Brian York's Life

Observing I will go

Written on June 19, 2008

I’m writing this from the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), which is one of a number of telescopes located at the top of an extinct volcano on the island of La Palma (home also of the city of Santa Cruz de La Palma, not to be confused with Santa Cruz de Tenerife (on a nearby island) or Las Palmas on Gran Canaria (another nearby island)). As you may have guessed, (1) La Palma is one of the Canary islands (Spanish colonial possessions just north-west of Africa), and (2) getting a plane ticket here required many interesting conversations with travel agents.

At the moment, it’s 4 AM on my first ‘day’ of observing, and I’ll be able to go back to the Residencia and sleep somewhere between 6:30 and 8:00 AM (it’s a bit of a drive back, on which more later). I’ve been up since 9 or 10 AM ‘yesterday’, so I’m starting to feel it, especially since the same thing happened (sort-of) the day before, and I’m not only expected to be awake but also to think coherently (at the moment, I should be working on an essay, but it’s all I can do to write a journal entry coherently). Of course, the professor who wants the essay is the same person who sent me here, so I have a pretty good excuse for being a bit late handing it back.

Yesterday (well, April 14-15, and it’s now early on the 17th in my time zone), I travelled from Vancouver to Amsterdam, (10 hours plus 2.5-hour layover), from Amsterdam to Madrid (2.5 hours plus 2.5-hour layover) (both on KLM) and from Madrid to La Palma (3 hours) (on Iberia, and I can only say never again will I take Iberia), and considering that I had to be up ~5 hours before my flight left, that’s another ~25-hour day for me (after getting here I had a 1.5-hour car ride (36km along and 2500m up from sea level) after a nice 1-hour wait in the airport, then supper, then getting ready for the observing I’d be doing today. Oh yes, and the 8-hour time difference (which was 9 hours while I was in Amsterdam and Madrid). Tired doesn’t even begin to describe things right now.

So far, the weather here has been cold (~-1 degrees, although it’s about 20-22 degrees down at sea level), cloudy (mostly below us, but we’ve also been inside the clouds), wet (see cloudy), and windy (as much as 70 km/h), which doesn’t really make the narrow mountain roads any safer. It’s a bit of a drive between the Residencia and the observatory too, and I’m just glad that I’m not making it.

Tonight, twilight ended (and the real observing, as opposed to standard stars) began at 10:00 PM (sunset was at around 8:45 PM, so that’s when we went up to the telescope), but it was cloudy until almost midnight, so we missed the first two hours or so of our observations. The seeing has also been crappy all night, so we’ve needed more time than expected for everything (seeing is the size that a point source will be smeared out into, and 1” (1 arc-second) is about standard, while 0.5” is good and over 1” is bad). We’ve had between 2.5-3.5” of seeing all night, which really sucks. So far, no confirmed DLAs either.

Oh, that reminds me, what am I looking for? Well, we have a sample of 17 radio-loud QSOs (Quasi-Stellar Objects, or Quasars) at redshifts of more than 2.5, and we’re looking for big absorption dips (Damped Lyman-alpha systems or DLAs) in them so that we can then observe the DLA at 21cm (looking for cold neutral hydrogen, to find the temperature of the system). So no DLAs is not especially good news, although it’s also to be expected at with the conditions we’ve had).

All told, what a day. And I have two more before I spend (another) two days flying back. Parts of astronomy are fun, parts are nasty. This is, at least during the learning phase, one of the nasty parts. At least I have some experienced help (Max Pettini, one of my collaborators on the project), and a really good telescope operator and (early this evening) support astronomer. Good weather or not, it’s been really interesting. And I have had one revelation — U2 makes good background music when you’re staying up all night operating a big telescope on the top of an extinct volcano. Not an earth-shattering revelation, but at least it’s something. I’ve also learned that, frustrations aside, I really do enjoy this stuff.

So, what else of note on the trip? Well, I was stuck in Amsterdam’s airport (because there wasn’t enough time between flights to both go through customs and go anywhere), so I amused myself by looking at tourist maps, and enjoying the fact that the red light district is as prominently marked as any other part of the town (isn’t it nice to have legal prostitution?) I also found out that, while KLM has reasonable service (at least for what I’m paying), Iberia costs too much and has really bad service on top of that. Oh, and really cramped airplanes as well — I pretty close to couldn’t even fit into the seat because my legs were too long.

La Palma is a really interesting place (what I’ve seen of it). At ground level, it’s a tropical island (palm trees, papayas, etc. all growing everywhere), but as you go up the mountain it starts resembling Vancouver/Victoria (big trees everywhere, with lots of pines (“Canary Islands Pine Tree”) (no Maple or Cedar of course), then (a bit further up) like Ontario, and then you’re above the tree line. I’m told it’s a superb view from off the mountain, but so far there have been so many clouds that I haven’t been able to see it. There’s a bunch of telescopes up here. The WHT (4.2m), the Isaac Newton (1.5m), a few 2.5m scopes, a 10m scope under construction, the MAGIC high-energy cosmic ray (gamma ray?) detector, etc. Lots of neat stuff. Limited variety in terms of food, but good food. It does seem odd to have supper right after getting up, a snack for lunch, and breakfast right before staggering off to bed though.

Wow, this is a longer entry than I thought it would be (we’re in the middle of a 40-minute exposure right now, and there isn’t much else to do at this point). Still, it’s an ok update as to how my life has been progressing over the last little while. This is the exciting life of a (student) astronomer — well, this and coursework. I have an essay due (in theory) yesterday, and a computer program the day before I get back. Neither of them is getting done right now because I’m so exhausted.

You know, I’m so glad that I married Morgan. Living with her has helped to keep me sane and happy during the first year of graduate studies (which involved a bunch of really hard work), and she’s also helped to keep me going while I’m off on these trips (I had 2 weeks of travel right at the end of term, which really doesn’t go well with courses). She’s been talking with me all night, and she got up at (and before) 6 AM every day when I was in China to talk with me on the phone. I got so lucky when I married her. Next trip, though, she’s coming along. No more of this (I know, I said that last trip too, but this time I really mean it, and I’ll have enough time to plan that I’ll be able to manage it too).

Well, that’s it. Only 900 seconds left on the exposure (15 minutes), so I guess I’d better start preparing to take an arc, nod the slit, and take another 40-minute exposure (then lather, rinse, repeat, then switch targets). Then, maybe, I get to stagger back into the Residencia and collapse into bed. Ah, bed. I can’t wait. Oh yes, and it’s now 5 AM.

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Entry last updated April 16, 2005