Brian York's Life

Third Day

Written on June 19, 2008

Miracle of miracles, today actually looks like a good day to observe. It was pretty humid around sunset (we have to close up at 85%, and it was over that), but the clouds are dropping now, and so is the humidity, so it looks like clear conditions. Well, CC70, IQ70, but not bad still (CC — cloud cover, and the 70th-percentile is about as bad as you can go and still do worthwhile observing, and means an extinction of about 0.3 magnitudes, while IQ — image quality, measures the “seeing”, and 70% is around 0.7-0.8” (arcseconds)). Sadly, that means that the weather is too good to do my program (I’m at CC70/IQ85, and there are higher priority programs for any better conditions), but we did get some data yesterday.

We actually got 2 3/4 of the 8 exposures that I need for one of my targets, and it looks like there’s enough data to say that there isn’t actually a DLA in this Quasar spectrum (unless it’s in one of the chip gaps, but that looks unlikely too). So I’m really excited that we actually got some data.

On the way up tonight, we saw someone cycling down Mauna Kea. That’s definitely a professional athlete thing, because the air here is so thin that physical activity like that would be dangerous for most folks (and could be dangerous even for athletes, but the ride down probably isn’t too bad, since you don’t have to pedal very much).

A couple of tourists wandered into the telescope just a couple of minutes ago (you’d think that the “Authorized Personnel Only” signs and such would be a hint that they shouldn’t just walk in, but apparently not).

That’s it for now. The humidity has dropped, and we should be able to open up pretty soon, and start taking pictures.

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Entry last updated October 30, 2005