Phil's Pretty Good Trip to Chile Dec 05

Phil had a four night run on the CTIO 4-m to observe red supergiants in the ultraviolet (sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?) We had significant instrument problems on three out of the four nights, but obtained (roughly) two nights of usable data.

A family of foxes had made their den near the kitchen/dorm. Several misguided astronomers fed them. This male is unhappy with how close we are getting trying to walk up the path, and growls and charges. I started to take pictures, and then realized that Emily had sensibly retreated about a hundred meters back. Emily: "I think I'll go up a different way tonight."

On two out of every three nights this year, Phil is supposed to get data taken for him on the 1-m Yale telescope with the OSU 2K Camera. He dropped in to visit the telescope.

The view walking up

Emily Levesque (undergraduate at MIT) is continuing her collaboration from last year on the project.

The 4-m telescope

We had funky looking clouds one night, which vaguely resemble virga. The humidity was nearly 50%, so I suppose it's possible.

The LMC and the 4-m telescope

Venus was usually visible even before sunset. Here it is a few minutes afterwards.

We'd be running twilight flats if we had a working instrument.

The Magellanic Clouds and the 4-m dome. The red lights are on as we are waiting on the Shutter Repairperson to drive up from La Serena.

The southern Milky Way

Alpha and Beta Cen on the horizon; that's the Southern Cross to the left.

Magellanic Clouds

Those headlights are those of the approaching Repairperson..

This was Emily's idea: Orion's belt through the dome vents. Sheesh; when is the Repairperson going to get here?

Pleaides over the 1.5-m

We had thought the foxes had gotten all the viscachas, but here was one.

Emily, playing the role of Elmer Fudd

This was some sort of exotic South American bird, I'm sure. To me, it looked a lot like a sparrow.

As the sun sets on our intrepid observers on our last night we find ourselves wondering: Exactly WHICH sequencer board is in the ARCON box tonight? Does ANYBODY know? And, will two sandwiches be enough for the night ahead?

Emily on an outcrop.

No green flash, but a very nice sunset anyway....

The 1-m observer, Yilen Gomez Maqueo, kindly let me observe my own fields this night; we were still waiting for the 4-m to be functional again. Incidently, they did get us back on the air around 12:30 that night, so that was something, and we got a TON of nice stuff regardless.