2015B Day 23: Ain’t Never Gonna Stop

Except when corrupt databases and/or fiber communication problems force us to do a hard reboot of the whole system, and there’s not enough time before sunrise to make it worth bringing it all back up again. Then we stop, even with stars in our eyes.

In keeping with tonight’s outrageous claims on astro-ph, we observed an Earth-sized object around a very nearby star. See Skemer and Close, 2011 for more info.

That’s Sirius B, a.k.a. The Pup, companion to Sirius, the Dog Star. Sirius is the wall of white on the left half, from us basically melting the guider CCD. You can see B along the spider spike. It is in fact Earth-sized! Even a bit smaller!
We’ve reached the point in the run where we don’t go to dinner any more. Don Hector noticed tonight, and sent plates up for Katie and me. Gracias Hector!

Since Katie just went with “not US-based” as her connection last night, I’ll just go with “Foreigner” and one of the all time classics.

If I could play guitar, I’d be in a rock band (I forgot to mention that I’ve seen Danzig live — front row right on the rail the whole show. He gave my best friend a high five.) If I could hit a curve ball I’d be chasing my cup of coffee still. The Navy wouldn’t promise me enough sea time on a fast attack, too many boring options. So I’m an astronomer now I guess. Still not sure what I’ll be when I grow up, but there’s still that one guitar.