I’ve been spending a lot of time this week working on a pilot study of quasars. My advisor and I had some observing time on the ARC 3.5m telescope at Apache Point Observatory. Our 2nd half night was Thursday morning from 3-7am. It was fairly brutal in terms of not-sleeping. However, it did yield mostly good weather. We teamed up with another faculty member to share the time, so we hopped between quasars and massive young stars. Quite a range in objects. Some things as close as 6000 light years, and some as far as 30 billion light years!
Because we were observing in the near infrared, we can work until closer to sunrise. I was just starting the final calibration observations as people were coming into work. It’s always weird to be going home as everyone else is just coming into work.
With these observations, I now have data on three quasars. The data ranges in quality to almost totally useless to fairly good. I’ll start working on reducing the data here soon. Should be fun!
Observing last night ended up so-so… Closed for the first hour or two of the night, we finally opened. Only to discover we couldn’t slew to the source! We spent lots of time trying to determine the source of the issue, finally learning it was the instrument rotator limits. Eventually we made our way over to the correct portion of the sky and were able to take calibration data on an A0V star. After that, we moved over to a Quasar selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and began taking data. About halfway through, the telescope operator informed us that the weather had turned sour and the dome needed to be closed.. All in all, we got roughly 15 minutes of integration on the quasar. Not as much as hoped, but perhaps enough to make an initial evaluation of the science case.
Dust and clouds are keeping the dome closed right now… Myself and two faculty members here at UVa have a half night of observing time on the 3.5m telescope at Apache Point Observatory. Unfortunately, it’s monsoon season in the southwest, so clouds are circling and the dust count is too high to open the dome. We’ve got just under 3 more hours left, so we’ll see if things improve. The dust count is on the way down, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed!
I’ve started a personal challenge/goal in the arena of photography. I plan to take a picture of something interested or aesthetically pleasing at least once a day. My goal with this is to improve my photography by forcing myself to be more creative in getting interesting shots, even from scenes I see every day. The first shot is of a house near the Astronomy Department. I liked the little fence and the walkway leading the eye towards the door…
I’ve created a set on flickr to house my daily photograph entries. I’ll post especially interesting ones here, but there should be a daily addition to the set linked below:
Daily Photograph on Flickr
Or, if you prefer an RSS feed, there’s one for the set here.
Late last night I returned from a weekend trip to Chicago. We had a family get-together to visit Peter, who is working at GE this summer. In addition to general sightseeing, we went to the planetarium, saw “Wicked”, and watched the Cubs beat the Giants at Wrigley Field. It was a fun weekend. I’ve put a few pictures below, but there’s many more at the link later on..
Chicago – 10-13 July 2008 – a set on Flickr
I spent 4th of July weekend in Washington DC. Even got to see the fireworks at the National Mall! Was quite good, and I managed to get some nice shots. Check more of them out in the 4th of July set on Flickr.
