Getting excited... and starting packing!

[happy-kat]

What a trip :-D

[Helen]

(IP: 86.185.89.205) ·  · 

Posted Monday at 22:16 · Report post

Part 2:

Mount Lemmon Sky Centre, @ altitude of 9,157 foot (and it felt like it!)

This part of the trip was always likely to be the most enjoyable - we had rented a 32 inch scope for 2 nights .

The SkyCentre is run by Adam Bock and does loads of public outreach work - with sessions just about every night the weather permits.  We were staying on site and using the scope once the public had left at 9:30.

The accommodation was school trip dormitory style!  Ex army camp, and little changed since then.  We did have our own rooms as there were only 5 of us, but there was a shared bathroom and separate communal shower (with signs on the door to allow single sex usage!!!!).  There were 2 technical hitches though - no heating in the bathroom or shower and no hot water    We did find on day 2 that there was one fully functional shower in the learning centre, so we queued

Adam Block did an overview session for us first to introduce us to ACP telescope control and writing scripts.  We then had a tour of the scope and dome, before we wrote the necessary scripts to gather the data we wanted on the supernova in NGC 521 (the one we'd been observing at MMT), some colour data on NGC 4151, and to switch back and forth between two eclipsing binary systems to allow us to produce light curves of the transits.

 

By the time it was dark it was very cold (there was still snow on the ground) and the wind was quite strong.  Any idea I had of just setting up a camera and leaving it on time lapse went by the board!

When we got to the obs and the camera replaced the eyepiece Adam started to fire up the pc etc.  A very encouraging thing then occurred...... Adam couldn't get the camera to connect   and he ended up under the desk getting at the usb!!! (so it happens to even expert imagers!)

It did get working though and we then decamped to the warm room (well warmer) for Adam to set us up to run remotely

We got some decent data before packing up at 5am.

Night 2 was less successful   A howling gale and a mostly cloudy sky killed our very carefully planned observing runs.  In the end all we managed was Jupiter, as it was bright enough to see through the clouds!  We started with subs of 0.001 through a Ha filter, and ended with 1s subs just to see anything.  We did see a shadow transit and the GRS, so it wasn't a total waste.  We had to abort when the wind neared 30mph - the dome was making some scary noises by then!

It was great to be able to use the big scope and get some decent data  , and to talk to and work with Adam Block  (the pictures around the centre were awesome!)

We left for our last destination..... Kitt Peak :smile:

Helen

[Adrian Condon]

Hi Helen,

Glad you enjoyed the trip...

Trust you will be happy to give a talk at the next SGL meeting at Lucksall.... I have booked my place!!!!

Well Done.

Adrian

[Helen]

Thanks for the kind comments all   will do the last installment in a couple of days (assignments to do first  wasn't all play )

Helen