Palomar

17:30. i'm at the observing room in the dome of the 200'' telescope on mount Palomar, aka P200. it's always great to go to telescopes (at least for me, other people may object), and this one in particular. it's big, friendly, familiar, and has all the advantages of being an observing site: it's on a top of a mountain, not too many people around, peaceful and quiet. I wrote about my last visit here. click on the here for a detailed map of the summit.

we drove up to the mountain yesterday, and joined a couple of families from the Kibutz who headed out an hour or two before us. they had set a camp a few miles from the summit, and after having dinner there (mmmmm... all sorts of israeli things... salad, labane...) we all went to the 60'' (1.5m) telescope. once a month in the summertime, that telescope opens its dome to public outreach, for the "friends of Palomar" (you can be a friend if you make a donation, duh). last night was one of these times. the telescope's scientific routine was stopped, all instruments removed, and instead the operator put an eyepiece. yes,
an eyepiece on a 60'' telescope!!! it's a rare experience, to look with your naked eye through a telescope this big. the visibility was very good, and everybody took turns looking through the telescope at a variety of astronomical objects: jupiter, a couple of globular clusters, the cat-eye nebula, the ring nebula... it was absolutely amazing. you could see colors and everything. usually when i go out with my amateur-astronomers friends and look through their (8-10'') telescopes, it seems like i have to try really hard to see a fuzz in the middle of the field, and strain my brain to admit that it looks kinda like the images i know and love.
the kids had a lot of fun too. Itamar was my new best friend, and wouldn't go anywhere without me. it's pretty awesome. sometimes i meet a kid that actually makes me want to have one some day :) (moms, don't get excited. i said some day). he kept asking questions and challange me with the most basic things (why are there trees? what is special? what is force? how come there's a sun? and on and on... some of these came in a long chain of questions, each following an answer to the previous one).

i took many many pictures, hopefully one or two of them will be any good. it's hard to do anything with so little light and objects that keep moving... i really hope that the one i took of eran looking through the eyepiece wil be good, it will make some people i know green of envy.
this morning, we went over to the 200'' telescope with everybody. it's always amazing to see this huge telescope in this huge dome. we climbed all the way up to the "prime focus", basically got all the way to the top and stood above the telescope. not a task for those afraid of heights.

tonight i'm joining eran for his observing night, that will start in a few hours. We are now taking some calibration exposures (basically, taking images of nothing, so that when we observe the real sky we have a "zero" baseline to compare to). In an hour or so we'll go have dinner, and then start the real observations when it gets dark enough. i think it's going to be a slow night, there's not much on the observing list for some reason. i'll try and tell about it here, as the night goes by...

18:16. Still working on calibrations. At 18:30, we'll go down to the "Monestary" for observers dinner.
19:12. back from dinner. we had salad, potatos in some creamy-cheesy sauce, ground beef meatloaf and green beans. comfort food ;). the chocolate cake dessert wasn't eatable. the cook/house manager at the monestary prepared a night meal for each of us, with our choice of sandwich, fruit, and pop. i added salad leftovers for later. who knows, maybe i'll feel like doing something healthy for a change.
Eran's doing some more calibrations now before sunset. if i'm not needed, i think i'll go out with cami and see if there's anything worth taking more pictures of; i like how the light looks like when the sun is low.
19:40. when the technician says "No light going in the instrument" it's a bad sign... tech gay goes to see what's wrong with the telescope, as Eran fills the kettle with water for tea.
20:10. the tech guy rebooted the main computer. it's basically the only think i know how to do when things go wrong ;) the sun set behind the horizon at 20:04 california time, just a few minutes ago. i took some nice pictures around/of/from the telescope, i'll add them to this post later.
21:20. the thech tried to do his magic (which included him being in the prime focus doing something, while shouting instructions through the speaker to start and restart and re-restart the system) all of which didn't work. sometimes you just have bad luck. finally, we decided to give up on the IR camera and only take spectroscopic data tonight. i took a long exposure picture while the telescope started observing it's first target for tonight.
00:48. the telescope is observing, and Cami is observing the telescope. i took some more long exposures, until the battery drained. while it's charging, i'm having nice conversations with the telescope operator, Jean. She just visited chicago a few weeks ago, and now reading City of the Century -- the book Ben read when we just moved in. So we talked a bit about chicago. she's very talkative and very nice, and a good astronomer :) whe discovered many comets... wait! she has a wikipedia entry!!
03:10. tired. 2 hours to go...
03:40. damn, it's so dry here. my lips are so sore... :(
...
the rest of the night went by, i went out a couple of times to get some fresh desert-feeling air, and eventually we closed the dome at 6. i fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, and woke up (about 5 minutes later) at noon, to drive back to pasadena.
all in all (besides some mosquito bites and my dried lips) it was a wonderful weekend. the only thing i regret is not having ben there with me. don't worry my love, next time i won't let you miss it :)

...
back in pasadena. i downloaded all the pictures to my laptop, but i'm too tired to upload them now... plus i have to get up early tomorrow. so... be patient, i'll put them on the blog tomorrow :)