The Organic Life Is Killing Me

Sorry I've gotten behind on my posts. I've been lacking the motivation and time to post anything more substantial than a rant about how expensive it can be to buy organic/local (that I'm not really going to rant about).

I don't know how I can have such a great life and still be so unsatisfied. I have an amazing job getting paid to do what I love, working for a great advisor. I get to explore the west, taking trips around Arizona and seeing exciting new places of the country. I have the most caring and supportive friends and family. There are people in the world who wish they could be where I am, having a roof over my head and a (mostly) secure life. I'm healthy, have all the makings of a wonderful life, but here I am wasting away my days pining over a man, a lost love, when I should be enjoying my summer. Isn't it funny how much one person can change your
life? Can make it blissful and full of sunshine. Can make it bitter and cheerless... Sorry about the depressing post, but it's MY blog. You don't have to read it if you don't want. Maybe I'm young and irrational (I know I am), but heartbreak affects everyone whether or not they will admit it...

The one word to sum up my life right now is: sigh.

NM-Chapter 1!

So, I have yet to make a post about my Grand Canyon trip (mostly because I don't have the pictures with me), but I went last year so it can't really be that exciting for you to hear about it again, can it?

Anyway, last Sunday the REU students, plus a few stragglers headed out in two NOAO vans to the state of New Mexico. This is an annual trip that the REU program makes each year, to see some observatories, etc. So, we left early Sunday for our 6 hour trip. I drove about half of the way there and took away two things from the experience:

1) New Mexico is very boring to drive through (until you get to mountains)

2) Driving a large van is not fun.

We eventually made it to a city called Alamogordo, NM. We met the NSO (National Solar Observatory) REU students at a BBQ place (not so great for a vegetarian). The NSO is based in Sunspot, NM- near where we would be staying for the next 4 nights. After eating dinner, we headed over to White Sands National Monument for the sunset. It was incredibly cool.

The sands are gypsum, from the surrounding mountain ranges. With time and much erosion the gypsum crystals forming in the basin wore down into the beautiful white sand dunes seen. Ken, the REU program director, had brought a few circular sleds with him. We waxed them up and then slid down the dunes! It was way more fun than it should have been. We then explored a bit and watched the beautiful sunset.

HEEEEELP!

Oh, I also got buried in the sand. :)

Then we went to our hotel, which was in Cloudcroft. Normally on this trip we stay with the NSO students up in Sunspot. Both of places are on Sacramento Peak, at about ~9500-10,000 feet. Sunspot is home to the NSO, as well as Apache Point Observatory (I'll get to that later), so only astronomers and those who work at the observatories actually stay in Sunspot. Well, apparently they had a lot of scientists up on the mountain this summer, so there wasn't enough room for us to stay there. :( Instead we crashed in Cloudcroft, at a really nice hotel, so I'm not really complaining.

The next morning I went for a nice run (and by nice, I mean elevation-breath-robbing), then we headed over to Sunspot (about 20 minutes from Cloudcroft) to celebrate the 4th with the NSO peeps. We spent the day playing games and generally just chilling out. All of the games were done in a tournament style, and I lost all of them (but ALMOST won bocce ball, in my defense).

Log toss. I lost (but looked cool).

Frisbee golf. I lost (but looked cool again).

Bocce ball. Vivienne (right) and I ALMOST won the tournament! 

Orange race. I lost.
And yes, those are oranges in panty hose tied around waists. Yup, astronomers are weird.

I didn't get to see any fireworks :( There were hardly any shows due to the fire danger across NM and AZ. But all in all, it was a very enjoyable Independence Day and I had the chance to meet lots of cool and friendly astronomers. It was nice to take a legitimate break and just spend the day relaxing.

More to come about the last half of the trip! Get ready for lots of boring descriptions of telescopes! :P

Fun with Jo and Jen (Dick and Jane?)

So, after the exciting Kitt Peak Adventures, Jenny came back to Tucson with me to stay a few days (this was planned before I even knew about Kitt Peak). She rented a car (YESSSS), so we could actually do things around Tucson, which was indescribably nice.

Can I take a moment to rant about Tucson real quick? Yes? You look forward to it gleefully? Ok.

Besides being as hot as an O star (ha, get it?...), Tucson is the most sparsely populated city I've ever seen. Ok, maybe not sparse. The population is very diffuse here. Wow, can you tell I've been doing science all day? Especially when I try to edit this like vi, and press $ to get to the end of a line. Ok, I PROMISE, I'm done with dumb astronomy jokes. The point is, Tucson is very spread out and feels very empty, even though it's not. There are more than half a million people here (Indy has ~million) but the population density is very low. So to do anything in this city, you need to have a form of transportation. While a bus pass will get many places, the buses here, for lack of a better word, SUCK. They are late, run infrequently, and stop running early in the night. Also, while I'm insulting the city of Tucson, can I also just say that the majority of people who ride the public bus look like:

1) Terrifying gangsters
2) Mentally insane people talking to themselves/hobos
3) Wary redheads trying to look as intimidating as possible

Anyways... I was talking about something before I started taking a crap on Tucson... Oh right, Jenny's stay here. She had a rental car, so we COULD actually do things in this city and the area. One thing we did was go to the Titan Missile Museum, located a bit south of Tucson. This was really cool, and very interesting to see the old missile site. They have the disarmed missile still in the underground facility. There were something like 30 of these underground facilities in the '60s but they disassembled all missiles but this one. We went on a tour of the site above ground, and also underground.

The 2 foot door to protect from nuclear attacks.

Everything was set on springs (including the floor!) to protect from the shock of any nuclear attacks.

Jenny got to simulate a missile launch! Here she is receiving a call from the president.

The missile!

We also went to Colossal Cave, which was pretty lame, and completely overpriced.

Cave bacon on the right! That was the only cool thing about this cave.

We went to the other REU students' apartments one night to have a little shindig as well. Lastly, we went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. So, everyone and their mom has told me to visit this place while in Tucson. Since it's a bit of a drive, Jenny and I left early in the morning to beat the heat. Well, when I heard the words 'Desert Museum' I figured this would be, you know, a museum, which I really don't think is unreasonable given it's in the name. It turns out it's not a museum at all. It's more like a zoo and wildlife center. It's practically all outdoors. You walk around to all the exhibits where they have animals/plants that are for the most part native to AZ. Amongst some of the things we saw...

Mineral collection... such vibrant colors!

Awww, coyote. Even though they're common, still cute! 

Hmmm, one of these is not like the other... :)

Javelina! They are a wild pig/rodent thing out here. I'm gifted with words.

AWWWWWW. Praire dog! :)

Rattlesnake!

A wild Jo on Tortoise.

The real thing.

Jenny as a tortoise.

It's Jojo! (not jojoba of course...)

I thought this was cute (besides the bees). 

The gila monster! 

There were lots more exciting animals that I'm too lazy to put pictures of/we didn't see. There was a neat walk-in aviary with birds and another one just for hummingbirds. There were 2 mountain lions, but when we went they were sleeping just out of view. We also saw Mexican wolves and lots and lots of cacti species. There was also an indoor reptile and bug room with lots of nasty crawly things like tarantulas, spiders, and scorpions.

It was also great to see Jenny! She is off to grad school at University of Colorado-Boulder soon to study astronomy, so that was probably the last time I see her for a while :( But the best of luck to you Jenny! Ho! Ho! A boojum!

Quote(s) of the Day

"I don't ned RAM, I just need... willpower."

-Nick Jimanez, REU student, after destroying the RAM on his computer.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steven: finder? i don't know finder well at all

 me: neither do I apparently

2:02 PM :(:(:( I just keep messing things up. I think I'll extract some spectra to feel better about myself

 Steven: haha

  that's a good solution :)

2:03 PM me: haha, literally!... no, not funny?

 Steven: haaaa

  i have a folder called sex on my computer

  and it has 8.3 GB in it

2:04 PM me: HAAAAAA

  hahaha

 Steven: it is, of course, for source extractor, commonly abbreviated "sex"

 me: I just laughed out loud and people are staring at me

 Steven: haha excellent

2:05 PM tell them "oh, just sex, you know"

 me: I love to use gsextract too.

  it's like a combination between sex and attract

 Steven: oo i didn't know there was a gnu version of sex

 me: oh, no it's gemini

 Steven: sounds great

  ohhhh

  double the fun

 me: haha

  hahahhaaa I just got that

 Steven: ok, this astronomy pun-fest needs to stop :P

 me: this just made my day

2:06 PM Steven: glad to participate
-Conversation between Steven J. and myself. Astronomy puns galore.

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!