As part of the aforementioned “Astronomy Ironman”, we’re spending 3 nights at the Apache Point Observatory observing. Earlier tonight I went out with a couple other grad students and shot some star trails (thanks AJ for letting me use your camera!). I’ve uploaded the best shots to my flickr account. Click the link below to see the shots!
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Thursday, 8 November 2007
FOBOS Observing
Just got back from observing on the 40″ telescope at Fan Mountain using the FOBOS spectrograph. As you can tell, it’s late (early?)… We took spectra of a bunch of stars and will hope to classify them based on the elements we see emitting and absorbing light. I’ll post more on that once I’m into the lab analysis.
However, we did take some time and got spectra of the comet 17P/Holmes which is currently visible near Perseus. Unfortunately we didn’t get very good signal to noise as the comet has rather low surface brightness. However, perhaps we’ll see something interesting in the data!
Anyways, now it’s bedtime, so I can get up tomorrow and get everything together for Friday’s trip to the Southwest for more observing!
Friday, 2 November 2007
UVa Astronomy Ironman: 1 Week and Counting
Less than week until the UVa Astronomy Ironman begins… In the space of a week we’ll be visiting a few world-class telescopes, labs, and even doing some astronomical observing of our own. The list of places we’ll be visiting is quite impressive:
- Steward Observatory Mirror Lab
- Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)
- Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO)
- Very Large Array (VLA)
- Apache Point Observatory (APO)
It should be an awesome trip. I should have intermittent internet access and will attempt to post updates here. Pictures should be forthcoming. I have visited the VLA and KPNO before, so it’ll be great to go back. This time I’ll get actual tours and be able to see more stuff, which will be pretty sweet.
As usual, I’ll post a link if/when I have pictures online. Should be a great trip!
