SNOW !!!

Hey peeps

It's snowing !!!! It's been snowing for the last day or so as well. It started snowing at around 23:00 last night (30 August) and it continued to snow the entire night. I was so excited I didn't sleep much (I only went to be at around 4 this morning and woke up just after 9 again, I didn't want to miss out on the snow you see). It's been really cold too. If you have a look at the first two images below you will see that the temperature graphs for the night before and during the entire day today never went above 0 degrees. The wind has also been blowing the entire time at around 100 km/h. I've tried to take some photos of the snow, but they mostly turn out just white and the features I tried to photograph don't show up :( But, it's still snowing outside and when you walk outside there are some places where the snow in almost chest hight !!!

Enjoy the pics, and I hope you are all keeping fairly warm ...

Sutherland in photos

These are just some of the recent photos of Sutherland. I'll be adding many more of the next couple of days (seeing as it's cloudy again).

Adios

The Telescope Story Begins ...

Hey everyone

As expected, the dome of the telescope arrived on Monday and most of the day was spent setting up everything so that it could be completed the following day. The only thing was that it started snowing on Monday as well. And to make things even more difficult, the wind was well over 60 km/h. This made for a very cold combination. I was mostly standing around taking photos of the guys working on the rails for the roof to run on and every time I took my hands out of my pockets to take a photo, they would instantly freeze. Luckily the guys that were working had brought some gloves and warm clothing (they were warned before they arrived I suspect). So by Monday evening everything was in place to lift the roof onto the enclosure by Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday (26 August) turned out to be a very pleasant day. The temperatures started at around -4 degrees C by sunrise but by mid afternoon it was close to 10 degrees C. There was no wind to speak of (which is highly unusual for Sutherland) and not a single cloud in the sky, and this meant that the roof could be lifted without any troubles. The roof was finally lifted onto it's rails just before 5pm that evening and it seemed very anti-climactic. I though it was going to be a big struggle and a fight with the rails and the alignment of the wheels, but it turns out that all the hard work and preparation the day before meant that all ran very smoothly. To see the dome finally in it's position was something really exciting. I can now see exactly what the telescope is going to look like and I'm very excited to start working on the project.

Wednesday (27 August) saw the guys from "Windeul Ingenieurswerke" doing the final finishing touches on the roof. The motor to control the opening and closing of the dome was installed, the edges were rounded nicely, insulation added and rubbers fitted. All in all I was very impressed by the guys and their attention to detail on the project. They definately made sure that we were completely satisfeid with the final product.

Throughout the whole process I was taking many photos, almost 250 in 3 days :)
Attached is one that shows one of the pillars being lifted into place. The white streaks in the background is the snow I was talking about.

Cheers

Kwêla comes to visit

Hey everyone

I got some awesome news. I might be on TV !!! A film crew from the TV show Kwêla (on KykNet) was doing a short piece on what happens in Sutherland, and since I'm the only astronomer/astronomy student up here at the moment that speaks Afrikaans, they came to visit me in the 1.0m dome last night. I had a full interview with Lise Swart and I'm very excited about the possiblity of being on TV :)

The picture attached is the little message that Lise left just before they headed back down the mountain. I'll try and find out exactly when the the piece will be shown on TV and you can be sure that I'll be posting that information on here too.

Oh, as far as observing is going this week, not good at all. I've been here for 4 nights now and not a single one has been usefull. The weather forcasts aren't looking good either, some even predict snow for Wednesday next week.

Cheerio

Sutherland (again)?

Hey people

I find myself in Sutherland again. This time I'm doing absolutely nothing to do with exoplanets though. I'm helping my thesis supervisor and one of his collaborators by observing some objects that we need to find very accurate positions and velocities for. This project was initiated by NASA and we will be helping the Hubble Space Telescope to update its pointing software. Unfortunately it looks like the weather isn't playing along. It looks like a cold front is on the way and we even have rain predicted for the next couple of days.

Aside from this, the enclosure for the KELT South telescope seems to be coming along nicely. The man responsible for it all is here in Sutherland at the moment with me and he is hopeful that the dome of the little building will be installed on Monday (25 August). I'll be taking lots of photos and will post some here soon.

Bye bye