Due to last night’s derailleur excitement, I’m on the hunt for a fix. I basically have two options: new pulleys or a new derailleur. Initially, I was going to opt for the second option as it would only be slightly more expensive and I might be able to upgrade components. So I trekked over to the bike shop… and they didn’t have anything I could use in stock! So it looks like I’ll be returning to the pulley idea…
So until I can get the pulleys and screws I need to fix it, I’m switching back to the P.3 for commuting. I had knobby tires on it, but just switched them out for an urban tire with less tread and more tire pressure. It won’t be quite as fast as a road bike, but it should do just fine.
My commute generally involves a nice ~5mile ride home from the Astronomy building. I ride different bikes depending on which ones are working and so on. I’d just finished rebuilding my Giant OCR3, which has been out of action for the past few months awaiting much needed upgrades. I’d taken her for a spin around the neighborhood a couple times and everything seemed fine. I even rode it into work yesterday morning.
Then on the way home last night, the chain started skipping around and I wasn’t able to pedal. I stopped to take a look at the bike and see what was was going on (naturally, this happened at the bottom of the long hill I climb at the end of the ride 
). Turns out one of the pulleys in the rear dérailleur was completely gone! It had come off somewhere along the way.
So, I had two options: turn my bike into a single speed for the rest of the ride home, or walk. As I was close to home and a chain is ~$30, I opted to walk/coast home. I managed to make it home fairly quickly all things considered. But, once again, I’m down to my mountain bike as the only working bike.
Each year RIT’s Center for Intercollegiate Recreation and Activities publishes a brochure about the program. This Center covers everything from Sports to Intermurals to Wellness classes. Also included in this is the “Interactive Adventures” program which runs the Red Barn climbing gym (where I used to climb). A picture of me ice climbing during one of the classes offered at RIT was featured on the cover of the 2007-2008 brochure! See below for a picture of the cover. I’m in the upper right (the only one doing something in cold weather )
I promised a writeup on “Speckle Interferometry”, and here it is! (or part of it at least). I’m midway through the lab, so there’ll likely be another part later, with more examples of actual observations and analysis.
Most everyone has looked at the stars and noticed they “twinkle”, getting slightly brighter and fainter. This is due to the Earth’s atmosphere. When viewed from space, the stars won’t twinkle. If you’ve ever seen a pile of leaves hit by the wind, the leaves take off and swirl around in seemingly random directions. This turbulence caused by the atmosphere is what makes the stars twinkle. This same turbulence can reduce the resolution of astronomical observations by smearing out the light form a star or a galaxy. If you’ve ever looked at an object across a hot patch of asphalt, you’ve experienced this before.. The turbulent air over the road makes the image appear wavy. The same thing happens with observations of the stars.
Speckle interferometry is a way to try and beat the effects of the turbulent atmosphere…
(more…)
Zombie mode pretty much sums up today. That and caffeine. Most of the grad students here are dragging today after spending almost the entire last night observing. Starting at around 21:00, we stayed at the telescope until 4:30 the next morning. Most of us saw constellations that rose in the evening set before we went to bed.
We were doing a “Speckle Interferometry” lab for the observational astronomy class. This involves taking many short exposures of stars in an effort to characterize the turbulence in the atmosphere. We have all the data we need (finally, after 3+ nights at the telescope, being thwarted by clouds), and I’ll start the analysis soon. Once I’m into the data reduction, I’ll be writing up a description of it in more detail.
Yesterday I took a group of fellow astronomy students (and a few significant others) to a crag outside Harrisonburg, VA. We left Charlottesville around 8:30, arriving at the crag around 10.
We set up 3 ropes on a variety of climbs (Undercling Fling (5.7), Warmup Crack (5.5), Bucketland (5.5) and Lil’ Bubba (5.9)). After a quick review/instruction of belaying, we started climbing around 10:30. Everyone was able to hop on all three of the ropes and give them a try. And, everyone made it to the top of at least one climb!
As the day went on, it got a bit warmer, but usually we were sheltered from the sun by the cliffs and trees, so temperatures were pretty bearable. Other climbers showed up later and set up their own ropes at other areas of the cliffs. After about six hours of climbing, we headed back to Cville.
Pictures from the climbing trip are online: Hidden Rocks – Harrisonburg, VA on Flickr
One of the great things about RIT was the on-campus climbing gym. I spent many a night there climbing, training, and hanging out. Until last night, I hadn’t found anything similar in Charlottesville. There is a climbing gym, but it is supposedly very over priced and not very good. So I’ve been holding off on dumping money into that.
Last night I went to a bouldering area about 20 minutes outside of Cville. It was great! While there are only a few smallish boulders (nothing compared to the Niagara Glen), it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, not having bouldered since May, my fingers were quite weak and soft. I managed to slice two finger tips open on holds! My fingers are a bit sore today, which should make climbing tomorrow interesting. But it was great to get out!
I’ve made my first break into travel guide photography! 
A picture I took of Camel’s Back Park during this past spring break has been selected by Schmap Travel Guides to be included in their Boise Travel Guide (3rd Edition). My picture of the park can be seen in the upper right by going here.
Of course, I’m not paid anything for the picture, but do get photo credit, so that’s cool.
After 5 years in college, I’m finally about to embark on my first “real” school vacation. RIT never celebrated any holidays (nevermind starting classes on Labor Day! =-o ). UVa however, gives us 2 “reading days” for Columbus Day and the day after. I’m planning on taking advantage of it by going mountain biking for a morning, but most of the time will be spent doing research. It’ll be nice to have a break from homework so I can get some research done.
I’m starting to learn more about my research here. I don’t know details and I don’t yet have the real data, but basically what I’ll be doing is studying interactions between the radio jets and the ambient gas in Seyfert galaxies. Basically, Seyferts are galaxies with a black hole that’s actively swallowing gas. However, unlike radio galaxies, Seyferts don’t have strong radio emission. They do show weak emission and low power jets, but not nearly as strong as their radio-loud counterparts.
So I’ll be using data from the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the physical conditions of the gas in the galaxy. I’ll go into more detail later, but basically this involves comparing the amount of light emitted by various elements in various states. Data will also come from the Very Large Array. This will enable me to measure properties of the radio jet and compare them with the information derived from the optical HST data.
I’ll be posting more detailed information about the methods I’ll be using once I get acquainted with the data.
