Posts from the Ledge

By Doug on October 25, 2006 at 8:01 pm | In Blog Posts |

Hola Slackerpedes from Cerro Pachon in Chile!

I am writing from the observing room at the Gemini South 8m telescope. Sadly, our first night here was clouded out. There was a spectacular sunset … due to the high clouds, so it is unclear (sic) how much observing will be done tonight. The weather hasn’t been reliably clear in the past weeks - we are expecting a mix of usable nights and … frustrating nights.

The Gemini telescopes operate using a “multi-instrument queue”. Many instruments are mounted semi-permanently on the telescope and the actual observations executed on a given night depend on the conditions and the ranking of the scientific program. If the water vapor is especially low and a highly-ranked infrared program has available objects, it will be executed. Programs that require the very crispest images are only done when those conditions exist. It is an excellent way to get the most scientific productivity out of the telescope.

Our program is to obtain spectra of supernovae light echoes in the Large Magellanic Clouds. We already have some images from the queue but need a few more to be ready to “cut masks” to do multi-object spectroscopy using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS). We also have some masks ready to use for other light echo brightenings. Now all we need is some clear weather! Actually, we can make use of partially cloudy conditions for some of our observations - another benefit of the multi-instrument queue.
To learn more about the Gemini Observatory, visit http://www.gemini.edu/

I’ll send along some audio segments soon!

Best regards,

Doug