Adventures at Kitt Peak aka Sunset Gallery

From July 22-27, I was at Kitt Peak, observing on the 2.1m! Unfortunately, this time of year is monsoon season in the southwest... :( We were clouded out 3/5 nights I was at the scope. The 2.1m was the only telescope open on the mountain, because everyone else does maintenance this time of year... THEY know it's crappy weather... We got to open twice though, and I even got to take some spectra of some AGN! :) I didn't take a lot of photos, except of the sunsets I saw. The best will be posted here, so get ready for a barrage of sunsets!

The first three nights I was there we used FLAMINGOS (some long acronym for Florida something infrared something). It was a grism, so you could do both spectroscopy (my favorite! lines that go up and down) and photometry (pretty pictures). All these nights were cloudy/rainy so we never got to open the dome and take data :( Whatever did the astronomers do instead?

Well, we watched Contact, Land Before Time, played lots of cards, looked at cute kitty pictures, played the Pokemon card game, watched storms roll over the mountains, studied for the GRE, read books, and walked to the cafeteria to eat cookies. Yeah. Astronomy rules.

What did I do during the day? SLEPT of course! When I went up to the mountain in June with Jenny, Eric and Con, I was utterly unprepared for the nocturnal life, so I remedied that this time. I spent the few days before I was headed up to the mountain slowly adjusting myself to staying up late. It worked well, and I had no trouble turning nocturnal!

My schedule for FLAMINGOS days was: wake up at ~2 or 3pm, wander around the mountain entertaining myself, fill the 12-hour liquid nitrogen dewar at 4 (keeps the telescope electronics cold to reduce noise!), eat "dinner" at 5, head back to the telescope at 7 to fill the 24-hour dewar, watch the sunset, then wait in sadness for the skies to clear up... For the last 2 nights I was there we used GoldCam (literally, gold), an optical spectrograph. Things cleared up these nights, so I got to take some pretty spectra of some X-ray sources (hopefully AGN!).

So excited to fill the dewar with liquid nitrogen!

We kept having problems starting with GCam: the telescope ran away twice (meaning, it started moving on its own, and wouldn't stop moving until we pressed the big red emergency button...) and our HeNeAr (helium neon argon) lamp burnt out :( Without taking spectra of the lamp, something that we know what the emission lines are supposed to look like, it's very difficult to calibrate the wavelength scale of spectra taken of science objects. But all in all, we got use-able data, but not much of it due to calibration issues and off and on clouds.

Phil and Nick in front of the WIYN 3.5m (where I observed last time!)

Not a bad view, huh? :)

Finally opening the dome!!!!! :)

Notable activities while on the mountain:
-Went running a couple times. Probably the worst idea I've ever had. Nowhere to go on the top of a mountain but down, and of course, BACK UP.
-Found a rec room that is in an old army bunker. It had pool tables, snacks, and a huge TV loaded with home-recorded VHS tapes.
-Randomly ran into the NAU (Northern Arizona University) REU students (the REU I did last year!!!!) and showed them around the mountain. One of them is from IU!
-Met some University of Arizona students who showed me the 90" telescope they were using. One of them almost got struck by lightning when we were standing on the catwalk!
-Said UA students invited me to go observing with them on Mt. Lemmon, about 1 hour from east of Tucson.
-For the first time of my life, WON A GAME OF POOL.
-Had a guitar jam session on the 2.1m catwalk at 4 in the morning.

Now, enjoy lots of sunsets from the 2.1m catwalk! :)

Night 1... rainbow!

Enjoying the sunset :)

Night 1.

Night 3...

Night 4... (4m telescope in foreground!) 

Night 5. WIYN telescopes in foreground.

Night 5. Smooth and uninteresting sunset = observing tonight!

Cali Or Bust!

Ok, ignore the ridiculous delay it took to post this. I've been on nocturnal schedule for over a week and it has been putting me behind in just about everything. More about that later though! For now, my trip to...

California! It started with a long 8-hour car ride with James, another summer intern. His destination was LA while mine was Irvine, to visit my dear friend Elaine! Once with her, we planned on tripping down to San Diego to visit Eric, who just graduated from IU and is going to grad school at UCSD. After leaving work early, we began the long and dry excursion across 500 miles of I-10, all the way from Tucson to LA.

Wind Farm in Palm Springs, CA on the way to LA.

We arrived in LA around 9pm or so, and went straight through to Manhattan Beach to pick up James' friend (whom he was visiting). James then drove me down to Irvine and dropped me off at Elaine's apartment. Hooray! :)

I suppose I should preface this story with the fact that the weekend we decided to visit LA and the surrounding area was the infamous Carmaggedon event that you've surely heard about. And I'm sure you also heard that nothing really came out of it since everyone stayed off the roads. Lucky for me!

Anyways, the next morning after sleeping in a bit, Elaine and I headed to the Irvine train station and took a train down the coast to San Diego.

The view from the train, stopped at a stain on the way to SD.

The train ride was really nice, and followed the coast all the way down to SD. Once there, Eric and his girlfriend Tess came by and picked us up. We explored the shorefront for a bit before sitting down to eat at a seafood joint on the pier. It was pretty scenic. :)

Elaine, me, and Eric! :)

After eating, we took the bridge over to Coronado Island (the bridge behind us in the photo above!). Coronado Island is a totally snooty and rich place. It was entertaining enough watching all the posh houses fly past the window.

Nice house on the beach. Not a bad life...

We headed down to  the beach, which was huge! The Pacific was pretty cold, especially since we were there in the latter part of the day. It was still lots of fun and nice to see water for once.

Elaine, Eric and Tess!

Next we went over to La Jolla, where Eric lives. We went to La Jolla beach to watch the sunset. To say it was nice is an understatement.

La Jolla beach sunset with surfers.

Afterwards we went to the Pacific Beach strip (I think? there are too many beaches) for dinner and exploring. It's a trendy little area where all the 20-somethings go. Lots of eclectic shops, bars and restaurants. We ate dinner then took a quick stroll down Pacific Beach (what a generic name). Then we went to Eric's apartment and sat on the porch for good company :) 

Elaine and I spent the night at Eric's, then headed back to Irvine on the train. Incidentally, our train turned out to kill someone. We still don't know how or who it was (suicide or accident on the tracks?), but it delayed us a few hours and is just bizarre. Go figure that the one time I take a CA train... But anyway, we got back to Irvine where James picked me up again and we repeated the long Tucson-LA journey once more! All in all, a great weekend spent with my good friends in California. 

PS- I'm officially in love with that state!

Linky

Here are some neat stories I've heard on NPR recently.

How the most popular fruit, the Cavendish banana, is being threatened by disease:
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/138610585/yes-we-do-have-bananas-for-now

(I love that they call the Cavendish, America's banana, the 'hotel banana'!)

How cursive handwriting is often not being taught in elementary schools anymore:
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-07-28/handwriting-digital-age

Quote of the Day

"I love you more than fat eric loves a hotdog with bacon and fish on it. ♥"

-Elaine S., who has my heart forever

Life in Arizona

I just stumbled across this old post I never published... a bit old news, but here :P This blog serves just as much as a journal for me as it does for you, so I'm still going to post it!
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Some random happenings in my life recently...

Went and saw Rush in Phoenix with two of the other REU students, Vivienne and Phil. This was the same tour/show that I saw last August in St. Louis, but it was just as freakin' amazing as it was then.

Had a pool party at NOAO astronomer Katie's house. She and her husband (I'm blanking on his name, but he works at NOAO as well) are wonderful, nice people. They have a pool party every year for the REU students. It was a nice escape from the Tucson heat.

After the pool party, that evening we all piled into the NOAO van and headed to the Desert Museum. Even though I had already been there with Jenny, this was also exciting because we went in the evening. Animals Jenny and I didn't see before were out, and we also got to find scorpions with UV flashlights!!! It was great, and I even saw a momma scorpion with dozens of babies on her back.

Me and 3 other REU's, Vivienne, Phil and Morgan (can you tell who the dweebs are in the group?) saw all 3 Lord of the Rings extended edition movies in the local theater. IT. WAS. EPIC. (and long)

I feel like I've done more things, but I guess not... but in the meantime, get ready for a booty-licious post in the future...

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(I wonder what booty-licious post I was referring to....?)