Lake Tahoe

While still in California, I went to Lake Tahoe with some NASA coworkers and their friends.  There was a birthday celebration which meant a lot of eating.

We went to a beach on the Nevada side of the lake.  I was pleased to go to Nevada, since I hadn't been there.  We went for a boat ride.

The next day, I went for a nice hike around the lake.  I can't help but include another picture of the lake.  It was so blue!

Threatening Clouds

The official reason that Kitt Peak and MDM domes are closed tonight is "due to threatening clouds".  They were threatening, but the colors were unreal.

I took this just walking out of the control room. All of the buildings should be white.  The dome straight ahead is silver.  That is also where I was observing a few nights ago.

This is the view of the sun setting behind the dome that I'm presently using.

Everything really was golden.  

Oh Look,On Even More Mountains

I have been downgrading telescopes all week.  I started at CHARA (which is a one-of-a-kind facility), then I moved to the bigger of the two telescopes at UM's MDM Observatory, and now I am at the smaller of the two telescopes.  The control room here smells funny.

I like both CHARA and the bigger telescope here because I don't have to go outside or through dark hallways to use the restroom.

I have to do both at this telescope.  I go outside, then go through an open room with shop equipment, then down some stairs, into a dark hallway.

On a positive note, this is what the sunrise looks like.

On More Mountains

As I said before, I went from Yosemite to observing.  The first four nights of observing were spent at Mount Wilson.  I had just been there in May.  This time, I was there with my advisor, one of his post docs, and his other graduate student.  A collaborator also came up one night.  It was rather crowded.

Of the four from UM, I was the last one to show up.  That meant that I got housed in the nice accommodations at CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy).  I had a nice cottage (built in 1901) all to myself.  It had a stunning view of the valley below.  Unfortunately, LA fills the valley with lights.  Fortunately, the marine layer minimizes the effects and I observe in the infrared wavelengths.

Here is a view of one of the six CHARA telescopes, well the open dome and secondary mirror.  One of the solar telescopes is seen in the back on the right.  Behind the small dome is one of Mount Wilson's historic telescope domes, where the 60-inch telescope is housed.  For revenue, Mount Wilson allows people to come up the mountain and rent the telescope for the night.  The renters get a guide that points to pretty things all night for $1700/night.  $1700.  (OK, they also do half nights, and groups can be up to 25 people.  However, I've run observing sessions for classes and smaller groups are better.  It is a better use of money than buying a star.)

Yosemite National Park

I spent four nights in Yosemite National Park, and I didn't want to leave.  If I had been going back to normal work, I may not have, but I left to spend two weeks of observing.

My requirements were to see giant trees and waterfalls.  The first area that I visited was a grove of giant sequoia trees, Tuolemne Grove.  It was awesome.  You just walk along the forest path, then through the trees there's a tree that's a slightly different color.  You get a little closer to it, and then you realize that this thing is bigger than everything around it.

I have a bunch of pictures of big trees that do nothing to capture their size.

The next stop was a view of the famed rock face for treacherous rock-climbing, El Capitan, from the floor of Yosemite Valley.

While standing there, I turned around to see my first Yosemite waterfall:  Bridalveil Falls.  I had the opportunity to climb around on the boulders that were at the base of the waterfall (but not directly under the water).  I took it...even though there were signs warning people against it and I had the worst sneakers on possible for climbing on slick rocks.

For two nights, I stayed in Yosemite Valley.  I would equate the experience to staying at a resort.  There are restaurants, hotels, and way too many people.  There were lots of waterfalls, so the hikes from the Valley floor were stunning.  I hiked to the front of Vernal Falls.  There's a series of stone steps that leads up to the top of the waterfall, but crosses right in front of it on the aptly-named Mist Trail.  I stopped in front of the waterfall as my knees were already killing me.  The view from above would not have been comparable.

Yosemite Falls were also stunning.

There was lots of driving from overlook to overlook searching for the best view of Yosemite.   All of them were equally awesome.

The next two nights were spent in the mountainy part of Yosemite.  There was more hiking and fewer people.  Since this was where the waterfalls started, there were some nice rivers and streams.  A highlight was lunch next to a pretty lake.  I enjoyed it up there more except for the mosquito bites.  Even with bug repellant, they got me.

I saw some wildlife while there.  I saw a bunch of mule deer, some elk (which I described as huge deerlike things), coyotes, huge birds of many varieties, various butterflies, and small woodland creatures (perhaps a woodchuck?).   No bears or mountain lions.  I hiked in fear of both.

The accommodations were platforms with plastic canvas tents.  Inside were cots and a wood stove (only in the mountainy tent).  There were communal restrooms.  The lodgings weren't terrible, but I can't call it camping.

 I can't believe I didn't visit Yosemite last summer; that was a mistake.

Mild Amusements in the Bay Area

The last week or so has been pretty eventful.

There was the wonderful annular eclipse.  I drove 4.5+ hours north with two others from work.  We ended up in Redding, CA where a bunch of other astronomy enthusiasts were.  One of those that I was with had a lovely telescope for which he just happened to have a solar filter.  This made the viewing fantastic.  We had at our disposal several pairs of solar-view glasses.  I made a pinhole projection because I felt the need to contribute something.

Here is the result of my pinhole at the center of the eclipse.

The next day, I went to San Francisco to see a concert at night.  I ate at a delicious Venezuelan restaurant.  The cab drivers of Mountain View were too busy trying to jump start their cars and taking fares that involved several people to take me back to my lodgings (really, one asked me where I was going and then they proceeded to ignore me).   I had a fun two-mile walk at 1 a.m.

Then Air Force One landed on base.  I got yelled at for taking pictures from the wrong prospective and had to move so I could take this one.  Apparently, the US doesn't want pictures of the plane's butt.

I went to San Jose on Saturday with a friend from college that happens to be in the area.  We went to the Winchester Mystery House.  They wouldn't let us take pictures inside due to copyright.  Someone took out copyrights on every room in that house.  I also ended up on a tour with a birthday party full of 8-year-old girls.  Fortunately, before the tour "officially" started and before I was told not to take pictures, I took this one of a door that opens to a wall.

The woman that owned the mansion would talk to the spirits to receive the instructions on how to modify the home.  She was never to complete the project.  At the end of the tour, I realized that I hadn't seen the staircase to the ceiling, so I asked the tour guide where it had been.  She got another tour guide to take me back through the house on paths not taken by the tour so I could see it.  The amusing part is that they misunderstood me, and I ended up seeing several things that I wouldn't have otherwise seen in the process of trying to explain what I hadn't seen.  That made the tour almost worth $30.

I went to San Francisco again on what turned out to be the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Unfortunately, my less-than-adventurous travel partner did not want to stick around for those festivities, so we drove across it, and that was it.  I then braved the cable cars reluctantly (they are really cool, but they are just a tourist attraction, really...and one that I had experienced a year ago).  I went to the Cable Car Museum, where there are giant wheels turning the underground cables for the cars.  That was pretty neat, and I hadn't been to that before.  I ended up at Fishermen's Wharf, which was absolutely packed with tourists.  I got to see some sea lions hanging out.

More Time on a Mountain

The rest of my observing run was productive.  I think we got some really good observations for my project.  I'm very excited about it.

My last day there happened to be a Saturday when tours of the historic observatory just happen to occur.  I woke up absurdly early (for an observer) to go on this tour.  The tour guide told some pretty horrible jokes and made a handful of wrong comments about science and telescopes.  When he was going over how CHARA works (the set of six telescopes that I use), he commented that observers don't even need to come to the mountain because there are telescope operators.  This distressed me; observers have to come to take the data.  The telescope operators operate the six telescopes; we operate the instruments that take the data.

Anyway, after the tour and before I descended, I went to my favorite spot on the mountain.  Here is a picture from earlier in the week of the view from that spot.

...and then I smelled some trees.  The ponderosa pine smells like vanilla or butterscotch.  

Since I was pretty much a waste of space on Sunday from trying to get back to a day schedule (which failed), I wandered around CalTech's campus in Pasadena.  The whole place smelled nice from all of the flowers.  I then proceeded to find various places to sit for several hours with a book.  I particularly enjoyed the pond with lots of turtles.

And now...I'm back in Mountain View after a very long morning of travel.  This will be the longest stretch that I'm in the same place this summer.  When it ends in just over three weeks, I will be on my way to Yosemite, Mount Wilson (again), Michigan's Arizona observatory (MDM), and then back to LA before returning to Mountain View for just over a week, ending my stay in California for the summer.

The Smog of L.A. Is Optically Thick, as Astronomers Say

On the plane to L.A. I was supposed to have an empty seat next to me.  That was the case when I checked in, but when I got to the airport to print out my boarding pass the seat was filled.  The guy that filled it decided he wanted to tell me his entire life story.  I don't understand that urge.

I get to L.A. (after descending through a really thick cloud of smog that made it almost impossible to see the skyscrapers), and the plane is taxied around for forever.  We get off the plane and get on buses to be shuttled to the terminal.  I have to carry my suitcase up a large flight of steps at the gate.  When I get to the top, the people waiting to board the plane are crowding the area and not moving.  That's helpful.

I then get to the rental car agency where the lady first asks me for another credit card because mine has been declined.  That's not possible.  I verify that that couldn't have happened, and I tell her I'd like her to try the card again.  She then tells me that the credit check issued on my driver's license failed.  That's also not possible.  She kindly told me that it could fail due to poor or no credit (also not possible).  She is unwilling to offer solutions, and it is like pulling teeth to get her to tell me where the next nearest rental car place is.  She tells me, and it is some absurd distance away.  I call the other graduate student that's going to the mountain with me.  Thankfully, he was able to retrieve me.  

And now, the observing isn't going very well.  There is a lot of wind, which makes the atmosphere unstable.  There have also been a lot of technical issues that have caused loss of time.  So much more can go wrong when using six telescopes at once instead of one. 

Then there was an earthquake today.*  

On the bright side, two astronomers I really like are coming to take over the telescopes after my time is up, so I will get to see them.  I also plan on going on the guided tour of the observatory on Saturday.





*Note:  It wasn't an earthquake.  The washer was just shaking the building more than I thought possible.  It was used again with the same effect.  Lame.

Blimps and Dirigibles

Yesterday, I left work at 7 p.m.  Since it was Friday, most of NASA was abandoned, so I decided to go for a touristy walk.  Don't get the impression that it is worth being a tourist in Moffett Field, CA.  Most of the base (which is what Moffett Field is) has been neglected for years.  This includes an abandoned bowling alley and gas station (also several restaurants).

First, here is a picture of a side of Hangar One that is only visible from the restricted region that NASA is in or the super-restricted region that I can't access (and I suppose the golf course and bay, too, but that's a bit further away).

I think I could have probably walked down that road, but there were definitely barriers just a little further down.  I was distracted by the blimp that I didn't get a good picture of because I was using my phone and forgot my camera...again.  Let's just say that the blimp used to have a sponsor...and it is orange.  The blimp also wasn't here at all last summer, and I got excited when I saw it floating around.  There's a company in Ames Research Park (the non-restricted area) that does airship tours of the area.

Then I decided I wanted to get as close to Hangar One as I possibly could.  This is about as close as I could get.  

I want to stand inside of it, but I believe there's a fence there for a reason.  I'd rather like to avoid arrest and/or losing my internship, so I just won't get that opportunity.

For some reason, I never got this close to it last summer, when it was still completely covered (at least at the beginning of my stay).  That means that when I was so close to it last night, I discovered a hidden "gem" of Moffett Field:  the Moffett Field Historical Society Museum.  A plane, a helicopter, and the fuselage of some kind of weird-looking flying contraption with really creepy mannequins sitting in it  (it sort of looks like a shuttle nose, but it isn't) are outside the building, so what could be bad?  It's only open for four hours four days a week.  One of those days happens to have been Saturdays, so I bet you can guess what I did today.

I wasted my time.  That's what I did today.  I have to admit that I've been really, really excited about airships for the last few days (after seeing the resident one comically floating around).  I've spent an excessive amount of time reading about blimps, zeppelins, and their history.

I spent $8 to see a museum that I figured was solely dedicated to the glorious machines that are airships.  I was wrong.  About a third of the museum was airships (and that is being exceedingly generous).  The rest was what has happened to Moffett Field since people realized how bad of an idea things filled with hydrogen are (and how impractical things filled with helium are).

I'm not a fan of war, but airships are just so ridiculous; I can't comprehend that they actually could have been practical for malicious purposes.  The only actual use that I saw in the museum was four little planes could hang on the bottom for docking purposes.  The post-airship uses of the absurdly large Moffett Field Hangars (Two and Three aren't nearly as nifty---I also can't get even remotely close to them) are less fun, and I will neglect them here.

I was really disappointed, except there were some really cool pictures of Hangar One being built and airships in various states of construction.  There were also pieces of the frame work, which was pretty cool.  I went to the gift shop hoping that they would have an airship magnet or some of the prints in postcard form.  I was disappointed to find that everything in the gift shop was far less whimsical.  I left so very devastated.

It's probably for the best that I'm flying to L.A. in the morning to go to Mount Wilson for some more observing.  This is the first of the observing runs on which I am the principal investigator (meaning it's for my thesis project and I wrote the observing proposal for the time).

To Northern CA...again

I've arrived in northern CA yet again.  The weather doesn't seem to be as promised.  It has been cool and cloudy.  My skin appreciates not getting burnt, but I think Ann Arbor has been having higher temperatures.

I had a great time getting here.  My flight from Salt Lake City was late, and the empty seat that was supposed to be next to me was filled (but I was supposed to be in the middle on the Philly to SLC leg and wasn't, so I won't complain too much).  As we flew in to San Francisco, I saw NASA Ames from the air.

Because my flight was late, I had to wait an excessive amount of time for the CalTrain to come to take me to Mountain View.  Once I got to Mountain View, I took a cab.  The cab driver decided that he didn't want to take me directly to NASA, which was a problem.  He wasn't happy when I corrected him and didn't give him a tip (he charged me for his detour!).  One road leads from the CalTrain to NASA, his "mistake" was not a mistake.

Here's a token picture of the public part of Ames (Moffett Field).  In the background you can see Hangar One, which is being stripped because chemicals from the exterior have leeched into the ground water.  That's awesome since I have no idea source of my drinking water.  Hangar One used to house airships...like blimps, but with a rigid structure (that's also where the name Moffett Field came from, Moffett was a proponent of airships).

I started work yesterday, which was great.  I'm beyond excited to be doing science and only science.  I also received a very warm welcome back from the Kepler team.  That was a bit unexpected, actually.  This summer they gave me a private office.  It has no windows, but it also has no one else in it.

Unfortunately, I'm only here for one more day of work before heading to Mount Wilson on Sunday.  I will be back.

Lake Michigan

I went because I was given an invitation of a place to stay. This place was straight out of the 1970s. It was preserved with amazing care.

Much of the long weekend that I spent centered in Beulah, Michigan was spent hiking to amazing views of Lake Michigan. I mistakenly called it a sea or ocean a few times, I admit. Forgive me, I'm used to lakes being small (at least I don't call glorified hills "mountains").

A true highlight was Sleeping Bear Dunes. Walking over two miles in sand, mostly uphill, was the one thing I had to give up on. I walked over one mile in the sand, mostly uphill, to a lovely lookout. Walking long distances in sand is hard. Walking long distances uphill in sand is really hard.

There's no place like Kansas...

I landed in Kansas City, Missouri. A college friend living in Kansas came to pick me up. We toured around Kansas City starting with the Hallmark Visitors Center, which is a museum of Hallmark's history. It was special---I got to make some bows. We then went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. They have giant shuttlecocks in the lawn. You know, the badminton birdies. It was a fairly impressive museum. I particularly enjoyed their photography collection (They have daguerreotypes! They lacked death portraits, however.).

We spent part of a day in Wamego, Kansas. Wamego is Wizard of Oz themed. We went to the Wizard of Oz museum, Oz Winery, and Toto's Tacos. The winery was impressive. I could have some shipped to Michigan--a state lacking in ridiculous alcohol laws. I have to add that Mexican food in Kansas is exactly what one would suspect. The queso on the nachos was that fake cheese that you get at sporting events.

Manhattan, where my friend resides, is a cute little town with a huge university. It was a nice visit, and I was even able to see the stereotypical round bales. I don't mean to overstate it, but they were one of the best parts. Quintessential.

Not surprisingly, I was on a mountain again.

I went to Arizona in 2008 to observe at Kitt Peak National Observatory. There was this mysterious other peak with a few domes on it just to the side of Kitt Peak...MDM. It has one large radio telescope (not actually associated with MDM) and two smaller optical telescope domes. I had no business over there. MDM, it turns out stands for Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT. This tangent now makes sense. MIT no longer has a share in those telescopes, but some other schools have picked up their slack.

I got to go to MDM to help observe for a long-term project run by Ohio State (apparently they picked up some of MIT's slack). I thought this would be perfect as I applied for time on both telescopes using the same instrument that this campaign is using. I got more time than I requested (either because my proposal was that awesome or because Michigan has more time than they know what to do with).

Anyway, I spent another week on another mountain. I saw some pretty sunsets due to clouds that of course ruined observations. It was a good experience, except for the fact that I had way more homework to do than I originally anticipated having. There's also the fact that my skin was ridiculously dry even though I was actively trying to combat this issue.

I spent some time standing on a rock a short walk away from the telescopes. Below you can see the MDM telescope I wasn't using on the left and Kitt Peak in the distance.

I spent a week in Texas, and it didn't feel like I thought Texas would.

I went to Austin (which is apparently a pocket of liberalism) to attend the American Astronomical Society meeting. The winter meetings of this group are the biggest in America (for astronomers, that is). It is usually a fun and draining time. It's fun because I get to be in a different place and I get to see people I don't normally get to see. It's draining because I get to see a lot of people I don't normally get to see. I almost always leave these things with the strong desire to be alone for weeks on end. This is never possible.

I gave a talk this year, which was very nerve-wracking. I usually present a poster and have no trouble talking to people one-on-one. Fortunately and unfortunately, my talk was the first talk in the first session on the first day. This meant that I couldn't tell people about it to have them come. I couldn't look beyond the first few rows of chairs, so I couldn't tell you how many people were there if I tried. I think it went well. I was glad to not have to worry about it for the rest of the week.

I wandered around downtown Austin a little. There were few skyscrapers, but the ones they had were tastefully done. I walked along the river a little and stood on a bridge that is known to be home to millions of bats in the summer. Aside from all of the astronomers, I met up with a friend from high school. She talked astrology with my astronomer friends; they took it well. Because I actually know a fair amount of astronomers at this point, I spent more time socializing outside of the conference than sight-seeing. Also contributing to that was the fact that the weather was pretty gross, as seen in the picture below.

November Observing Run Photos

So, here are some pretty pictures from Mount Wilson in southern California.

The observatory is just outside of LA, so here is a view overlooking civilization.

The telescope that I was using was actually a set of six telescopes. The light from each of them goes through the white tubes and into a central building where it is combined. The result is hopefully a resolved stellar surface.

And then it snowed, so I got no data. On the left in this image is historic 100-inch Mount Wilson dome that Edwin Hubble used to use. The short buildings in the bottom of image are the control room for the CHARA interferometer (left; the telescope I used) and the building where the light is combined (right).