I have written a bit about observing at various telescopes, most recently being my 4 night run at the Steward Observatory Bok 90″ Telescope. You might wonder what I (and other astronomers) actually do while observing, where we actually are while the telescope is staring up the sky.
The days of being near the telescope are pretty much over for scientific observing at large observatories. Most observing doesn’t look like this anymore (in addition to the fact that this photo is staged: light are on!):
Nowdays the astronomer (and frequently a telescope operator) sit in a control room which is thermally isolated from the telescope. In the case of the Bok 90″ and most older telescopes the control room is inside the dome and near the telescope. However in some cases, the control room is in a separate building! Here is a picture from inside the Bok control room where you can see the back of the telescope through the open window in the upper right. The window is of course closed while we’re observing.
Modern telescopes can be controlled via specialized computer software which can point the telescope and run the various instruments. So control rooms will have multiple computers to run the telescope, acquire data, and analyze that data. There is also frequently a telescope operator employed by the observatory who’s job is to operate the telescope. This can involve moving the telescope from target to target, focusing the telescope, and troubleshooting. The operator will have their own desk and set of computers to manage this task.
(Note: I have uploaded a few pictures to flickr which show the control room. I encourage you to click on the images and go to the flickr page. There are notes on the images showing which computers do which tasks.)
At the Bok 90″, this is the telescope observer’s area:
Here’s a close-up view of the telescope control desk (no smoking, unlike Edwin Hubble in the picture above):
Since the telescope pointing and control is taken care of by the telescope operator, this leaves the running of the scientific instruments to the observing astronomer (me!). In my case, I am using a camera to image several galaxies I am studying. In the observer’s area of the control room there are two computers: one for controlling the instrument and one for looking at the data from the camera.
So while observing, I use the left-most computer to open the shutter on the camera and take an image. That image is then downloaded to the computer next to it (the one with 2 monitors), where I can view it and analyze it enough to verify its quality. For most of the night the observer will sit at those computers, taking and analyzing data.
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