Bad News

I got an email from the people in USA saying that the telescope that we will be building in Sutherland has been delayed by a week (and so it starts). This means that we will only start on the project in September and not at the end of August as we had hoped.

This prompted my supervisor here in South Africa to "design" a backup plan in case the telescope will not be completed by the time I need to hand in my thesis next year. This "backup" plan/project will run concurrently with the telescope deployment, which means for the first six months of my M.Sc degree I will be doing twice as much work as I should. This will ensure that I will at least have one thesis ready to hand in by the middle of next year.

It's going to be a tough time for me ....

No work and all play ....

Last night turned out to be quite serious, the wind was gusting up to 120 km/h last night. The people that live here on site told us that this is the worst wind they have ever experienced. All this meant that I didn't get to open the telescope dome again and so lost an entire night of observing :(

I'm on my way back to Cape Town now. It's been a really good week. I didn't get as much work done as I would have liked, but at least I'm feeling like I've had a small little holiday.

See you soon

The Last (K)Night

It's my last night up here tonight and I'm actually sad to be going home tomorrow. The night started out kinda nice. The wind was blowing slightly (at around 30 km/h or so), but soon turned ugly. At the moment the wind is howling outside at around 80 km/h again, and it's only 1 hour since I started :( At least I got some good data for the start of the night. I'm going to stay in the dome for the moment, the wind might die down again and I need to take a couple more data points at the end of the night. The entire dome is vibrating in the wind. It's kinda scary, I still have to srive down the mountain too. :(

Anyway, I'll keep you informed.

Snow?

Nope, none, nada. It was cold enough for snow, it got down to -2 degrees last night, but it didn't snow :( Unfortunately I wasn't in the cold. I was sitting watching the clouds and mist all night from the comforts of the Hostel Library.

Tonight looks like the best night to observe since I've been here. There is absolutely no wind and the atmosphere looks really stable. The stars outside are brilliantly bright and they are not even twinkling :) This is good news for astronomers. The less twinkling the less turbulent the atmosphere and the better the image quality. Not that I'm actually taking images of the stars, but some of the other people on the hilltop are. All I'm doing is "catching" and "counting" the number of photons from a particular star.

Anyway, it's back to work for me. I'll post some more stuff tomorrow :)

Bad Nights

I think I spoke to loudly and the universe heard me. Last night was no good for observing, we had scattered clouds all over the place and watching your target star disappear before your eyes makes astronomy a very hard thing to do. Tonight is even worse. At the moment of writing this entry the temperature outside is about 4 degrees and the clouds have really decided to roll in. I'm actually hoping for some snow, but the locals are telling me that it is still far to warm for snow. It will rain, and we might even get some sleet, but it's still too humid for snow :(

So tonight I will be spending most of my time playing around on my computer. Some "administration" on the file system is what's needed.

I'll keep you informed on the snow question. Stay warm people, cause it sure ain't warm here :)

PS. The attached photo is my attempt at HDR. Let me know what you think.

Good Nights

The last two nights were actually pretty good. The astronomers that have been up here in Sutherland for the last 2 weeks have confirmed that this has been the longest run of good nights so far, so I guess I arrived at exactly the right time :)

The picture on the side of this blog shows the weather output from SALT. There you can see that the whole of last night was at around 7 degrees, nice and toasty :) And don't think the "warm room" inside the telescope dome is actually warm. It's one of those obscure astronomer jokes.

I took a trip down to the new Recreation Center that was completed recently and I must say that it is pretty awesome. There's a climbing wall, basketball court, indoor braai with pooltable and big screen tv, fully stocked gym, and a squash court !! In Sutherland !! That's cool. I'll upload the photos to my facebook profile soon (or see if I might be able to post them here some time).

Adios

Observing Time

So the wind died down just enough for me to be able to do some work last night. I managed to get some good data (I think, we'll have to see once it is reduced). I did have to stop slightly early though because the wind started to blow again at some strength. When I closed up the dome the wind was gusting at around 80 km/h and when I finally managed to pack up all my stuff the wind was around 100 km/h. And let me tell you that driving a small little Palio in that kind of wind was scary enough ...

Tonight looks much better for observing, little wind and it's going to be very cold. It's already 8 degrees (Celsius) and it's only 20:00 !! But I'm looking forward to it. Bring on the cold, I've got my jacket and beanie.

Stay cool peeps

Sutherland Again

So I'm back in Sutherland, not working on the project I told you about in the last post. I'm actually doing some observations for people at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany at the moment. I'm following up on a possible planet candidate around a very young star.

It's the first night here and the wind is blowing at around 80 km/h at the moment which means that I can't actually do some observing tonight. But the weather forecast looks good and hopefully I'll get some observing done tomorrow night.

First Post

Hey everyone

This is the first post in a line of many (I hope). Over the next few weeks and months I will be sharing all the joys (and pains) of setting up a robotic telescope in Sutherland, South Africa (possibly the coldest place in the entire country, and I dare say entire African continent).

Chat again soon