While supervising the Master students at our telescope on La Palma last autumn, I completed the missing scenes for a new version of my Mercator time-lapse movie. Please set it to at least 720p, or go to YouTube and set it to 1080p and full screen, and enjoy! (I know this is not very recent news, but it would be a pity to not have this as a memory on the blog.)
PS.: sorry for not posting during the last half year…
While two weeks ago I was waiting for the comments from my co-authors before I resubmitted my second paper, I finally got enough motivation to finish my 3D model of the Mercator Telescope, which I started 1.5 years ago… I did it using Goole SketchUp, which is a very easy to learn and use, but still powerful modelling tool. When I abandoned the model back in 2010, I was a bit stuck with the texturing of the dome, and I basically lost interest, as most of the work was already done, and I did not feel challenged enough anymore to keep doing it. I had drawn the model based on the original blueprints of the observatory, I had taken all the high-resolution pictures on site which I needed for the texturing, but then there were still lots of time-consuming details left, which is – I can easily admit it – a bit of boring to do… But some of my colleagues started nagging me recently, so I thought, if I do not finish it now, I will never finish it. So then approximately another 30 work hours later (growing the sum to something around a 150 hours) the model was done :) I am having trouble uploading it to the servers of Google to make it available from within Google Earth itself, but until I succeed with that, you can download the model directly from here (and open it with your copy of Google Earth). I have also prepared a set of sample pictures, which can be found on Flickr. But here is a quick peek:
For my last three observing runs, I preferred to have my racing bike with me on the Canary Islands instead of my photo gear. It would have been especially hard (and heavy) to carry my tripod along when I had to take care of my bike box… But now, at the end of the cycling season (and with quite some kilometers ridden on the Canaries in May and August already), I decided to bring the hardcore photography stuff. Thanks to Jonas now I even have a Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens with me. The view angle is basically the same (though the distortion is very different) as with my standard lens, but the maximum aperture is larger, which enables me to capture more of the faint starlight on the same exposure. Everything you will see in this post was taken with that lens. (Thanks again, Jonas!)
Of course packing was hell again (luckily I had better thing to do on the weekend, like cycling, playing with FIFA 12 – call me a child, I do not care :D), and I did not sleep too much during the night (but then almost 5 more hours on the planes, and this was the first time I have flown with a CRJ900). As my observing run starts on Wednesday only, now I have some time to concentrate on photography. The main goal is to take hundreds (thousands) of images again, and make a new version of my time lapse movie, The Starts of Mercator. And there are always some special things to take additional pictures of :) So lets see what we have here.
This was the first time ever that I have seen lenticular clouds over La Palma. They are usually not seen in good weather, so in astronomical terms, this was a bad sign for the forthcoming night… But not in photographic terms ;)
It was only ‘half moon’ (first quarter) over the Observatory, but it is already very bright. Without the moonlight, you cloud see the Milky Way towards the center of our galaxy on the left side of the picture. Now it is only visible, if you know what to look for… The bright path on the bottom is created by the headlights of someone driving up to the telescopes, and as you can see the dome of the WHT is open in the bottom right corner.
The lenticular cloud stayed for hours there, so I took a picture of it (and a whole time lapse sequence too) with the dorm of the Jacobus Kapteyn telescope in the foreground. Plus you can see the dim, outer part (looking into the anti-center direction) of the Milky Way with constellations like Cassiopeia and Perseus, plus you can easily (if you are/were an amateur astronomer) spot the Andromeda Galaxy in the top right corner.
Jupiter (the brightest ‘star’) and some winter constellations rising behind the INT building right before moonset (that’s why the building looks yellow and instead of white).
Looking towards the North celestistial pole. E pur si muove. It is not a real long exposure shot, but 140 (30 sec exposures) images stacked together from another time lapse sequence. The virtual circles are very nicely preserved thanks to the fisheye lens (compare it to the distortion of a standard lens here.)
Orion rising behind the INT. One hour before the arrival of the storm…
And then, at last but not least, the most special picture of the night. It is – again – part of a time lapse sequence, and you can see red sprites on the top, just below Orion. This is an extremely rarely photographed high altitude lightning, if you do a Google search on it, you won’t find many colour images… And to make it even more special, I was outside – monitoring the weather – when it happened, so I even saw it with my own eyes!!! Just as a red flash thanks to my peripheral vision, but I have seen it! Normally they can be seen from much further and at a lower view angle (and then they look more elongated thanks to the different perspective), so this is really the first image I have ever seen taken from almost below the event. Nice :)
During the last three weeks I spent 17 nights working at the telescope. 11 nights at the 1.2 meter Mercator telescope on La Palma, and 6 nights at the 0.8 meter IAC-80 telescope on Tenerife (and I had one night in between, when I did not have to work). All these nights were clear, and though some were plagued by the Calima (dust from the Sahara blown above the Canaries), I managed to keep observing all the time, except for one hour, when the seeing got so bad, that I could not do anything anymore. It will be really hard to have a better observing run ;) It is not easy to admit that there are much better time-lapse movies than the one I made last year, but the video below really shows how beautiful my workplace is…
I still think that this is the best part of being an astronomer, but of course after so many days it is good to be back in the normal day-night rhythm, and on a lower altitude (almost sea level), where there is more oxygen ;) So after saying good bye to the view from the Observatory (see below – pretty, isn’t it?), I took a taxi down (to 2000 meters lower in elevation) to La Orotava.
I am staying at the Hotel Rural Victoria, and it is perfect. I have a quite big room, free wifi, an LCD TV (on a nice wooden work desk), a huge private terrace overlooking the city and the sea (with my own cacti :D), two big beds, separate bathroom and toilet, etc. And the dinner included in the half pension has three courses with some tidbits in between! Perfect for a tired cyclist, who does not want to look for food after a long day. I hope the breakfast will be as good too! (Update: it is damn good too! I have chosen the best hotel.)
Today I did not do anything special, just assembled my bike (for the 3rd time in three weeks…) while watching the Vuelta (I went on a ‘short’ 1.5-2 hour training on 5 out of 7 afternoons while I was working here on Tenerife, so today was a rest day), walked around the city for an hour (it is really nice, a bit like La Laguna), and got some cookies and chips for later. And a big bottle of water – the most important thing… Now I have 6 days to bike around the island (mostly up and down, not really around), and I made plans for 5. We will see how much I can handle. The rides are shorter (100-130 kilometers), but with a lot of climbing, so it is not at all easy… But the scenery is amazing, so it is definitely worth the struggling ;)
I will keep you updated on the rides! (If I have energy left to blog afterwards… :D)
I am back again on La Palma at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (ORM) – for the 4th time already. I have 11 nights of work at the Mercator Telescope, then I will fly to Tenerife to continue there with another instrument. As always, I can only say that this island is amazing. Every time I take the taxi from the airport to the observatory, I can not stop staring out the window to look at the landscape. This is the first time I am here during summer, and I have to admit that the temperature is much nicer up here at 2300 meter, than it is in e.g. October. I don’t need my winter coat anymore, and I don’t need to put a kilogram of warm clothes (knee warmers, arm warmers, neck warmer, wind coat, rain jacket, etc.) on when I roll down with the bike on the morning, a simple jacket is enough. So during the day it is typically ~20°C (but it feels much more thanks to the Sun), while on the morning it is around ~15°C. Now again I took my racing bike with me (and I will have a week of cycling after my observing run on Tenerife), so already here I use it every day to commute between the Residencia and the Mercator Telescope.
I need to ride up once before dinner to start the calibrations (~5 PM), then I roll down to eat (~7 PM), and after a small nap I ride up to catch the sunset (which is around 9 PM) and start the observing night. Then I work till the Sun rises, and go down to sleep around 7:30 AM (and sleep from 8 AM to 4-4:30 PM). The ride itself is 2.65 km @ 6.9% with a maximum over 100 meters of 10.3% (a hard 3rd category climb in Tour de France terms), so it is not extremely difficult, but riding above 2000 m makes every climb a bit more challenging (click on the climb-plot and it will be bigger). But it is very good high-altitude training, and 3 times faster than walking! (I don’t even think about driving up with a car, that’s not my thing :D)
On the last afternoon I rode a new personal best up to the telescope, reaching the ‘summit’ in 11m 09s, which corresponds to a VAM of ~1000 Vm/h (yeah, I know it is not really a pro value, but who cares :D)! My previous bests from last October and this May were 12m 05s and 11m 36s, respectively, so the improvement is very clear. Oh, and these were ridden while carrying a backpack… After this record ride, I took the evening ride a bit easier and recorded the scenery (turn the volume down, if you don’t want to listen to my still quite hard breathing…). It is a nice place to work at ;)