The Life of an Astronomer

Not too much has occurred since my previous update. I sleep all day, take pictures at sunset, and play with a telescope that is far bigger than I am.

Here are some samples of the pictures I take...

Obviously, this is a telescope dome. It is not the one that houses the telescope that I use, but it looked prettier than mine at sunset the other day. I apparently have just claimed possession of a telescope. That's the stuff of dreams!

I insist that there really isn't much else to do up here when not observing other than take pictures of the domes and the mountains. This point brings me to the next picture.

This is the moon rising over the (Andes) mountains as the sun was setting. A bit more obvious than the first obvious picture I decided to describe in detail?

If the bored-astronomer-turned-photographer is really quite fortunate, the animals of the mountain will emerge (this does not include the spiders, imitation elderberry bugs, or the several dozen ants that I have found in my room).

For good measure, I include a picture of a fox with the view from the area of the cafeteria and the rooms. When asked, the fox did not desire to join us in the control room. We should have lured him with cookies.

He did desire to scare us by howling incessantly the other night.

At the observatory!

Once again, I'm on the top of a mountain staying up all night. Things got off to a rough start last night, but everything seems to be working properly now.

To start, on the left is a picture of the view of La Serena from the AURA (Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy) compound where we stay before coming up to the mountain. Off in the distance and across the water is a statue on the top of a hill. It's La Serena's version of Corcovado, which you may remember from this post.

We walked around La Serena for a day and found out that every restaurant recommended to us by other astronomers or that we had been to previously is closed. It was a bit disappointing, but there were plenty of other places to eat.

We came up the mountain yesterday and had a very long night. As I said above, things weren't going smoothly at first, so I had to stay at the telescope until almost 9 a.m. I then had to walk down to the rooms because my observing partner wasn't feeling well and left with the car an hour or so earlier. I note this so I can show the picture of the rooms as seen from the telescopes, to the right. Please note that the rooms are in the white building on the left that looks like it's going to fall off of the cliff.

I got to sleep around 9:30 a.m. only to wake up about an hour and a half later by the fact that I was uncontrollably rolling back and forth in my bed. I was apparently the only thing in my room moving, but it was undeniably an earthquake. It lasted about a minute or two and was not intense enough that I realized that I should get out of bed. I hadn't slept for over a day, and I was half awake and barely aware of what was going on. I imagine if it were more violent, I would have gone outside. When I realized what it was, my initial reaction was how displeased I was to be in a building so close to a ledge. I got over that and fell asleep again.

After dinner (which involved papas duquesas!) and before observations started, I watched the sun set and took this pretty picture. The big dome in the foreground houses the 0.9m telescope that we're using.

Edit: The earthquake occurred in northern Chile and was a 6.2 magnitude event. The epicenter was less than 150 miles north of the observatory.

The Return to Chile!

I made it to Chile after several flight delays, but nothing major. The curious thing is that all of the Chileans agree that it's an hour ahead of EST, but the clocks on the planes did not. Luckily, we had a long enough layover in Santiago that losing an hour was not a problem.

Speaking of the Santiago airport...
I wish I would have realized I should be taking pictures, but I was too tired this morning (perhaps when I get there next week). The airport is a bit of shambles from the recent earthquakes. We got off the plane in the normal jet-bridge, but we passed some rooms that just looked like they were under construction. The ceiling was missing tiles in some places. Then we tried to get to departures to get the flight to La Serena. I had read earlier this month that the airport was utilizing outdoor spaces to avoid the unstable structures. This is true. The national flights were kept entirely outside in tents. There were desks for check-in, security screenings, ticket sales...everything. Vendors even moved stalls outside. It was impressively efficient, but it makes me wonder what the rest of Santiago looks like since the airport is northeast of the city.

La Serena looks completely unaffected. We got here, showered, and napped. We went out for dinner and I had my beloved papas duquesas. I could have just eaten those (fried mashed potato balls) and had strawberry juice for dinner. Tomorrow we will be wandering around the city.

We head up to the mountain on Thursday. I'm looking forward to observing.