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The trip to Las Campanas Observatory was quite an experience. Of
course I had prepared myself for a long trip. First from Washington to
Miami, then from Miami to Santiago on a red eye, and finally from
Santiago to La Serena. And after all that a two hour drive to the
observatory itself. The whole thing should take about 22 hours. However, I was a little unlucky. When I got to Ronald Reagan Airport, I was told the incoming flight from Chicago that would have flown me to Miami was going to be late. I kept an eye on the monitors in the airport, and found that my United flight was scheduled to leave at 8:15 pm (15 minutes late), even though the incoming flight was scheduled to arrive at 8:37 pm! So it was no surprise when a little later I was told that the flight to Miami was going to get me to Miami was too late, but that they could put me on an American Airlines flight which was supposed to get me to Miami at more or less the right time. The tight margin was put under further pressure by a string of slight delays. It started when the inbound American Airlines plane arrived late as well, followed by a somewhat chaotic boarding process (apparently many people think that if everybody rushes on board at once, the boarding goes faster...). The few minutes that we were able to catch up during the flight were converted in at least twice the same time in extra delays, when in the final phase of the approach to the landing strip the captain discoved another airplane on the tarmac. He revved up the engines and made another circle around the airport. Fortunately, the next landing attempt went smoothly, and we taxied right to the terminal where the United planes were parked. A vestige of hope was quickly extinguished like a sparkle by a deluge when the plane made a 180 degree turn and taxied all the way around the airport, only to stop at the terminal farthest from the United terminal. With my carry-on luggage in my hands, I started the steeplechase to the far end of airport. After the inevitable wrong turn, I arrived at the gate for the Santiago plane, panting and heaving, and surprisingly only two minutes late. The plane to Santiago had left two minutes early. United provided me with a hotel room in the effervescent airport of Miami. Before I could go to sleep I first had to cancel the old travel arrangements and make new ones. Unfortunately, it was impossible to call the people in Chile and inform them of my mishaps. Later I found out this was probably due to the fact that they were experimenting with a new phone system... Now that my attempts to contact the observatory in Chile had failed, I decided to ask Cindy to contact them by phone or email, despite the awkward time of day. Thanks to her efforts, and also those of the observatory people, the rest of my travel was put back on track. A day late I got on the night flight to Chile. Sufficiently deprived of sleep, I actually managed to get some shut-eye on the plane! The next flight was smooth too, and I was greeted at La Serena airport by the driver who took me to the observatory. During the drive it proved impossible to keep my eyes open, and hence the first thing I did at the observatory was to take a two hour power nap! As you can see on the pictures below, my room was actually quite comfortable and cosy!
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After the nap it was already time to go to work. The winter nights are
long, which, on the plus side, means that it is possible to get a lot
of data, but on the other hand also that the schedule is very
busy. Typically, I got up at three or four o'clock (where four is the
preferred time). Then it was straight to the telescope to check if
everything was still set up the way it was supposed to be, and to do
some calibrations. This took about an hour, and this hard work was
rewarded by dinner. After about 45 minutes for dinner, it was back to
the telescope, where the work started at about half past six in the
evening, and lasted until seven o'clock the next morning. Still, as you
can see on the right, I could manage a smile. Admittedly, the picture of
me you see here was taken in the second of my ten night run...The telescope I have used is the Las Campanas 100 inch (2.5m) Telescope. Below you see a picture of the building itself, and two shots of the telescope itself. In the rightmost picture you can see the mirror itself.
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During the first four nights I took pictures of nearby galaxies, and below you see a couple of examples. The colours are not as we would see them if we looked at these galaxies through the telescope. Instead, they have been enhanced to make small differences in color visible more easily. The changes in color that you can see in these pictures are real, though. Galaxies tend to be bluer in the outer parts than in the center. This differences in color arises because the mix of stars changes from the center to the outer edge of the galaxy. In the center, the stars are old and red, in the outer parts, the stars are younger and bluer.
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During the second part of my observing run, I took spectra of the
galaxies I had observed before. To get a spectrum, only light from the
galaxy is collected that falls through a very narrow slit (the white
line in the picture to the left). The light from the slit is then
led through the spectrograph, which sorts the light into different
colors, much like the white light of the sun gets sorted into
different colors in a rainbow. A spectrograph is much better at
sorting the different colors. Even though in the picture to the left a
red and a blue line are shown, indicating that the light has been
sorted by color, to our eyes it would all be just the same color.The reason I took these spectra is that I wanted to find out how these galaxies are moving. Spectra like the one to the left are perfect for this. In the spectrum you can see a bright horizontal band. This is the light that comes from the center of the galaxy. The bluer outer parts of the galaxy are much fainter, which is why rest of the horizontal bands are much fainter as well. In the picture you can also see a set of straight vertical lines. These are not very interesting to astromers, because they come from the atmosphere of the earth and the moon. Note that there are also three lines that are curved (one is rather faint). These lines originate from gas between the stars in galaxies, and as the gas moves in the galaxy, they change color. Red means higher velocities, and blue lower velocities. By measuring the shapes of these lines I can figure out how these galaxies are moving.
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An essential ingredient for successful observing is... clear skies. At Las Campanas statistically an astronomer stands a good chance of having clear skies, even in winter. But still, there is a the occasional adverse weather conditions, and I had my share of it, as you can see in the three pictures below. In the mild variant, the weather presented thin clouds, that would usually drift away and dissolve after sunset. Even though these clouds are annoying because they make observing more difficult, they do lead to great sunsets!
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It its more nasty variant, the weather can direct a snowstorm to the mountain, shutting down observing for a night or two. Hey, it was winter after all.
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But it was not only fun to look up to the skies with a big telescope, simply looking around at the scenery was also a great thing to do. Below are some of the views from the mountain.
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The theme of the drive down was `surprise'. I thought I had seen most of the road on the way up. In my recollection it was a fairly straight road, that took about 15 to 20 minutes from the highway to the mountain top. Much to my surprise, the road actually was a winding dirtroad, with many bumps and sharp turns, and it took about 40 minutes. I hardly remembered any of it! I guess I slept a whole lot more on the way up than I thought, despite all the bumps in the road! The flights home were nice and uneventful, with connections that worked. After a 24 hour trip I got home at noon, and yet I managed to stay up until that evening. After almost two weeks away from home, I wanted to get a lot of quality time with Cindy! |
