hgomez's blog

This week, a number of scientists have gathered in Madrid to discuss the first science results from the Herschel Space Telescope.    Herschel is the largest astronomical telescope ever put in space (the mirror is 3.5m wide!) and observes light at infrared to submillimetre wavelengths (50 - 550 microns), around 500 times larger than the wavelength of visible light.  Astronomers built this telescope to observe cold objects (shining at 10K or -260C) in the Universe, since these sources radiate at this wavelength.  read more »

Last night, we realised that all the analysis we did on the polar alignment and azimuth axis the night previously had been the wrong way.  We were so frustrated!  I would like to blame altitude for this, but it appears to be a software issue which told us to move the back end of the telescope up, when in reality we had to go down.  This confused us for around an hour but we soon got back to the taking of pretty pictures.  read more »

After 15 hours on the mountain, we got first light on the South 0.4m.   The first images looked a little strange (see the bottom image) because the telescope wasn’t focussed yet.  Once this was done, we checked the drift on the stars and saw they were moving south on the images. To fix this, Jacob and Wayne moved the azimuth axis (by around 0.75 inches) and the drift was significantly improved.  We then checked the polar alignment of the telescope by moving between a bright star at the zenith (i.e.  read more »

Ok, so yesterday was bit of a struggle.  Not much progress was made due to network issues but they seem to be solved now.  We’ve been up the mountain for 10 hours doing some work but we’re only just now about to start looking at some stars through the 0.4m!  The south 0.4m is all set up but the North has a technical issue which the Santa Barbara guys are working on.   Edward will be controlling the camera, Wayne will control the interface which controls the telescope  read more »

We’re about to leave since we’re all pretty tired after trying to solve some problems.  Progress was very slow today due to some network issues, but we think we’re ready to start doing some serious commissioning once we’ve stopped being so fuzzy (altitude is a little weird on the brain).  Tomorrow, Edward and I will start working on the 0.4m which Wayne and Jacob have set up and we should be able to report back with some pictures of the sky.  read more »

This morning we had an eventful ride up the mountain, we were stuck behind a horsebox on its way up to the peak to ferry down the tourists.  Jacob, our driver, did his very best to stay calm traveling at 5 mph for almost 20 minutes but we got here eventually. Don’t these tourists know there are people working up here! Sheesh!  We finished yesterday a little behind schedule since there appeared to be a problem with the telescope drivers (the hand paddles) talking to the computer and some circuit issues with driving certain parts of the 0.4m .  read more »

Well, we’ve been at the summit for almost 10 hours and it’s been great so far.  Mark was installing a webcam on the outside of a building and we helped him out whilst the electrics and links with the 0.4m and the control software are being tested by Wayne and Jacob.  The enclosure just opened (wow, what a noise it made!) and it was truly awe-inspiring.  We got to take some pretty nice pictures too.  Now we’re off and we’ll be back early tomorrow.

This week, I have been lucky enough to be asked to go out to the Haleakala site in Maui by LCOGTLas Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network to help commission the telescopes. As an astrophysicist, I often analyze images from telescopes (mostly ones which work in the far-infrared range, including telescopes which sit on top of another extinct volcano on the Hawaiian islands - Mauna Kea on Big Island).  read more »