Three observing nights left! Wait actually just two! We love it here, we really do. Our TO’s are lovely, the company is great, and the science is incredible (especially this run). But there comes a time in any astronomer’s trip where we start gazing wistfully out to the sunset horizon and thinking longingly of the family and beds and cats waiting for us back home.
First, a moment of mourning for our fridge hoard of empanadas that only survived one night of cleaning crew scrutiny. Though we did not get to enjoy as many of you as we wanted, know that you were loved while we had you.
The main course tonight was a VisX sandwich, with a filling of Jaylishus. Luckily, we’re getting good at swapping between normal operations with our imaging cameras and the spectrograph, and overheads are dropping across the board.
We looked at some sources that were sure to illuminate the high resolution grating. These systems are easy for our AO system to lock onto, but high spatial resolution data is immediately interesting, or “astrophysically unsettling” depending on perspective.
VisX imaging on such bright targets requires only a few exposures for noise, and we spent the first few hours merrily jumping between targets and interrupting our good TO’s naps.
Midway through the night, the seeing seemed to say we had overstayed our welcome. We went from a variable, but usable seeing to “AO system can’t operate in these conditions” and “it’s amazing that we’re making an image at all” in a short 30 minute span. Just in time for observer handoff.
Needless to say, we didn’t have much science we could do with chart breaking seeing. We got as far as acquiring, but the star was so far spread around the coronagraph (when we could even close the loop at all) that the hour was chalked up to wash. So we got up to some hobbies in the down time.
Two teams competed heartily on both the Wednesday and the Sunday crossword. Neck and neck, brains were steaming. But in the end, who can really say which team won, especially when one team refused to screenshot their times.
Alycia graciously handed back the telescope to Sebastiaan, and more visXing occurred. Also more neural nets. And perhaps even some trapezium camsci calibration. It feels like we’ve been here forever, but it still surprises me that we have just two days to wrap up this run.
Leaving you with some more peaceful words. Because I’ll be thinking of them even when I’m gone.
Song of the Day
Ok I didn’t do a great job with the quotes this time. But sometimes you just want a song with a beat.