlos this morning... it was a 4 hour ride, and they were only going to see some kind of rock (they're geologists...). To me it wasn't worth it. Instead I slept in (relatively). I had to run some errands so I've been walking all over town since about 10:30. I stopped at two bookstores (didn't find anything), then went to the Copper Coyote Cafe. It looked neat, but the Parmesan bagel I got was mediocre at best. I then stopped at Really Good Stuff! thrift shop and bought a shirt and reusable bag. Today and tomorrow is the Flagstaff Music Festival. I stopped by for a bit and saw some group I forget the name of perform.

Flagstaff Music Festival.

I bought a George Harrison and Fleetwood Mac CD at a book sale tent.

Downtown Flagstaff

I am now at the Cline Library, hoping to check out some books after I post this. Au revoir!

I saw this neat flower on my way to the library.

Keytars and the Universe

Whoa. This has been a hectic week (I feel like I say that every week...).

The highlight has definitely been, hands down, yesterday. It was, of course, the much-awaited Dream Theater/Iron Maiden concert. I apologize ahead of time for those of you who don't know them/don't care to hear the gory details of the concert. This blog is partly for my own record though, so I'd like to remember the intense epicness.

To start off, myself and two other members of the REU group, Eric and Nick, left for Phoenix at about 3:30. I like the drive a lot, so it was nice. We made a planned stop at an In 'n Out in Phoenix for dinner. They only have In 'n Outs in CA, AZ, and NV I believe. Apparently it's a big deal or something... I got a pretty dissatisfying veggie burger, but the fries and shake were good. And the other two seemed to really enjoy their food, so I guess you need to eat meat. There is some kind of 'secret menu' that you can order off of if you know what to say. Weird westerners.

Hot Phoenix.

Moving along, we went to the venue next: The Cricket Pavilion, which was smaller than I expected, but pretty nice. Turns out we had superb seats. We were about 20 feet from the stage, which was excellent for my eyes, but awful for my ears. To be honest, I went online looking up DT tours, and was pleasantly surprised to see they were touring with Maiden. So, really, I went to see DT, and got a bonus of Maiden.

Wooo! Dream Theater takes the stage!

I've never seen DT live, but have been spending far more time than I should looking up youtube videos of them recently. In short, they kicked some serious butt. Some of the highlights were: Mike Portnoy (drummer) threw his sticks in the air multiple times and caught them probably 50% of the time... Jordan Rudess (keyboards) PULLED OUT THE ZEN RIFFER! YESSSSSS!!!! I think the all caps and exclamation points convey my excitement. I don't know why, but I have a strange obsession with keytars.

Jordan Rudess and John Petrucci during Panic Attack.

During one song, James LaBrie (singer) came to our side of the stage. When he did so, I was the only one in the area who was fist-pumping (I think everyone was there just to see Maiden...). He looks over at me and points to me from stage. It's really not anything spectacular, but for a brief moment I was one of 'those fans'. I can die a happy girl now (who knew that was all it took?). DT played a pretty great set (although I kept waiting for Overture 1928....). What I remember they played:

-Rite of Passage

-Home

-Panic Attack

-Under a Glass Moon

-Pull Me Under

-And some other song I forgot

But... that was only half of the show. The main entree was of course, Iron Maiden.

Unintentionally caught Steve Harris mid-headbang.

I know hardly any IM so I felt pretty out of place as the crowd got crazy and sang all the songs. I knew maybe 3 or 4 out of the 2 hours they played... woops! They were really incredible regardless, though. I have never seen such an energetic band perform. These guys are at least in their 50's, and they were running all over stage, jumping around, and being generally Crazy. Bruce Dickenson (singer) was running on top of the set, while Janick Gers (1 of 3 guitarists) was doing insane acrobats with his guitar. I think he actually played it 2% of the show, while 98% of the time was spent throwing it in the air (for real), banging it against props (seriously), playing it in between his legs (it looked uncomfortable...), spinning it around himself, and throwing the cord all around stage.

Janick Gers. He seemed to really enjoy playing like this.

Musically useless but visually entertaining.

The best way to describe the way he ran around stage would be prancing. I felt sorry for the drummer, Nicko McBrain, because he was boxed in around his drum set and nobody paid attention to him. Oh, I forgot to mention that at the beginning of their show, Maiden played a little intro movie to Mars The Bringer of War from the Planets by Holst. I didn't see anyone else around me who seemed to appreciate the reference... silly rock fans. They also showed some clips of the Crab Nebula! Something else I also forget to mention and am adding now: The guy next to me looked like Geddy Lee and was doing some serious head-banging and air-guitaring to Maiden... I've never seen anyone air guitar with such passion.

After the concert it took us forever to get out of the venue, and after a gas/coffee stop we were on our way back to Flagstaff. I happened to stick my head out the window and saw the Milky Way! So we got off the highway and pulled off to go look at the sky. We happened to see 4 or 5 other guys who actually had a telescope and chairs set out. They just happened to be astronomy/physics (graduate?) students! It was actually pretty funny that we were all astronomy people and we sat around talking about science and Iron Maiden. It was one of those strange chance moments that happens rarely but is really neat. The skies were phenomenal and the Milky Way very bright.

I don't know what kind of luck I was having, but on the way back I saw a fireball! I've never seen one, and it was really cool! To top off a long night, we went to Lowell to try and see Comet McNaught... turns out it's not visible naked eye or was too low. FINALLY I got back to my apartment at about 3 and got to sleep for ~4 hours.

The result today: I'm really tired and feel deaf!

Rocks, Rocks, Rocks

Flagstaff is a runner's dream. They have a system called Flagstaff Urban Trail System. There are so many cool places to run!

This past weekend we went to the DCT in Happy Jack, about 40 miles from Flagstaff. We got to see the telescope they are building there. It's still in progress, but it was really cool! The dome and telescope were actually much larger than I had anticipated. It was also really astounding to see a 4.2 meter mirror...!

Here I am, looking way too excited, in front of the unfinished DCT.

Sunday we went to Sedona, some place I'd never heard of until I came here. It was really cool though! We went for a hike down the West Fork Trail to Oak Creek Canyon. There was indeed a creek (gasp! Water in Arizona!?)! The rock formations were really neat and exciting. I don't know what else to say... it's kind of hard to describe red rocks.

Christine, myself, and Teresa on a big rock. I am quite afraid of heights.

The image above is a really neat rock wall. It kind of looked like somebody just went through and carved it out. It's hard to get a perspective, but it's actually very tall!

This is Oak Creek Canyon. Water!

The hike was cake compared to the Canyon, but was still lots of fun. That night we went to Kathy, the program director's, house for a potluck. Lots of good food and company.

Pretty much during the week, I wake up, go to work, sit at a computer doing work, leave 8 hours later, and go home. Since I didn't bring a computer here, I have to find creative ways to entertain myself once I get back to my apartment. Lately I've taken up playing the harmonica. I don't know how the other people in my apartment feel about this, but I've gotten really good at 'The Saints Go Marching In'. Tonight I hope to learn 'Hey Jude'. I've been reading a lot, and going old-school by playing the Gameboy Color I brought along (Pokemon Blue and Lemmings anyone?).

On a very mundane note, the other day I bought Rosemary & Mint shampoo/conditioner. It's... interesting. It definitely lives up to the scent. And lastly, I will leave you with this photo of Teresa and I in Sedona. SHOOTOUT!

A Less-Than-Groundbreaking Update

Not much has been happening here (well, anything exciting).

Today is the big advisory board meeting at Lowell, so the building is eerily quiet and seemingly empty. It's really been cooling down here in Flagstaff the past day or two. It's currently 60F, and tomorrow the high is 58! Yikes!

Some various pieces of news:

- Next week a few of the other students and myself are going to see the Iron Maiden and Dream Theater concert in Phoenix.

- This is a perfect time to observe Comet McNaught. It should be visible naked eye next week!

- For those of you who ever nagged me about buying new shoes, well I finally bought some new running shoes the other day. The new ones work really great! Now I don't have to superglue them every week...

- Woops. I had to edit this post. I was going to go to the John Hall Telescope next Thursday with my advisor and his previous summer student from last year. The telescope is 42 inches and located at Anderson Mesa, Lowell's main observing hub that's about 12 miles from where I work. Unfortunately I just realized it is the same day as the concert I mentioned just previously. Bummer. My advisor says we will go sometime in July, though. The things I do for Dream Theater.

I feel that no post is complete without a photo, so here a couple pictures I took on a longer-than-anticipated walk the other day. There are hardly ever any clouds out here so the sunsets aren't that exciting. I'm fairly certain I saw a lenticular cloud the other day though!

Above: to the west

Below: the east

A Big Hole in the Ground

Well! This has been a busy/crazy last few days!

We had our 'first' day of work last Tuesday, but didn't really do much expect paperwork and university stuff, so really I started Wednesday. My research is pretty good so far. I had to do some boring beginning work for a while, but Friday started getting into the real stuff. I'm writing lots of programs right now, which isn't the most exciting, but it's interesting (and incredibly frustrating when debugging).

This is the office where I work. My desk is the one on the right.

Friday night all of the REU students (there are 7 of us right now) went out to dinner to a Mexican restaurant. Afterward we walked downtown to attend the Flagstaff First Friday Artwalk. It was really neat and fun! First we stopped at the Flagstaff CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to watch a banjo/guitar duo band. It was nice, and there were a lot of hippie looking people. We all did a cakewalk, and three of us won free baked goods! I had a Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodle that had cayenne pepper... interesting to say the least.

We then headed to the main drag and to Heritage Square, where a kids movie was playing. There were so many people out and about! There were lots of art and photography exhibits. Downtown is really nice! It has lots of historic buildings and quaint shops. It feels nice and homey and reminds me of New Harmony, IN. After looking around there we went back to the apartments and played a fun and competitive game called Perpetual Commotion, where you have to lunge after cards in a chaotic mess...

Friday night we decided sort of on the fly that we wanted to go to the Grand Canyon on Saturday! So... we woke up and arrived at the South Rim at about 8. After taking photos and getting ready, we started hiking down at about 9. The Canyon was amazing! I have never seen anything quite like it. It was fantastic and an unforgettable sight. I took lots of photos, but will post a few here.

The first photo I took. This is before we got to the trailhead.

We hiked down the South Kaibab Trail, to Cedar Ridge, then to a place called Skeleton Point.

Wow!

The view below, from near the top. If you look closely near the bottom, you can see a lodge. We hiked down there! It was 1.5 miles out of the 3 going down.

Altogether, we hiked 6 miles round-trip: 3 down and 3 up. Woo, I definitely underestimated how hard it would be to come back up... It was harder than I thought, but still fun!

Left: The near south end from Cedar Ridge.

Right: The near north/east end from Cedar Ridge.

It got REALLY hot down in the canyon. It was 85 at the rim, 93 at the halfway point, and 100 at the lowest point we went. As you descended, it was very noticeable that the temperature increased. Going down was, of course, not bad, but coming back up, we had to take lots of water breaks.

Left: The Colorado River below!
Right: The view from Skeleton Point, the lowest point we hiked, 3 miles down.

So yeah, the trip was pretty good :)

Today we went to the Flagstaff farmer's market. Sarah, my housemate, and I got some pasta, apricots and honey. It was a pretty good farmer's market (not as cool as Bloomington's though...). Afterward we went to a couple of garage sales, where everybody seemed to buy random things as tends to happen at garage sales.

Now I'm back here in the library! It has been a fun and busy first weekend!

PS- I forgot to mention that now my muscles in, of all places, my butt are sore! I can only imagine it's from walking up the steep canyon trails.

PPS- Somebody seemed to have a problem with my telescope photo from the previous post. It is the 24-inch Clark Telescope refractor at Lowell Observatory!

Flagstaff!

Woo! So, I've been in Flagstaff, AZ for 2 days now. Traveling started Sunday with a plane ride to Chicago, then another to Phoenix. I even got searched after using one of the new full body scanners in Indy! Flights and everything went really well, in fact everything was early and I even got to Flagstaff 3 hours early due to happening to get an early shuttle ride from Phoenix to Flagstaff!

What I fell asleep to on the flight from Chicago to Phoenix...

What I woke up to! Nice.

The ride from Phoenix to Flagstaff was really nice. It started with cacti and flowering bushes and palm trees and eventually evolved into pine trees as we started ascending. Flagstaff is at an elevation of 7000 feet!

Mountains!

My apartment is really nice! It's pretty new, and has two other bedrooms. I've already met one of my roommates, Sarah. She's from Cornell and pretty cool. Teresa, a friend from IU will be my other roommate, but she doesn't arrive until the 10th.

The view from my apartment! The San Francisco Peaks. From left, Humphreys, Agassiz, and Doyle.

Sunday night I did some rudimentary shopping and basically passed out I was so tired. Monday morning I woke up at 7 (still on Eastern time... Arizona is 3 hours behind), and went to Lowell Observatory, up Mars Hill. I'll be working at Lowell through the summer, so I wanted to see what it was like.

The view as I hiked up a back trail!

Some mountains and the city below.

A telescope at the observatory

The San Francisco Peaks again.

The weather in Flagstaff is fantastic! It's not too hot, usually in the 70's, and is dry and clear (I got sunburned my first day in Arizona- It was almost 100 in Phoenix though!). Today we had some clouds come in and it cooled down some. The people here are pretty nice, and there are a lot of Mexican restaurants.

Today I started my REU (Research Experience for Undergrads) work. This morning we did paperwork and got ID's, etc. Then the program director and a couple of prof's took us out for lunch to a local pizza place. It was lots of fun to meet the professors and the other interns! They all seem pretty cool so far.

Afterwards, myself and two other students who will be working at Lowell drove up to meet our advisors and get started on our research! I am working with Phil Massey on spectroscopy of yellow supergiant stars. I'm going to be looking for a specific Oxygen line that may be a luminosity indicator and be able to tell us if a star is a yellow supergiant in galaxies with low radial velocities. I also get to write some programs for analyzing spectra. Fun stuff!

I'll post whenever I have anything else to say! I didn't bring a computer so am at the mercy of library hours. Until then!