Showing posts with label australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label australia. Show all posts
Friday, May 13, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
rainbow panorama
remember that bright rainbow that appeared last week at the observatory? i finally got the panorama together. actually, thats a lie. what i did was mention the idea of the panorama to a fellow astronomer that i was observing with and he offered to do the whole thing in photoshop ;) it took him about 30 minutes and the result is stunning (click to see a larger version)...
muchas gracias el lobo rayado!
muchas gracias el lobo rayado!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
bye bye kangaroos!
back to the big city today... just as well as there are rain storms all around!
the best kangaroo moment this week happened three days ago. as i was walking along the path between the telescope and the hotel-style rooms, a couple kangaroos were sitting next to the path, mindlessly chomping away at grass. as usual, one of them looked up at me as if i was just a harmless creature passing by. but the little one startled at the sight of me and turned to bound away in haste. after one bounce, the poor thing landed on some loose brush, lost his footing and completely wiped out! i had to stop in my tracks to laugh because he looked so awkwardly funny! his head popped up instantly from his splattered position on the ground and he looked around as if disoriented. then he quickly jumped up and bounded off a few bounces in a different direction, but friend just remained still watching the whole scene, chomping away.
they're such cute little clueless creatures.
the best kangaroo moment this week happened three days ago. as i was walking along the path between the telescope and the hotel-style rooms, a couple kangaroos were sitting next to the path, mindlessly chomping away at grass. as usual, one of them looked up at me as if i was just a harmless creature passing by. but the little one startled at the sight of me and turned to bound away in haste. after one bounce, the poor thing landed on some loose brush, lost his footing and completely wiped out! i had to stop in my tracks to laugh because he looked so awkwardly funny! his head popped up instantly from his splattered position on the ground and he looked around as if disoriented. then he quickly jumped up and bounded off a few bounces in a different direction, but friend just remained still watching the whole scene, chomping away.
they're such cute little clueless creatures.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
sunset over warrumbungle park
siding springs observatory sits inside the warrumbungle national park. sometimes the sunsets over the park are incredible.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
invaders have landed at siding springs observatory!
many observatories have an all-sky camera in place to help monitor the cloud levels throughout the night. they are incredibly useful and also beautiful when you can see the milky way galaxy stretched overhead.
sometimes they have even detected critters crawling across our known universe! ;)
this photo was spotted the other night by a fellow astronomer up here at the AAT this run.
sometimes they have even detected critters crawling across our known universe! ;)
this photo was spotted the other night by a fellow astronomer up here at the AAT this run.
Friday, March 4, 2011
the UK Schmidt Telescope
just across the mountain from the AAT lives the UK Schmidt telescope, a 1.2 meter scope built in the early 1970s. in the photo below, the UKST is the dome on the left as seen from the catwalk of the AAT.
solid 70s construction (the tape is not part of the support structure ;)
the rooms inside this telescope dome feel like museums of old equipment and techniques in astronomy. this is the original analog mini-dome model that is still in control of moving the opening of the dome relative to where the telescope points.
while we can make much more precise measurements with digital CCD technology, there's something romantic about investigating old developed images.
nowadays, the UKST is used to survey the sky and collect velocities of 1 million stars zooming around our milky way galaxy for a project called RAVE. this robot works hard to position all optical fiber on the heavy plates in order to collect spectra of each individual star.
here's an old note i found in the dome...
solid 70s construction (the tape is not part of the support structure ;)
the rooms inside this telescope dome feel like museums of old equipment and techniques in astronomy. this is the original analog mini-dome model that is still in control of moving the opening of the dome relative to where the telescope points.
while we can make much more precise measurements with digital CCD technology, there's something romantic about investigating old developed images.
nowadays, the UKST is used to survey the sky and collect velocities of 1 million stars zooming around our milky way galaxy for a project called RAVE. this robot works hard to position all optical fiber on the heavy plates in order to collect spectra of each individual star.
here's an old note i found in the dome...
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
rainbow bright
the first stretch of this long observing run is over. i've had a few hours of sleep, and i'm off to the town of mudgee for a couple days to relax and visit several local wineries! the last time i stopped in mudgee, i had lunch at a resturant called "fish in the bush" (tee hee ;)
clouds are generally bad for using telescopes, obviously, but they often produce interesting terrestrial phenomena. the same night we saw the moon next to venus, we also saw a brilliant morning double rainbow!
at one point, both bows stretched around to make 3/4 of a full circle. it was stunning, but i couldnt fit it all into one photo (wish i had a fish-eye lens!). i took a lot of photos that i'd like to try to mosaic together - any recommendations for software to use to do this?
in the meantime, enjoy!
clouds are generally bad for using telescopes, obviously, but they often produce interesting terrestrial phenomena. the same night we saw the moon next to venus, we also saw a brilliant morning double rainbow!
at one point, both bows stretched around to make 3/4 of a full circle. it was stunning, but i couldnt fit it all into one photo (wish i had a fish-eye lens!). i took a lot of photos that i'd like to try to mosaic together - any recommendations for software to use to do this?
in the meantime, enjoy!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
coonabarabran
just arrived at siding springs observatory for another round of observing with the anglo-australian telescope.
there isnt a whole lot of excitement during the seven hour drive through the bush to get here, regardless of whether you take the hunter valley route or the mudgee route. but i must say, i am highly amused by the place names around new south wales!
i remember driving around the UK and being utterly confused as to how anyone was supposed to know the proper way to pronounce place names. for example, Leicester is "Les-tah," Belvoir is "beaver" (i'm not joking, and made the mistake of using this pronunciation in australia. the horror!), Loughborough is "luff-buh-ruh." actually, anything with an "ough" in it is pointless to even try. just wait to hear someone say it. especially edinburgh.
apparently a common mispronunciation of Loughborough, especially among australians, is "looga-burooga." having done some driving around this part of australia, it's clear that a lot of place names maintain their aboriginal origin and are pronounced mostly phonetically. so if the word has a lot of letters, like coonabarabran, you just take your time, pronounce all the letters, and it sounds exactly as it looks. or, in true australian fashion, you just shorten the word. so instead of saying the 5 syllables of coon-a-bear-a-bran every time, you just say coona.
coona is the closest town to the observatory and also happens to have one of the best names i've encountered yet! but on the drive today we also passed by dunedoo, wallerawang, cullen bullen, and marrangaroo :)
there isnt a whole lot of excitement during the seven hour drive through the bush to get here, regardless of whether you take the hunter valley route or the mudgee route. but i must say, i am highly amused by the place names around new south wales!
i remember driving around the UK and being utterly confused as to how anyone was supposed to know the proper way to pronounce place names. for example, Leicester is "Les-tah," Belvoir is "beaver" (i'm not joking, and made the mistake of using this pronunciation in australia. the horror!), Loughborough is "luff-buh-ruh." actually, anything with an "ough" in it is pointless to even try. just wait to hear someone say it. especially edinburgh.
apparently a common mispronunciation of Loughborough, especially among australians, is "looga-burooga." having done some driving around this part of australia, it's clear that a lot of place names maintain their aboriginal origin and are pronounced mostly phonetically. so if the word has a lot of letters, like coonabarabran, you just take your time, pronounce all the letters, and it sounds exactly as it looks. or, in true australian fashion, you just shorten the word. so instead of saying the 5 syllables of coon-a-bear-a-bran every time, you just say coona.
coona is the closest town to the observatory and also happens to have one of the best names i've encountered yet! but on the drive today we also passed by dunedoo, wallerawang, cullen bullen, and marrangaroo :)
Sunday, February 20, 2011
TropFest: Den Sista Galaxonaut
originating in sydney nearly 20 years ago, TropFest is the world's largest short film festival. last night was the screening of the finalists and the official voting for a winner of this year's competition. there were a lot of people in sydney's domain park, yet i was impressed by how quiet they were when the films were playing.
there were 16 finalists. the short films were not anywhere near the amateur quality i was expecting - they were impressively professional! here are my two favorites, neither of which won, unfortunately.
The Maestro
Directed by Adam Anthony
Den Sista Galaxonaut
Directed by Alexander George & Tyrone Lindqvist
there were 16 finalists. the short films were not anywhere near the amateur quality i was expecting - they were impressively professional! here are my two favorites, neither of which won, unfortunately.
The Maestro
Directed by Adam Anthony
Den Sista Galaxonaut
Directed by Alexander George & Tyrone Lindqvist
Monday, February 14, 2011
determining redshifts
determining how far away an object in the universe is from the earth is one of the most difficult tasks astronomers face, and also one of the most important. because the light from distant objects is the only signal we know how to receive from them with current technologies, we need to know how far away they are in order to determine how intrinsically bright they are. once we know that fundamental piece of information we can start to deduce all sorts of funky and interesting information about them!
there is a series of ways that astronomers use to determine distances to celestial objects, which is described as the "cosmic distance ladder." if an object is sufficiently far away (more than a few million light years - a criterion satisfied by all galaxies in the universe except andromeda and the little guys in our local group), we can measure its redshift. the cosmological redshift is a measure of how much a wavelength of light from a distant galaxy has stretched due to the expansion of the universe since the galaxy's stars emitted the light that is finally now reaching earth. whew! go read THIS for an explanation of redshift if you want...
in order to determine a solid redshift, you have to know how far light from a galaxy has shifted in wavelength. the best way to do this is to look at the galaxy's spectrum to identify specific spectral features (e.g. hydrogen, oxygen, etc...) whose patterns are all shifted to longer wavelengths. when i was at the telescope last week, we were observing spectra of 400 galaxies an hour (in clear weather) and then determining their redshifts as we went. here are some examples of the practice in action...
someone in the collaboration expanded a fancy little bit of code that shows the galaxy spectrum (in white) and allows one to display template spectra of well-known galaxy types (green) shifted to the potential redshift of the observed galaxy. (click image to enlarge). the X axis (horizontal) shows the wavelength scale (the discrete energies of the photons received by the telescope) and the Y axis (vertical) shows the amount of photons received at each of those discrete wavelengths.
to determine the exact redshift, you match as many features as you can, like the overall shape of the spectrum, the well-known dips (like calcium H and K that are very close to each other at about 4500 angstroms in the above spectrum), or the more obvious spikes ("emission lines"), if you happen to get strong ones like in the example below.
some galaxies have spectral features that are very strong and easy to identify, but others look noisy and its not obvious at all if there are any features. to be absolutely sure of a redshift, we can take a guess at the redshift and then look more closely at several regions where there should be spectral features if they are present in the galaxy and if the galaxy is at the guessed redshift.
its amazing to sit back and think that each one of these spectra are composite collections of light created by hundreds of billions of stars gravitationally bound together in a single swirling galaxy, probably not unlike our own milky way home. but i have to admit, when every singe hour of observations produces a collection of 400 galaxy spectra to determine redshifts for, my eyes feel exhausted and strained at the end of a long night at the telescope!
luckily during our recent observing run, we had quite a few people in the telescope dome (note the unusually high female to male ratio :)
and we could therefore be a bit more leisurely during our redshifting sessions!!
there is a series of ways that astronomers use to determine distances to celestial objects, which is described as the "cosmic distance ladder." if an object is sufficiently far away (more than a few million light years - a criterion satisfied by all galaxies in the universe except andromeda and the little guys in our local group), we can measure its redshift. the cosmological redshift is a measure of how much a wavelength of light from a distant galaxy has stretched due to the expansion of the universe since the galaxy's stars emitted the light that is finally now reaching earth. whew! go read THIS for an explanation of redshift if you want...
in order to determine a solid redshift, you have to know how far light from a galaxy has shifted in wavelength. the best way to do this is to look at the galaxy's spectrum to identify specific spectral features (e.g. hydrogen, oxygen, etc...) whose patterns are all shifted to longer wavelengths. when i was at the telescope last week, we were observing spectra of 400 galaxies an hour (in clear weather) and then determining their redshifts as we went. here are some examples of the practice in action...
someone in the collaboration expanded a fancy little bit of code that shows the galaxy spectrum (in white) and allows one to display template spectra of well-known galaxy types (green) shifted to the potential redshift of the observed galaxy. (click image to enlarge). the X axis (horizontal) shows the wavelength scale (the discrete energies of the photons received by the telescope) and the Y axis (vertical) shows the amount of photons received at each of those discrete wavelengths.
to determine the exact redshift, you match as many features as you can, like the overall shape of the spectrum, the well-known dips (like calcium H and K that are very close to each other at about 4500 angstroms in the above spectrum), or the more obvious spikes ("emission lines"), if you happen to get strong ones like in the example below.
some galaxies have spectral features that are very strong and easy to identify, but others look noisy and its not obvious at all if there are any features. to be absolutely sure of a redshift, we can take a guess at the redshift and then look more closely at several regions where there should be spectral features if they are present in the galaxy and if the galaxy is at the guessed redshift.
its amazing to sit back and think that each one of these spectra are composite collections of light created by hundreds of billions of stars gravitationally bound together in a single swirling galaxy, probably not unlike our own milky way home. but i have to admit, when every singe hour of observations produces a collection of 400 galaxy spectra to determine redshifts for, my eyes feel exhausted and strained at the end of a long night at the telescope!
luckily during our recent observing run, we had quite a few people in the telescope dome (note the unusually high female to male ratio :)
and we could therefore be a bit more leisurely during our redshifting sessions!!
Saturday, February 5, 2011
intense observing
as you can see, i havent been able to post nearly as much as i was hoping during this observing run at the AAO. it turns out this telescope and observing project require a lot more attention than i had predicted. it takes three people to keep operations going: a "night assistant" to control the telescope (make sure it continues pointing in the right direction, monitor the weather), a "support astronomer" to operate the instrument (keep everything in focus, configure the 400 optical fiber positions before each observation, actually open the camera's shutter), and the "observer" to decide what targets to look at and make sure the data is top quality throughout the night.
i'm feeling fairly exhausted from the whole ordeal even though these are short summer nights! during this run i'm training to do both the support tasks and those of the observer and at the end of this month i will spend a few nights as the head support astronomer!
for now, here are some photos.
these mountains are littered with telescopes and i just found out there are plans to build about 14 more small-ish ones over the next several years!
butterflies love bottle brush.
the view from the catwalk of the AAT.
the AAT.
the control room setup is not quite as impressive as at UKIRT on mauna kea, but it certainly accomplishes the goals.
the night assistant in his rest state.
no matter how much i want to complain about brutal observing and not having as much time as i was hoping to work on science during the nights, i cannot complain at all about having time after i eat dinner to go out and watch kangaroos eat grass and bounce around. they are so freaking adorable... and when they hop away, i cant help but smile.
i'm feeling fairly exhausted from the whole ordeal even though these are short summer nights! during this run i'm training to do both the support tasks and those of the observer and at the end of this month i will spend a few nights as the head support astronomer!
for now, here are some photos.
these mountains are littered with telescopes and i just found out there are plans to build about 14 more small-ish ones over the next several years!
butterflies love bottle brush.
the view from the catwalk of the AAT.
the AAT.
the control room setup is not quite as impressive as at UKIRT on mauna kea, but it certainly accomplishes the goals.
the night assistant in his rest state.
no matter how much i want to complain about brutal observing and not having as much time as i was hoping to work on science during the nights, i cannot complain at all about having time after i eat dinner to go out and watch kangaroos eat grass and bounce around. they are so freaking adorable... and when they hop away, i cant help but smile.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
telescope domes and kangaroos!
its one of those fantastic new moon, pitch black nights where you cant see your hand in front of your face. unfortunately, the sky is also covered in clouds so i cant see any stars :( but i managed to see some kangaroos and take some photos before the sun went down!
the anglo-australian telescope:
the Faulkes Telescope South:
the anglo-australian telescope:
the Faulkes Telescope South:
Sunday, January 30, 2011
lessons from australia #1
always walk behind someone who is slightly taller than you (especially in the morning)...
comic from the oatmeal
comic from the oatmeal
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
australia day 2011
there are so many events happening today around sydney in honor of australia day that i just cant keep up. i managed to walk to the harbour to watch the ferrython. there were a lot of boats of all sizes racing under the harbour bridge! this photo is a hint of the event before the real chaos began, but i like it...
then i returned home to eat lunch and decided that its too bad its not a holiday in the rest of the world, because i keep getting "urgent" work emails! hmph.
anyway, happy australia day!
then i returned home to eat lunch and decided that its too bad its not a holiday in the rest of the world, because i keep getting "urgent" work emails! hmph.
anyway, happy australia day!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
sunday at shelly beach
the forecast called for rain, and how wonderfully wrong they were.
the morning looked a bit cloudy in my neighborhood, but i decided to grab a ferry for the coast anyway.
there was a volleyball tournament on the beach!
after a tasty brazilian feijoada for lunch, we decided to walk to that little beach off in the distance.
we spotted a big lizard along the way...
almost at shelly beach!
ahhh...
one thing i like about australia is that matters are not complicated by subtlety or suggestion. no, they are presented in an upfront and honest manner. for instance, when i first heard of shelly beach, my passing thought was that maybe it was named after a historic person named shelly who lived in the area and achieved something special.
and then i visited the beach today. as i walked into the water, i realized my feet were becoming quite sensitive because the sand went from very small granules to increasingly larger chunks of broken shells. i thought to myself "wow, there are a lot of shells here! oh right, shelly beach is... shelly!"
(shells photo credit: amanda gilligan)
when i lived in england, i felt like there was always some deeper, hidden, clever meaning to everything and i was constantly on the look out so as not to miss the subtle joke. the british take great pride in their humour, even moreso when people "dont get it." actually, i just found this quote about the english and their use of understatement from the "Humour Rules" chapter of Watching The English, by Kate Fox, which explains it all very well.
anyway, in australia, understatement is not commonplace. they call it like it is. shelly beach has a lot of shells. es ist wie es ist.
i like not feeling as though i'm always missing something!
the morning looked a bit cloudy in my neighborhood, but i decided to grab a ferry for the coast anyway.
there was a volleyball tournament on the beach!
after a tasty brazilian feijoada for lunch, we decided to walk to that little beach off in the distance.
we spotted a big lizard along the way...
almost at shelly beach!
ahhh...
one thing i like about australia is that matters are not complicated by subtlety or suggestion. no, they are presented in an upfront and honest manner. for instance, when i first heard of shelly beach, my passing thought was that maybe it was named after a historic person named shelly who lived in the area and achieved something special.
and then i visited the beach today. as i walked into the water, i realized my feet were becoming quite sensitive because the sand went from very small granules to increasingly larger chunks of broken shells. i thought to myself "wow, there are a lot of shells here! oh right, shelly beach is... shelly!"
(shells photo credit: amanda gilligan)
when i lived in england, i felt like there was always some deeper, hidden, clever meaning to everything and i was constantly on the look out so as not to miss the subtle joke. the british take great pride in their humour, even moreso when people "dont get it." actually, i just found this quote about the english and their use of understatement from the "Humour Rules" chapter of Watching The English, by Kate Fox, which explains it all very well.
anyway, in australia, understatement is not commonplace. they call it like it is. shelly beach has a lot of shells. es ist wie es ist.
i like not feeling as though i'm always missing something!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
big bada boom - welcome 2011
sydney put on a pretty good show to welcome in the new year.
jupiter got in on the action.
so did the boats in the harbour.
happy 2011 all!
jupiter got in on the action.
so did the boats in the harbour.
happy 2011 all!
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