I had a nice relaxing weekend here in Charlottesville. My parents were in town for my Dad’s Darden Class reunion and it was great to spend time with them. We went to the UVa Astronomy Department’s public night at McCormick Observatory on Friday and got to look through the telescopes up there. The Clark 26″ telescope was trained on Saturn. The rings were clearly visible along with 5 moons. It almost looked like a picture!
Yesterday was the Astronomy Department picnic at Fan Mountain. It was nice to relax in the sun and enjoy good food and good company. Sprinkles of rain starting coming towards the end so it was good timing.
My parents headed out this morning, back to Idaho. So now it’s back to work for me. There’s two weeks of classes left, then finals, and then summer! I’m anxious to finish classes so I can get back to doing research. With the workload now, research has all but ceased. I have plenty of research related work, but it’ll have to wait for summer unfortunately.
As far as school goes, I have a few major projects left before the end of the semester, and one more problem set. By this Wednesday my model atmosphere of an 8 solar mass star should be completed. This model includes ionization of hydrogen and helium atoms in the atmosphere of the star, as well as doing simple radiative transfer. The code is quite involved, but very instructive.
The other project (which hasn’t been well defined yet) is for the Optical/IR Instrumentation class. It will likely involve putting together and testing a single-pixel detector. Also quite involved, but should be quite interesting!
Right now, I’m taking my final break before starting to work again… the 2008 Paris-Roubaix bike race is on TV, and I’m watching the carnage. The cobblestones are taking their toll and there’s been lots of crashes so far. Quite an intense race. Unfortunately it’s tape-delayed at least a week, so I already know the results. But, should be exciting to watch the action anyways!
