I could feel it from the start: This night was going to be a success. Despite the haze that we could see in the horizon during sunset, the night gifted us a stable seeing and what was cloudy now is clear, baby. Can you believe we are only already at half of the observation run!? Me neither, in fact days and nights are starting to merge in my head by now, and time has turned into a meaningless, fleeting concept. What’s more is that we are really close to a full Moon. Might not be a blue Moon, but the light it reflects still allows for more vitamin D in my body than the one I would get in the Netherlands at this time of the year. Moon, you’re the light that I needed.
Before starting our observations, the pneumatic seal on the secondary mirror had to be fixed, so we had to lower the telescope to 1 degree of altitude to reseal it. You don’t see a telescope do such a big tilt every day!
Tonight was again all about Laird and Jialin and their observations. The driver of tonight was mainly Parker, who was tutored by the more experienced grad students.
We were all really excited about digging digging dark holes, until we realized Laird was using the Lyot mask, but not the Lyot stop. Sebastiaan was very displeased about this. I am therefore obliged to call it control region, and not dark hole, from here onwards.
During the first half of the night we looked for young planets that still have residual formation heat in the iz band. Afterwards, we focused on protoplanets that are still accreting in H alpha. In the meantime, some other folks were working (or testing launch trajectories) on their laptops downstairs.
Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank one of our most affectionate blog readers. Your message really warmed up our hearts today. As a gift, I will show everyone a new animal I spotted today: Carlos!
And you, dear reader, if you are enjoying this blog, spread the word: tell your mother, your brother, your sister, and your friends, don’t let them lose the chance to discover our new song of the day every day.