I recently travelled to Cerra Tololo, Chile to make astronomical observations at the Cerra Tololo Inter-Amerian Observatory (CTIO). Here's my edited account with pictures. I took out (some of) the boring parts, the personal parts, and the curse words. Keep in mind this was written hastily when I was sleep deprived. It's not a work of art. I don't mind if you skip to the pictures.
Oh and if anyone gets to the part about the native fruit, do you have any idea what I ate?
I might delve into what we were looking for in a later post.
[removed the posts from the Nashville, Miami and Santiago airports]
November 22, 2006 - 12:30 pm – La Serena, Ch
The flight from Santiago was difficult because I wasn’t sure which one to take. When I arrived, they told me that my flight did not currently have a gate and so I had to wait to find it. An hour later, they still did not know where the plane would be. Eventually (30 minutes before takeoff) I learned I was at gate 25. After struggling to find the gate, nothing else happened. I sat next to a big, slightly fat (or maybe he was just tall) dude who took up a little too much room. Add that to the fact I still had my jacket on and the sun was pouring on me and you get one sweaty Cameron (it’s summer here in Chile).
These past 20 hours have blurred together. I think about yesterday and the flight from Nashville to Miami and it halfway feels like it happened earlier today and halfway feels like it happened yesterday. That long flight from Miami to Santiago really blurred the days together. I was a bit of an insomniac on the flight because of the screaming baby in the row next to me. It made me want to be sterile. And sleeping on an airplane sucks in general. So I haven’t slept much.
PS. Don’t Southern hemisphere toilets flush in the opposite direction of Northern Hemisphere toilets? I can’t remember which way our toilet spins so I couldn’t compare. (Actually I thought my toilet at home spun ccw, but the toilet here flushed ccw so I’m a bit confused).
9:05 pm – La Serena, Ch
So I’ve got nothing to do today. Rob [the professor with whom I’m researching] said I’ve got the day to myself. I found Tito [cab driver] and asked him to help me find some food and exchange some currency. I’m not really sure what the currency exchange is here, but I got a decent amount of food for 2500 pesos. For dinner I had a weird native fruit (sweet taste, white flesh, green skin, lots of watermelon seeds sized seeds), a few white rolls, and a thing of rice and veggies. One problem: I forgot to get a fork. I ate the rice and veggies with my fingers. The local grocery mart looked a lot like any American mart. Except it was packed as hell. I had a rough time getting any pesos. Navigating a Spanish ATM with an American credit card was a bit of a difficult time. Tito had someone from the store help me with the ATM machine, but she didn’t really know what to do. Then someone else helped and I was good to go. I was a bit worried for a few minutes. The city looks nice. It’s a bit small. So after dinner, I took a bunch of pictures of the sunset from the mountain. Some of them didn’t really come out. That’s too bad because the sunset was beautiful. The view is gorgeous up here. I’ll take some more pictures tomorrow morning. I’m supposed to be at the front desk at noon tomorrow for… something. I think I’m moving to the dorm at CTIO. Good night.
PS. It just got dark outside at 9:15 pm. Sweet.
7:35 pm – Cerra Tololo – CTIO – 1.0m control room (is that really what it’s called?)
Today has been pretty long. I woke up at the CTIO hq in La Serena. At noon, I took a ride with 6 other astronomers up the mountains to Cerra Tololo, which is about 8,000 ft up. The ride was an uncomfortable 1.5 hours because we completely filled a Suburban. But the ride was enjoyable because I got a great view of the countryside. It reminds me a lot of California because it is dry. But there is still plenty of foliage. I think I got a good picture or two of the ride but I wish I got more. We passed a big lake between some mountains that was just gorgeous. And for the first few minutes we were close enough to the Pacific ocean to see it. Once here, I was taken to my room and then to lunch. I ate with another astronomer from Texas Tech named Lee. He is working on defending his doctoral thesis. After lunch, I hung out with Lee and Rob in the little cafeteria/lounge for about an hour. Afterwards Rob and I came here to do some flatfielding (a type of calibration) which took the better part of two hours. Then dinner. I met another astronomer named Pat from … and met Katie and Jedidah at dinner. It was pretty funny… after dinner Katie, Jedidah and I were going to walk from the cafeteria to the observatory, but two foxes were in the way and growling at us.
So we drove. Now we’re waiting for the sky to get dark enough (it’s 8:30 now) to do some observing!Today has been great. I got that feeling of awe when I first saw the telescopes on the mountain in the distance. I feel like a little kid doing something I’ve always wanted to do. This kicks ass. I need to get more pictures of the telescopes and more pictures of me near them before I leave.
PS. The angular momentum of the Earth to make the water spin different directions is much too small to make toilets spin in a different direction. And the jets point one way.
The big 4 meter telescope is on the left
Friday – November 24th, 2006
2:58 pm – CTIO lounge
Last night was busy. I had my first observing run. It began with taking some twilight flats before the sky got too dark. The twilight flats didn’t turn out well because we didn’t track the sky. Then the sky got dark. Rob started off the night by getting the telescope going. Then I took over. We observed for about 9 hours. 9 hours. That’s a long time. For the most part, it was uneventful. It’s all about getting in a rhythm and knowing what to do when. There are a few different things to watch and know when to change. But it wasn’t too difficult. The most exciting part of the night was when the power restarted. The dome got messed up somehow. That led to a good half hour of trying to get things going again. Everything got back to normal eventually. We ended up getting about 500 images of the blazar last night. Rob worked on photoshopping a picture of Katie, Jedidah and a fox for a while. It turned out pretty good. I spent a good part of the night surfing the web. I was able to see a real night sky for the first time. I got a great view of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Milky Way and the Southern Cross (it’s a big deal when you’ve never been below the equator before). The amount of stars is amazing. I’ve never seen a view like that. I think people would take a bigger interest in astronomy if they could see that kind of sky. There were thousands of stars with more becoming visible the longer you look. The Milky Way looked like a great band of stars across the sky. Thinking about the scale of everything was impossible. Here’s a good shot of the sky from APOD
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010514.html. Keep in mind that this image was taken by a professional using a 20 second exposure with an astronomical CCD. You can get the general idea of how cool the sky was.
This afternoon, Katie, Jedidah and I went to the big 4m telescope to take some pictures. That thing is freaking huge. That's me at the bottom. I'm 5'10. Oh I found out last night that the blazar we were looking at, PKS 0537-441, has a redshift of about .89 (or was it .98?), which makes it about 7 billion light years away. That means the light we were seeing last night took half the age of the universe to reach us. The light was older than Earth. Pretty cool stuff.
Now once again we’re waiting for the sky to get dark. We’ll take some twilight flats and then I think I’ll be the lone operator for the rest of the night. Exciting eh?
Saturday – November 25th, 2006
1:38 pm – CTIO lounge
Well, I’m up early. I had to wake up in time to do dome flats (early meaning at 1 so I could eat lunch then I’ll go up to the observatory at 3). I’m a bit tired but I’ll live. A bunch of the Chilean workers are watching soccer in the lounge. I heard “Goooooooaaaaaalllllllllll!!!!!! Goooooooaaaaaaaaallllllllll!!!!” a few minutes ago. The lounge area isn’t bad. There’s a great view. Most of the time the glass doors are open because the weather’s so nice.
I forgot to mention how scary the drive to the mountain was. The driver was insane. All the roads here are 2 lanes. To compensate, there is a lot of passing. But this dude didn’t accelerate when he passed cars, even with oncoming traffic a bit too close for comfort. The driver crossed himself every time he passed someone. And then the road up the mountain was dirt. And in most places there was no guardrail, just a bit of dirt stacked up about a foot high on the side of the dirt road. And the road was insane.
Anyways, last night was fun. I was in charge most of the night. There weren’t any major problems. The biggest problem was when my math book hit something on the keyboard and moved the telescope mid exposure and blurred a few images. But that wasn’t a big deal. Most of the night was spent trying to do math homework, watching episodes of “The Office,” and random other web videos. Nothing too exciting is going on. We saw the foxes again yesterday. I went out and skygazed again last night. Did you know the constellations are upside down in the southern hemisphere? The sky gets dark here around 8:30 or 9 and gets light again at 5:30. That’s a fairly short night. I think that’s due to how far south we are and it’s summer. It’s hard to tell if we’ve seen any microvariations yet. I’ve made some rough graphs of the observations and they’ve all been inconclusive/negative. We’ll see.
5:33 pm – CTIO lounge
On my way up to the telescope this afternoon, I decided the road I was walking on was too long. So I hiked up the side of the mountain to the top. It would have been a much better idea had it not been so hot and if I hadn’t had my laptop and math book in my backpack. I was panting like a dog when I got to the top. Afterwards, I went back to my room, put my gym shorts on, and did some reading before dinner. The weather is amazing. I wish I had a professional camera, or at least some professional lenses, to capture the view up here. My little 4mp camera is good, but it doesn’t do the mountains justice.
A good wide angled lens would be great. The pictures aren’t bad, but my camera wasn’t meant to be used for these big, sweeping views. The air is so clear you can see clearly for miles, but you don’t quite get that impression from my camera. Maybe I should invest in a better camera.
I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here. How many 19 year olds can say they were invited to South America to look at galaxies 7 billion light years away? I may not be the only one, but there aren’t many.
My lips are chapped because of the dry weather. I need to shave, too.
The food has been good. It’s not quite what I was expecting (I was thinking Mexican food), and thankfully it’s not tacos and burritos. It’s a mix of American dishes and other things.
I decided I don’t want to go back to school. I’d rather play with telescopes then go to class. This whole traveling and seeing the world thing is a lot of fun.
Controlling a telescope with a computer for 9 hours may not be the definition of fun, but I’m still enjoying my time so far. I might be having such a good time because everyone here has been nothing but nice. It’s been enjoyable learning about astronomy from Rob. I don’t really even miss partying. How weird is that? My bed here is hard, but springy. Like a board on a trampoline. I’m still sleeping fine.11:47 pm – 1m
The blazar tonite, PKS 0208-512, has a redshift of .999. This makes it about 7.7 billion light years away.
November 26th, 2006
5:32 am – 1m
Very fatigued. I’ve been thinking for too long. I’m not going to sleep much either. Damn domeflats.
November 27th, 2006
1:45 am – CTIO 1m
This is sad. I’m just about done with my first observation runs (hopefully there are many more to come). I’m going to be depressed using those weenie 8-inch telescopes in a103. I’m still in charge here so I think I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the remainder of my time as operator. This has been a great experience. I like being treated as a real astronomer, even though I’m still in freshman physics. Let’s hope this data leads to a Nobel Prize!
PS. I’m really going to miss the view up here. I love actually seeing 3 galaxies when I look up.
So that's the end of the trip. I could post more pictures later.
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