I'd never been to a real telescope to observe, so of course when my advisor suggested I join him, I jumped at the chance! The travel and the observing is so breath-taking,
that it awoke in me the desire to post to this blog again after a four-year hiatus. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I'm enjoying describing my experiences! Feel free to write a comment, or shoot me a message.
One of the first things I realised: it's hard to get here! Never have I gone through so many security checks in one day (5 - Boston, Miami, Santiago, La Serena, Atacama). We took a 3 hour-flight from Boston to Miami, followed by a 3-hour layover, then an 8-hour international flight from Miami to Santiago, followed by another 3-hour layover. Next on the itinerary was a flight from Santiago back North along the Chilean coast to La Serena.
Boy, was the view gorgeous! The terrain was very hilly and a barren brown. The entire country is rather narrow, and from the plane you can see the entire East-West extent of it. On the west is the Pacific Ocean, lapping away at the coast; the continental shelf is rather shallow and there are rings of completely-submerged islands that make the water look green in places. Each time a bit of the ocean floor becomes high enough, it pokes its head above the ocean and becomes a tiny island, maybe a hundred square meters in size.
On the East rise the majestic Andes, their snow-covered peaks guarding the country's Eastern frontier, and abrupt snow line distinguishing them from the lesser hills spread out below all the way to the ocean. The air corridor lies right in the middle of the two, affording a beautiful view of the entire country.
When the plane flies low, you can sometimes tell where the country gets its food - there are step farms in the occasional valleys between the hills. I have never seen trees growing in step farms, which leads me to believe that those are orchards.
Everything went fine until we tried to land in La Serena. Swooping low over our destination, we saw a giant bank of cumulus clouds many dozens of kilometers wide rolling in from the ocean, hugging the ground and spreading along the valley like a blanket. To the folks on the ground this march of the impenetrable cloud bank, seeming to us from the air almost like the dust kicked up by a ferocious advancing army, spelled a spell of fog. Which meant we could not land.
The plane took off, sharply banking to the left and flying out over the ocean. The captain announced (in Spanish) what I took to imply that we were to wait for the clouds to dissolve and the fog on the ground to lift before we could land, and that this was likely to take about half-an-hour. The flight itself was supposed to be 45 minutes long! Well, more exciting views for me.
The cloud bank was very narrow, and we soon cleared it as we rose over the ocean. But it was apparent that the clouds were forming a short distance from the shore and then advancing inland. Needless to say, the fog did not lift in half an hour. The plane banked again, and flew further North along the coast. At this point, I dozed, and woke to the aircraft landing, as I soon discovered, in the town of Atacama, Chile, about 200 miles North of La Serena. On alighting, miles upon miles of brown barrenness stretched on all sides. It's winter here, but the temperature is about 20 degrees C and rather pleasant. Another plane had landed beside us - perhaps the flight going South to La Serena, and both of us were stranded in the middle of the Atacama desert.
The little cafe in Atacama was overwhelmed by the couple of hundred passengers, and decided they could only serve a ham sandwich for lunch, thwarting our plans of checking out the famous Chilean avocado. An hour later, we were ready to take off again. This time we did land in La Serena, where a driver from the observatory picked us up. By now, we had been traveling for over 24 hours since leaving Boston, and a 2-hour drive awaited us from La Serena to Las Campanas, where the Magellan telescopes, together with the 100 inch du Pont and 40-inch Swope telescopes are located.
Our first leg was on the Chilean highway to Vallenar, 200km North of La Serena. I dozed during bits of the drive, and always awoke feeling like we had not gone anywhere at all - miles upon miles of barren brown stretched on either side of the dusty road, and a railroad line dogged us almost all the way to the telescopes, until we crossed it at a level crossing about 20 miles from the telescopes and left it behind us. Pebbles and small rocks were strewn all over the landscape, dotted by the occasional hardy winter shrub at most a foot high. The road often curved sharply to the left or the right, and occasionally fell away at over 30 degrees of average incline, only to steeply rise again. That the land is parched was apparent when we noticed that the road sides were often cracking in giant fissures hundreds of yards long; there was not a bird in the sky, and it seemed as if no creature could live in this desolate rocky desert. So imagine my surprise when we met a herd of mountain goats, crossing the road!
Eventually we left the road to Vallenar and turned on to the road to Las Campanas, the home of the Magellan telescopes and La Silla, the European Southern Observatory. A couple of miles down, we spotted both observatories perched upon their respective little hill tops. The road forked, and we took the one to Las Campanas. Some day I will visit La Silla too...
The domes seemed so near, then - but the winding road through the plateau took the best part of the hour to get us there, and it was past 4 PM when we alighted at Las Campanas, "The Bells", so named because the rocks in this area ring like bells when tapped due to their metallic content. We found our names on the guest list white board, with little stars next to them. After settling in, we were greeted by a scrumptious dinner. Astronomers swear by the kitchen of the Las Campanas Observatory, and I can see why - the steak and potatoes were good, but the soup was even better - and the cheesecake! Wow, it's going to be a brilliant three days here!
During dinner time, we met Oscar Duhalde, the astronomer who discovered Supernova 1987 in the LMC, who was a lot of fun to chat with. I had been wondering where they get their water from. Oscar tells me that they have wells all around the observatory for this purpose. The water table is 40 m deep, but underground water is sufficient to supply the telescopes and support buildings.
In the evening, we held a strategy meeting - what will we be observing and when? How do we optimise our viewing, so we can get as many objects in as we can? Which spectroscopic and photometric calibration stars will be observe? It's best to start out in the West and move East, but you don't want to start too far in the West too early, because that part of the sky is still bright. I'm clearly going to learn a lot about "real" observing in the next few days. So exciting!
In the evening, I took my binoculars and stepped outside. I was immediately stunned. First, everything was pitch dark. The Milky Way stretched from South-East to North-West, with enormous dark patches that could only be giant molecular clouds silhouetted against the milky backdrop such that they almost seemed three-dimensional. I searched for familiar constellations. Of course, the hemisphere was playing with me by making everything upside down. But I had the last laugh by bending over backwards. I saw the limbs of Scorpius cunningly straddling the Milky Way, an up-side down Hercules tumbling in the North, the tail of the Big Dipper poking above the Magellan domes and pointing to a brilliant Arcturus, the planet Saturn in Virgo completely dominated by the bright stars of Centaurus, the closest star - Alpha Centauri, the beautiful Southern Cross; and oh my, is that really the globular cluster omega Centauri directly overhead? I have never seen a globular cluster through my naked eyes! That's when I caught sight of the Magellanic clouds. No description had prepared me for the sight. The LMC looked enormous, 20 degrees above the horizon, the most prominent feature was the bar, aligned perpendicular to the horizon, with a clear hint of the arms coming off the top and bottom. The SMC was less distinct, but no less spectacular, trailing about 20 degrees behind the SMC. That sight totally beats the Northern attraction - Andromeda.
Tonight will be our first night observing. The seeing in the past couple of days has been great at 0.5 arcseconds. I'm looking forward to seeing the 6.5 meter telescopes for the first time...
No comments:
Post a Comment