Archive for April, 2006

“Breaking Up Is Not Hard To Do”

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 10:23 AM

Or, so it would seem for Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. It has now broken into more than 30 pieces. It is going to be approaching its closest point to the Earth from May 12 through May 28 at a distance of 5.5 million miles.
During the expected perihelion, the closest point to the Sun (just [...]

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Coming Down off the Mountain

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 03:31 PM

Well, our observing run at CTIO is a success. It got a little dicey toward the end with the moonlight just flooding the sky making us have to spend 4 and a half hours in a field we had to spend only 1 hour on the first night, but we got all the fields we [...]

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Report from CTIO: I saw the Magellanic Clouds last night!

Friday, April 7th, 2006 at 03:27 PM

(Click on image for full-size version.)
This is an image of the center of the Milky Way and The Magellanic Clouds over the CTIO 4-m telescope. I did not take this picture and the orientation of the sky is a bit different right now (the Magellanic Clouds are lower), but it gives you a small taste [...]

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My First Night at CTIO

Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 03:33 AM

Well, my “night” started around 3:00 pm with my collaborator, Dr. Roberta Humphreys (U Minnesota), and I learning the ropes of running the Yale 1-m telescope. The first thing we learned is don’t trust the manuals that are online, since “tweaks” to those procedures seem to be par for the course. By 3:30 [...]

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Starting an Observing Run at CTIO

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 01:30 PM

After 27 hours of flights and waits at airports, I have finally made it to La Serena, Chile. I stay at the AURA compound there tonight and I’ll probably walk around the city this afternoon. Tomorrow, we take the “carryall” to Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (a.k.a. CTIO) to start our 6 night observing run at [...]

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