As you probably realised, my trip to Hawaii was more or less a complete washout. Of the four nights we had on the telescope, we made it to the summit for one and a half of them. The last night was the most depressing, when we sat there for hours waiting for fog to clear only for it to start snowing heavily. Once that happens, you need a team with shovels to be able to open up and it’s time to head down. We did manage to get about an hour’s data on the third night, for a program which didn’t need as good conditions as mine did, providing data on targets which will be viewed by the new Herschel telescope.
Herschel doesn’t need to worry about snowstorms, as it’s ESA’s new space telescope. With a 3.5m mirror, it will be the largest telescope ever to fly. Designed to work in the far-IR – a region of the spectrum that hasn’t been covered by recent missions – it should produce spectacular views of the coolest bits of the Universe, from nearby star formation to the most distant galaxies. In order to make sense of the results expected when it launches later this year, scientists are currently carrying out large surveys with existing ground based telescopes. These will be used to calibrate and to help interpret Herschel’s results – which will no doubt send scientists scurrying back to Mauna Kea. If it isn’t snowing, that is.
Jane on February 19, 2008
Well, it was pretty disastrous, especially for Chris on the second-half-of-night slots. Our polarization experiments on the first half of the last night went a little better – in the sense we got 32 seconds of actual data! My favourite bit was us rushing around shouting ‘where’s the hairdryer??’ Seriously – it’s a heat gun used to melt ice off the instrument window where the light goes in, which had frosted over in the abysmal conditions. Anyway, our 32sec of data showed that the new polarization observing mode actually works, for the first tim, which made the trip worth it!
That, and the Sakatinis at the cafe Pesto bar in Hilo… martini made with sake, mmmm