Tag Archives: observing

Chile, here I am!

After a short TGV ride from Brussels to Paris on 1st class (and almost getting chased down by the French border control after not wanting to stop for their undercover agent at the train station – yeah, sorry, but anyone can wave in front of you with a fake ID…), and a flight of 14 hours and 35 minutes (I had the same flight duration from Abu Dhabi to Sydney last year), I arrived to Santiago de Chile. I came to South America for the first time in my life, and I will be observing at the Swiss 1.2 metre Leonhard Euler Telescope at the La Silla Observatory (ESO).

The flight was really long, and with much more turbulence above the equator upon entering the airspace over Brazil than what I am comfortable with. Anyway, these Boeing 777s are luckily pretty flexible. Among others, I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which I found a really nice feel-good movie, with a great soundtrack. Unluckily I did not manage to sleep much, partly because the Air France economy class is simply crap, but mainly because while other people fell asleep almost immediately after take off, I wanted to sleep only after shifting to Chilean time, which coincided with others waking up and turning their reading lights on… Anyway, I got picked up at the airport by a taxi arranged by ESO (which by-the-way stands for European Southern Observatory), and after a short drive, ended up in the ESO Guest House in Santiago. It was quite an experience driving past dirt an poverty around the outskirts of the city, then the modern financial district, and ending up in the very green area of the guest house. The building itself is a colonial hacienda, with an inner garden, a nicely furnished living room, and very friendly staff. More importantly, with great food! I have not done much on the afternoon and the evening besides posting the two previous blog posts, simply because by nine I was so tired, that I had to go to bed. I did not take more than 5 seconds to fall asleep.

The next morning I finally made it to the shower, then after a quick breakfast my taxi came and I took the plane to La Serena. With its 1h 15m flight time, it was nothing compared to the more than two hours I spent afterwards in the ESO transport driving up to the Observatory of La Silla. But at least I finally saw the blue sky (the weather in Santiago was pretty rainy and windy), and the Andes. The roads here are generally not the best, but the last section towards the observatory before the gate of the ESO was simply missing (only gravel), while after the ESO gate, there were more potholes than road around them. It was really bad, not only compared to the smooth roads of Mallorca… I was seriously worried about my photo equipment.

Then upon arrival, I was immediately taken to my room. End that was it. No reception, no check in like on La Palma, nothing. I was still in time for lunch, where I ran into the current observer and a few other young astronomers (and by young I mean more or less my age) too. Since I had nothing better to do, I joined them for a small excursion to the nearby (dried out) oasis and a small copper mine.

As you can see, this is a pretty dry place, a rocky desert. But a very colourful one! Now I am at the telescope, but the sky is cloudy, so we are not working tonight. Also, my run only starts on Monday, so I still have some time to walk around, and take some pictures of the Southern sky, if it clears up. Many more posts to come!

Back from La Palma

What time of the day is it? I see that it is bright outside, so it must be during the day, but my biological clock is so screwed up again, I could not tell if it was morning or afternoon… I had enough of this jet lag (or observatory lag in this case) for this year, I am really fed up with it. At the end each of the seven nights went by without major problems and with perfect weather at the Mercator telescope, thus the Master students from Leuven and Amsterdam got plenty of data to work with.

It is really exceptional that we had such good meteorological conditions in October. As far as I can recall, there were always at least a few nights lost due to rain/clouds in the past years during the weeks of the master students’ observational projects. This time the students from Amsterdam even gave me a bottle of wine for the help I provided them during the past week! That felt really nice, I have to say. This was the first time I got something like this from students :)

I stayed one more night at the observatory (but not at the telescope) before coming home, which I spent studying my Dutch, trying to go through the lessons I had missed during the past two weeks. Then my taxi to the airport almost did not fit my bike box (we had to leave the trunk open and fix everything with ropes…), and my flight also got a three hour delay. And although I specifically went for a direct connection this time, the leg space is so horribly inadequate on these Thomas Cook flights, that now I really do not know what to do next (because having to change two times with IBERIA is also not one of my favourite things). I wish we could just teleport from one place to the other. The weather back home in Leuven is a bit grey, but this time of the year, this is pretty normal. But it is good to be home again. The rest of this week I will have to catch catch up with my work email, my Dutch class, and try to unpack my bags/bike box… Oh, and sleep…

Moon, Venus, Saturn, Mercury, and the ISS

After a week of cycling, I am back again at the Mercator telescope, supervising a group of Belgian and Dutch master students while they are working on their observational projects. This is our second night, and we already saw a quite rare celestial conjunction. The picture above was taken with a FUJIFILM X100S camera set at f/2.8, at ISO 400, using an exposure time of 30 seconds. It shows the Moon and Venus towards the top left, the track of the International Space Station in the centre, and slightly hidden among the hundreds of stars, also Saturn and Mercury towards the lower right, just above the horizon. Use the finder chart here to identify them!

The outburst of the Draconids

Last night (Saturday) the Draconids produced a pretty nice outburst as the Earth passed through clouds of dust left in space by the comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, resulting in a short but strong meteor shower. I had my camera outside for approximately three hours, taking pictures continuously (14 sec exposures every 15 seconds), so besides watching parts of the show with my own eyes (while the telescope was working on its own), I also got tens of shooting stars ‘on my memory card’. Unluckily it was almost full Moon, so the sky was very bright, and the Draconids are mostly faint meteors, but I still managed to see 46 of them in 31 minutes, so the outburst was indeed very strong.

Here is the nicest one (cropped) from my pictures, and if you continue further below, you can see animations of meteors leaving persistent trains! (But be patient, the animations are big and they will load slowly…) Check them out, because you do not see such things too often :) I even sent in a report to the International Meteor Organization, to place La Palma on their map. You can also check their results. Continue reading →

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Back at Mercator, now with photography equipment

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 :)

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