If you saw my twitter posts this morning, you might have caught some of the observing I was helping out with. As part of the continuing study of the jet-gas interaction in a Seyfert galaxy, my advisor and I noticed a possible companion galaxy. The companion is about 40 arcseconds away in projection, so it is close enough to be a potential source of gravitational interaction with the host of the Seyfert nuclei.
It is widely thought that galaxy-galaxy interactions and mergers are a major channel for the triggering of nuclear star formation and accretion onto supermassive black holes (sparking AGN activity). The Seyfert galaxy we have been studying shows signs of having undergone a recent interaction. The only problem is, we don’t know if the possible companion is actually associated, or if it is a background galaxy!
Because most galaxies are moving away from us due to the expansion of the Universe, we can use the doppler effect to learn about how fast a galaxy is moving away from us. If it is not gravitationally associated with the local collection of galaxies, we can use that velocity to determine a distance.
This morning, two first year grad students at UVa spent ~3 hours observing the companion galaxy in an effort to measure the redshift due to its recession. They are out in New Mexico as part of a trip to visit various telescope facilities UVa has access to, and to become trained on the 3.5m telescope at Apache Point Observatory. (I went on the same trip 2 years ago as well: Astronomy Ironman).
I tuned in this morning to watch the observations (which I can do over the internet, using some special software developed for the telescope). They did a great job observing and we got some data on the galaxy. It is a faint galaxy, so it will take a bit of work to test our hypothesis that it is at the same distance as our Seyfert, but we definitely see the companion in our data, so that’s good!
We called it quits on observing just as the sun rose here in Charlottesville. Clouds and wind in New Mexico kept us from even opening the dome. Now, had we been observing in the radio…
Wait, that’s the next observing run… In a little over a week I will be in Green Bank, WV to do some looking for neutral hydrogen (H I) in some active galaxies. Fortunately, that is much less susceptible to weather conditions. I’ll definitely be posting regarding that. But now it’s bedtime. Let’s see if I can get there before the Sun is up!
I’m back in Cville after almost a week in Idaho. I spent 4 straight days skiing, mostly with excellent snow. It was great to see family and ski with them.
I am about done unpacking from my trip, and the first load of laundry is just about done too. Glamorous eh?
I have an observing run at APO starting in less than 2 hours, so I’ll be heading into work in a bit to get set up. The weather is looking quite poor, with the satellite loop showing a stationary cloud over the observatory. It’d be great if it cleared up, but I’ll be kinda surprised if that happens. We shall see I guess..
As you can see from the post time, it is almost 6am. Having been up since before 1am, I am sitting in the conference room staring at a looping radar image showing a small cloud which has been sitting over Apache Point Observatory all night. So far all of the calibration files have been taken for the observations, but the dome hasn’t opened. Heavy snow yesterday afternoon combined with fog have kept things shut down.
I was hoping to observe more quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey tonight, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. Oh well, that’s life I guess… Have another half night coming up in March. Hopefully that will be more successful.
The sleep cycle for the last 24 hours has been a bit interesting. I went to bed last night at 9pm. Slept until 1:30am, then got up and went into work to do a half-night of remote observing on the APO 3.5m telescope. We had very nice weather, although quite a lot of variety in “seeing”. In the 4 hours alotted, my advisor and I observed several high-redshift quasars and some Seyfert Galaxies. We wrapped up our observing program at about 8am Charlottesville time. The Apollo Lunar Ranging Progam was set to go next, so they had the last hour of the night.
Ordinarily, we would take calibration data following the end of our run, but since there was another observing program at the end, we had to wait until after they had finished to do wavelength and illumination calibration for the spectrograph. We could have done it before their program, but we would have lost ~45 minutes of observing time, so instead we waited until morning.
Taking calibration data wrapped up around 9:30am, after which I proceeded directly to my office and went to sleep on the sofa. My officemates began to filter in for the next hour or so, occasionally commenting on the “body on the sofa”. I finally roused myself just before 11am and went to work. Fortunately, my day today was fairly light, with a “Compact Objects” discussion session (“Compact Objects” refers to things such as X-ray binaries, neutron stars, black holes, and the like) and the High Energy Astrophysics class.
I headed home at 6, having consumed near 2L of Mountain Dew since 5am in my efforts to stay awake. Figuring it would be futile to attempt to work, I got into bed around 7, and slept for an hour and a half.
Quite an interesting sleep cycle eh? ~6 hours in 3 blocks. 
