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 :)

Prize winning contest

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Physics and Skiing

We had to say something about the Aspen part of Chicago ----> Aspen and back, didn't we? Well, sit back and relax. Here it goes...

Preface: We were here to talk about cosmology with clusters of galaxies , one of our favorite topics :). That part went pretty well, but who cares. Here's the rest of the story.

Aspen is a pretty small town. It's located at 7,900 ft. (~2400m), at the base of the north slope of Aspen Mountain, which peaks at 11,212 ft (3418m). To north of town is the Roaring Fork River, and then a smaller range of mountains. The south facing slope of that range is peppered with the vacation homes of the filthy rich. The south side of each house is just a few big windows facing to the south, over the river, towards the sun and the ski slopes.

Aspen has three populations of people: the filthy rich, the locals, and the occasional physicist (see picutre above). The rich and famous frequent your favorite minaturized versions of the large retailers in New York and Chicago (Macy's/Marshall Fields, Saks, etc.). Some of the locals are the ones who run the hotels, drive the shuttles, and run the stores. Those we had the pleasure of meeting often are from the midwest, younger people that have shunned (at least temporarily) the flatness of America's breadbasket for America's Alps. The remaining locals are an interesting mix of cowboys and midwesterners, hospitable and fearless.

We spent most of our time with other humble physicists, for whom Aspen (well, really the National Science Foundation) has built the Aspen Center for Physics, which hosts monthly conferences for the full range of physicists (condensed matter, atomic, bio, nuclear, partilce, astro, and string theorists...well, string theorists don't really count, but you get the idea). The daily meetings at the conference we were at ran from 8-11am, and then 4:30-7:30 at night, conveniently spaced for scientific collaboration on ski slopes.

Now for the fun part, the "collaboration". Aspen has 4 major ski areas, Snowmass, Aspen, Aspen Highlands, and Buttermilk. We hit Aspen, mostly because it was the closest, but also because it's not Buttermilk, which didn't look very challenging. We got the group rate for lift tickets($50) and rentals ($25), which was something like 40% of the regular rate.

The longest run is 3 miles, pretty hard to ski down without stopping a few times. The peak is at 11,212 ft. That's where Keren is in the picture above. We rode a gondola up to this point. Keren skis every other year or so, so she was confident. I, on the other hand, hadn't skiied in 13 years. I was more than a bit nervous about wiping out and falling 3 miles downhill. Sorry to disappoint, but we did pretty well going down. There aren't "easy runs", mostly blue squares, some black diamonds, and a few double blacks.



Here we are in action (click on the images to see more): That's me to the right, and Keren on the bottom. These were pretty easy runs. I felt pretty stylish in my blue jeans, black Carhart jacket, and Michigan hat.



Toward mid afternoon, clouds and snow rolled in. Making it hard to dodge obstacles in the hill. About that time, we took "Blondie's" a black diamond. Keren is working her way down it below. That was my one crash of the day. I got going to fast, tried to turn too sharply, my boot popped out of the binding, and "poof", a cloud of snow. Thankfully, nobody was there to see it. I like to say it was an equipment malfunction, and that even the best skier would have surely crashed...there, now I feel better.




There's not enough room here to show all the pictures, but we did have some spectacular views on the way down. Below, the lovely foreground view is my wife on "Ruthie's Run". Behind her is the view. You can see Aspen's tiny, unorganzied airport in the valley below, a dignified site that recently devoted a post to. The last picture comes from about 1/3 of the way down Aspen Mountain, where you can see how the city is neatly nestled in the Roaring Fork Valley.



We spent about 5 hours on the hill, skipping lunch and a few talks. We could have skipped the whole day of talks, but one of those talks was mine, and it just didn't seem right to miss my own talk. Take a a look at the Aspen Mountatin trailmap, where you can get a feel for how large the moutain is, both from the picture on the front cover, and from the map inside. We spent most of our day on Ruthie's Run, Dipsy Doodle, all the different Copper runs, Deer Park, and Buckhorn (not in that order).



We weren't as sore as we could have been the next day. My toenails hurt the most -- a week later, both my big toes are black and blue. They remind me of my dad's toenails after being stepped on by so many cows. It's worth it though, because I was reminded of how much fun I used to have skiing, and my ski buddy made it all the more enjoyable. We're talking about how we have to visit Caberfae more often, near my parents' place in Cadillac, MI. Most of the rest of the trip sucked, but we already talked about that.

Chicago, IL -------> Aspen, CO

why would one go from chicago to aspen?
1. you like to ski
2. you are very rich and have a house up there
3. you have to go to a conference...

how would one get from chicago to aspen?
1. use teleportation (about 0.00626468212 s)
2. by car: load the car, remove snow and ice from car, turn car on, drive, drive, drive, drive, reach a corn field, drive, drive..... drive, reach a mountain, drive, drive, ... drive, arrive aspen. (about 18 hours 20 mins)

3. by air, direct flight:
walk to el station (5 min); take red line to down town (25 min); take blue line to o'hare (1 hr); check in; walk to gate (C2); wait for boarding; walk around gate, notice that the flight is delayed, and was moved to gate F4; walk to gate C4, take shuttle to another terminal; go to gate; wait for boarding; notice that the flight moved again, now to gate F14; walk to gate F14; wait for boarding; go to restroom 5 minutes before boarding, notice by chance that the flight moved back to gate C3; hope you can make it; take a shuttle back to the first terminal; walk to gate; finally, board plane; wait on runway for de-icing; fly to Aspen airport. land, get bags, take hotel shuttle to Aspen.
about 8 hours.

how would one get backfrom Aspen?
1. teleportation (i wish...) (about 0.00626468212 seconds)
2. by car: use same instructions as above, reverse the order. (about 18.5 hours)
3. by air, through denver:
take shuttle to airport; wait for check in; notice previous flights were cancelled; wait another hour in line; notice the flight before yours gets cancelled; wait another 20 minutes; notice your flight get cancelled; use airline phone, talk to agent; wait more in line; talk to person at check in; reschedule your flight for tomorrow; go back to aspen; get dinner, beer, sleep, breakfast; check online, make sure your flights are on time; repeat steps 1 through 8. for steps 3-8, replace "cancelled" with "delayed"; check in; wait in line for security; go through security; walk to gate; wait for flight; board plane; wait in line for your turn to take off; fly to Denver (25 mins); arrive to denver airport, miss your connection; walk to gate of next flight; talk to abnoctious agent; walk to another gate, use airline phone to re-book your flight; walk to gate; wait for flight; board; wait in plane for late baggage; take off; fly to chicago; land; wait for bags; wait till the carosell stops; wait in line to claim lost baggage; fill in forms; walk to train station; take blue line to downtown; walk to red line station; wait till the train arrives on opposite track, due to construction; ride red line; walk home;
about 2 days.
wait for your bag to arrive. one day.

some day we will be laughing about this... i hope... for now, until option 1 becomes available, i strongly recommend NOT to use option 3.

--- pictures ---

300 people waiting for 4-5 flights out of Aspen. expect delays.


leg room! finally, flying out of Aspen.


waiting in Denver, and finally flying out.

sorry, we didn't have the energy to take pictures of our lost luggage.