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We might make it. Alycia has one night left, and our next and last observer arrived today (get ready for something different — more to come).

The winds were finally a bit calmer tonight, and seeing was bouncing off 0.5″ for a while — but we still ended up with some clouds after midnight. Nothing too bad, but still a little frustrating.

Two days ago we had a song about a miracle. Here’s another one of sorts — though Johnny would disagree.

I saw the CDB live at the South Dakota State Fair. This was the encore, during Johnny’s solo the old man thrashed on a golden fiddle for 20 minutes.

Well, dear AO team, you finally entered to the final countdown, there are less than 10 days to leave “Las Campanas Observatory” just on time for Christmas, I guess.
I really hope that all the science you obtained, be the source of great discoveries, that will make your team proud, and also all of the ones that made your science possible.
I admire you Katie and Jared, you stay here more than 30 days it is hard to believe, but I guess easier with so nice company as the Magellan Operators ;), and of course the very nice food! Specially empanadas!!!

Good Luck

See you the last night.

One of the downsides of observational astronomy is the lack of control we have over our experiments. It’s just annoying that we can’t re-create star and planet formation in our laboratories and observe the evolution of planetary systems over billions of years. And then on top of that, we have to deal with the epitomy of the unpredictable and uncontrollable — the weather! I think this accounts for the rather superstitious way that astronomers, not generally given to magical thinking, talk about the weather. I remember hearing that one should always walk around the telescope catwalk clockwise (or was it counterclockwise? Luckily the point is moot here at Magellan where the catwalk doesn’t go all the way around.) to keep away the clouds. We joke about the colleagues who are “weather curses” and seem to always bring the clouds with them.

We can’t even enjoy all the wildflowers up here without seeing them as evidence that El Niño is out to get us. Out for a walk earlier today, in the glorious sunshine of a clear blue sky, I still managed to scowl at the butterflies.

Tonight was the 8th night of Chanukah. Alas, there was no meteorological miracle. The winds only came below our AO-secondary-imposed 20 mph limit for a couple hours before returning to sit at about 20 mph and taunt me:

So, last night’s incongruous song involved sharks, among other things. And sharks reminded me of the TV show “Shark Tank” for entrepreneurial products, and one of their successful products was a Chanukah Christmas tree topper, which brings me to the fact that tonight is the final night of Chanukah. Wait, you didn’t like that link, ok, here’s LL Cool J telling you to do a mitzvah (good deed) this Chanukah and support the “I have a Dream Foundation.” Satisfied by the link to Chanukah? Good. Tonight’s song is: All About that Neis – Hanukkah by the Maccabeats. Neis means miracle, though not of the meteorological type. And it’s a parody, so it gives fond memories of previous years’ song rules.

Hello Everyone,

Having just finished up three nights over in Baade, the MagAO team has very hospitably welcomed me (Kate R.) as their guest tonight.  As you may have heard, last night didn’t go so well, giving Katie and me the opportunity to poke around in the Baade dome at 1am:

 

Fortunately, today the clouds have slowly dissipated, although not before painting us a beautiful sunset:

Just after sunset, Katie took me into Clay, and showed me the MagAO team’s handiwork.  Although I wasn’t sure how to feel about the LEDs on back of their secondary poking out of the dome in the middle of the night, altogether it was an impressive sight.  Made me wish I were one of these cool instrument builders myself!

Anyway, after the tour we had a quick Hanukah Baruch by Alycia:

And then it was down to business.  Actually, there was some waiting around as those clouds moved along, but my understanding is that there has been serious data collection happening for several hours now.  (I must admit to being a bit distracted by my own data as all of this was going on.)

Re: tonight’s musical selection, I must first offer my sympathies to any of you who may have found yourselves tricked into watching Kate F.’s video.  One of the many confusing aspects of that selection was the incongruity of the music and the stark gas station / desert setting.  I obviously didn’t understand the lyrics, but the melody reminded me of 5th grade choir.  Working with that theme, I googled “incongruous music videos”, and this was the top hit:

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

I’m headed out tomorrow, but it was a great privilege and great fun to be able to join the MagAO party this week!  Here’s wishing them the clearest of skies and the best of seeing for the rest of 2015B.

 

 

I’m glad to not have to come up with anything terribly clever to say tonight, since Jared and Katie already gave away the 2015B blog award (deservedly, to Amali Vaz).

Here is why I’m having my own private pity party right now…

and a zoom in on the wind data…

My two nights are up, and unfortunately I’m not going to have much to show for them science-wise. This is through no fault of Jared and Katie, who went to heroic efforts to swap all of the BCU fibers in just 15min last night. Tragically, the wind made their efforts mostly moot. We did manage to observe one target as it was setting away from the wind though, and there’s still hope for me to get some more 2015B data. Alycia Weinberger arrived today and will be observing for the next 5 nights. Some of my targets overlap with hers, so I may be able to piggyback on her observations. Fingers crossed for the stars (good seeing, no clouds, low winds, and dry air) to align tomorrow!

Alberto’s Hero song last night reminded me of a Japanese song called “Hero” that I used to sing at karaoke a lot when I was living there in 2004-05. In fact, the only versions of it that I could find on YouTube were of people singing it at karaoke. This guy is pretty good though and you can see the original music video on the TV. In fact, even if you don’t like the singing, you should play the real song in a separate browser and watch this video on mute so that you can see all the sweet dance moves.

Speaking of sweet dance moves, MJ always cheers me up…