Wow. How lame is it to update your blog with events that took place about 3 months ago? Actually, don't answer that. Get ready for a burst of posts.
In favor of my laziness, I will whirlwind you through some exciting times that I forgot to post about while in Arizona. First on the list is observing on Mt. Lemmon with a couple of UA students I met at Kitt Peak (funny how astronomy works...!) Actually, I already knew one of them from the AAS meeting in January, so that makes this whole "observing with strangers" thing less sketchy, right?
This story begins with Harry Potter, and seeing the movie at midnight. Actually, that has no influence on this post, but I thought I would include it regardless.The following Friday night, after a birthday sushi dinner with the other interns, I met the UA students in a shady alley in south Tucson (almost as bad as Detroit). OK, I'm kidding!!! But I did meet some strangers (I knew one) and together me and three other UA students headed up out of Tucson and into the surrounding mountain range en route to Mt. Lemmon which houses the UA telescopes. I'll spare you all the astronomy details, but we were observing exoplanets on the Steward Observatory (astronomy department at UA) Kuiper 61".
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| The 61" dome. |
We played a fair amount of Jenga, rummy, and boggle (I just want to very humbly point out that I won all of the above), as well as stargazing, coffee drinking, and watching youtube videos. Good times with good people (what astronomers aren't good people?!).
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| Jenga about to come down!!! Ruh-roh. |
Also, Kuiper was buried at the bottom of this telescope! The only indication of this is a rock at the base in tribute to a great astronomer.(I love parentheses today, it seems).
Quick astro plug, Kuiper is known for his discoveries of both a Uranus and Neptune satellite. He also founded the LPL at UA!! (Lunar and Planetary Lab, which does NOT like to associate itself with the "normal" astronomy dept- Steward... geez, astronomy drama) He helped select the landing sites for the Apollo missions, and is the namesake for which the Kuiper Belt is named after! A pretty rad dude in my book.
Anyway, I slept in a very... rustic dorm, woke up, explored the mountain a bit, and we eventually drove back down later that day! Wreaked enormous havoc on my sleep schedule- I had just gotten back to diurnal when I decided to go observing again... And made some new friends! :)
And now for some pictures! Enjoy.
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| Such a nice homey dorm building. |
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| DAY SLEEPERS (astronomers are zombies) |
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| The liquid nitrogen dewar... the tube froze solid in that position, just floating in the air! NEAT! |
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| We found this "Heistmobile". Astronomers are taking over the world!!! |
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| Not a bad view, eh? |
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| A monsoon dumps on the city of Tucson below. |
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| Hoodoos exist in Tucson too!!! Fun rock structure on the drive down the mountain. |
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