Hi! I’m Jensen, a PhD student at MIT and one of this run’s guest observers. This was my first time at Las Campanas Observatory (or any observatory, for that matter), so naturally the universe bestowed upon us the cloudiest, windiest, rainiest, and snowiest May week at LCO in recent memory. The usually featureless “Metro”blue forecasts were often filled with harbingers of astronomical doom. That being said, I’ve loved my time here and hope to come back for future runs!
Today started off strong. The clouds were sparse, the wind was mild, and humidity was low. The local fauna clearly noticed the improvement in conditions, because some grazing guanacos made an appearance for the first time this week.
To make the most of the good weather, and to commemorate my last (full) day at LCO this run, I took myself on a self-guided tour of the LCO grounds. It was fun to see the Irénée du Pont and Henrietta Swope Telescopes up close after several days of admiring them from afar.
As frequently happens at LCO, a lovely sunset closed out our daylight hours. A mountain view like this is hard to beat.
Now, the moment we had all been waiting for: nightfall. The (relatively) clear conditions from earlier in the day had persisted, and after much anticipation, we were finally able to open the dome. The hunt for Hα companions could resume!
Unfortunately, just as the sky giveth, the sky taketh away. After a couple hours of patchy clouds and low- to mid-tier seeing, the clouds returned with a vengeance and forced dome closure. Thus ended our short-lived excursion into actually doing astronomy at a telescope. Some observing is better than none at all, though. At least we generated a few new .fits files in our time at LCO.
On the bright side, things can only get better from here – I look forward to returning and seeing everything to southern sky has to offer!
The Best 15 Minutes
My favourite part of today was when the Clay Telescope’s dome, at long last, opened. I never thought that watching metal panels slide and fold could be so exciting.
The Song of the Day
Today’s song of the day, for obvious reasons, is Nuages from Nocturnes by Debussy.
xwcl admin addendum
The blog operators would like to include these two photos collected by the rest of the team of our guest observers enjoying a clear sunset:
