Two No Trump

So much to say, so little inspiration to type it all out. Let's just say I've had less than enough motivation to write a blog post as of late...

Okay, let's start at the beginning, shall we? Two weeks ago the REU students were scheduled to visit Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) to tour the mountain and see a few of the telescopes. On Thursday I realized that Jenny, Eric, and their advisor Con just happened to be on the mountain for an observing run through IU. I was thinking it would be fun to say hi to them while I was there on Friday, so I emailed them seeing if we could coordinate a quick hello. Just minutes after I emailed them, though, Ken (the REU director) came in and asked if I knew Con Deliyannis. After dozens of cheeky comebacks involving the personality of Con Deliyannis ran through my head, I answered simply yes. Ken and Con had a series of last-minute conversations and it was suggested that I could stay the night at KP with the IU peeps. I of course said YES.

So I packed some things for a night and off we went on Friday to see the observatories. On my (first) round on the mountain, the first thing we saw was the solar observatory, including being able to walk around in it.

The Solar Observatory and Solis!

The sun in a mirror.

Peace! My shadow from the sun.

Next up was the 2.1meter telescope (we will be using this next month!) and the Coude spectrograph.

Brittany and Vivienne in front of the 2.1m.

On the 2.1m catwalk. The 4m dome in the background!!

Afterwards we went to the WIYN 3.5m scope. WIYN is a consortium consisting of Wisconsin, Indiana, Yale, and NOAO (whom I work for). They have 2 telescopes- .9 and 3.5m. So IU essentially owns a large share of the those two scopes. As such, our grad students and faculty get a fair amount of observing time with them. Con, Jenny and Eric were currently up on a 5-day observing run at the 3.5m. The 3.5 (more affectionately known as 'big WIYN') is, for lack of a better word, a totally awesome telescope. It was built 15ish years ago and the advanced technology and mirror and mount design make it the best science telescope on the mountain (more so than the larger 4m telescope!) It houses the WHIRC infrared camera and Hydra, a mulit-fibre spectrograph. Enough gushing :P Here are some photos during our visit...

Gahhh, infinite reflections in the 3.5 primary and secondary mirrors!

TO Charles explains the telescope optics and electronics. Check out those actuators!!

Next up was the 4m Mayall telescope, finished in 1970. Words cannot adequately explain the scale of this telescope. Even though it is only half a meter larger than big WIYN, is far larger, and the dome weighs nearly 500 tons. 500 TONS! The primary mirror (4m) weighs 15 tons alone! There is a huge equatorial mount supporting the mirror. this is by far the largest (reflecting) telescope I've ever seen!

The HUGE 4m equatorial mount! See Phil for scale in bottom left.

That ended our official tour, and I was subsequently dropped off with Jenny as the rest of the REU's left the mountain. Right before they left me though, I asked Ken how I would be getting home the next day. He looked quizzically at me and said he thought I was coming home with Con and his students. They weren't leaving until Monday, though, and I had no other way off the mountain. Ken again suggested, hey, do you want to stay with them until Monday? Again- YES. So it was quickly arranged that I would be staying in the observers' dorms until Monday (working for NOAO has its perks- like being able to use NOAO resources on the fly).

Eric eclipsing the sun with his large girth.

Jenny Power-Posing. 

Arizona is colonized once more!!

But anyway, I spent the next few days observing with them on the 3.5m. This was my first time ever observing using a telescope larger than I am tall. Also, the first time I've had to adjust to a nocturnal schedule. Last year in Flagstaff we got to use the Anderson Mesa telescopes, but bailed out early due to weather. Yeah, let's just say becoming nocturnal was kind of rough. Especially because I wasn't really anticipating going observing until the day before it happened. The first night I just powered through (with the help of 5 cups of coffee!), staying up until 5:30am, then sleeping until 11:30am. The next two nights were much easier after that. The life of an observing astronomer goes: wake up at ~2/3pm, eat 'breakfast', go to the telescope ~5 to start taking calibrations and checking things out. Watch the sunset. Take data observations. Go to sleep at 5:30. Lather, rinse, repeat!

My dorm building. Shhh! Nocturnal astronomers!!

Con was observing an open cluster, needing very high resolution spectra, so we were taking 2-hour exposures. That leaves a lot of downtime. Plus, apparently the 3.5m is important enough that they don't really trust astronomers with the telescope, so instead they have a telescope operator, or TO. So, that left a LOT of downtime. What do 3 college students and a professor do all night while observing on top of a mountain?

THIS. Make Eric look like Two-Face in the light of sunset. I love my friends.

Play bridge of course. But seriously, Con taught us how to play bridge. Let me just revoke all previous bridge and old people jokes I have ever made. I am superbly impressed that old people can play bridge (if that stereotype is even true to begin with). It is by far the most complex and intellectually involved card game I have ever played. Hands down. It is also immensely fun, especially when you have tons of cafeteria cookies to eat. We also went out and watched the sunset each night, hoping to see a green flash,  and also just to enjoy the beautiful sunsets from the mountain.

Sunset from Kitt Peak.

The 4m at dusk.

Anyway, we had great weather for the run- one night we even got down to .5" seeing!!! I'm not even going to explain what that means besides saying that it was REALLY clear and you get a lot of flux (light). Excellent seeing also means excellent stargazing. I can honestly say I have never seen so many stars before in any other location. Last summer we got a lot of great skies on our camping trips, but I think Kitt Peak trumps them all. It was utterly astounding, and impossible to communicate to you how amazing the skies were. I could see details of the Milky Way I didn't even know existed. And lots of meteors (aka shooting stars :P ) We could even see the Wallow fire that is currently destroying southern Arizona (it has currently burned 800 sq. miles...!!!)

We got to explore the mountain more while we there as well. Jenny and Eric and I did some easy hiking around. More telescopes that we saw were the 12m ARO (Arizona Radio Observatory) radio dish. (No cell phones on the mountain or they would interfere with the radio telescopes!)

The 12m ARO dish.

Jenny is so strong!

We tried to visit the 25m VLBA (Very Large Baseline Array), but it was closed.

Con, Jenny and I in front of the 25m VLBA dish.

We got to fiddle around with things at the WIYN .9m as well. This was pretty fun. Jenny had been observing there previously. It is a VERY hands-on observatory, much unlike big WIYN, which is the Ritz hotel compared to the Super 8 little WIYN. Apparently it is very 'character-building' scope- you pretty much have to do everything by hand: Fill the dewar (that houses the liquid nitrogen that cools the electronics), open the dome slit, move the dome, point the telescope at the lamp screen, and in Jenny's case once, tracking the dome!! Since objects in the sky are constantly moving (due of course to the Earth's rotation), in order to observe them, the telescope must 'track' them, or move at the same rate they do while pointing at them. Well, apparently when Jenny was there the dome wasn't tracking (the dome slit needs to move with telescope of course), and she had to sit in the dome all night moving it with a manual joystick-esque panel. Did I mention this was in January? :P So yes, a character-building telescope indeed!

Believe it or not, this photo is NOT posed! A teaching moment at the .9m, caught off the record. Eric, Jenny, and Con.

We also got to sit in the Cass focus of the 4m telescope!! The Cass(egrain) focus of a telescope is directly below the prime mirror, at the bottom of the telescope. I didn't take any photos, and can't find anything good on the internet. Suffice to say it was incredibly neat to be at the bottom of a huge telescope, sitting crouched underneath a 15 ton mirror looking at all the electronics and instruments that light from space gets fed into!

But in time our run was up, and it was time to head back to Tucson. On the way back to Tucson, we got stopped by border control. When they asked if everyone in the car was a US citizen, I was soooo tempted to say 'si' but refrained for fear of being jailed. We also saw a dust devil on the way!

A dust devil on our way to Tucson.

Con took us on detour through the Saguaro National Forest to check out the scenery and take a few short walks. WOW, are there are a lot of saguaros here! The mountains are covered in them. From afar you wonder if they are tree trunks, but upon approaching you realize they are really just thousands of CACTI. Maybe this is only so cool to me because I had never seen a cactus until arriving in Phoenix last year. Even so, there were none in Flagstaff since it was in the mountains, so being in the desert this year has been cactus-land for sure.

A dead saguaro.

We then stopped at a real nice Mexican restaurant in Tucson, where I tried mole (chocolate chili sauce) for the first time... it was... intriguing. Then we went to the airport where Jenny rented a car (she stayed with me from Monday til Friday) and then it was finally back to my apartment and getting used to a diurnal life again. The weather was great up on Kitt Peak, 70 during the day (windy and colder at night), but it was the BEST escape from Tucson. Here I am again though in the 100+ weather and cloudless skies. Home sweet home!