Tag Archives: video

Night 4-6 at the Mercator Telescope

I finished 10 minutes before the start of the twilight on night 3, so as I had no targets which could have been observed in such a short time, I decided to turn the telescope towards something visually stunning to create a proper outreach (PR) picture for our Institute, and the Mercator Telescope. The result is shown below :) The idea that we should release something like this once every month is supported by the staff at the telescope too, so that’s the reason why I made such a labelled version.

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My last lonely night turned out to be much more busy than planned, as the students from Leuven and Amsterdam were already at the observatory that evening. So while I was observing, they had their project presentations in the control room, which in one hand was quite interesting, but on the other hand, I could not work on my article… (I have to admit I have serious problems concentrating on it here.) The night itself was not the best, we had a lot of cirrus clouds (creating an amazing sunset – see below), and the seeing was also not that good. Then I had to close the dome for the last hours, because the clouds came up again… Even with far from optimal conditions, I managed to observe almost all the targets of the program, so it is OK.

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The first night of the students brought the worst weather I have ever seen until now on La Palma, as it was raining all night long. Luckily we got an invitation to visit the William Herschel Telescope, so after they got an introduction into image processing with IRAF, we left Mercator, and walked to the nearby WHT. Yeah, walking was my idea, as it was not raining at all, and the distance is only 400 meter. (Of course, on the way back it was raining, so we got completely soaked, but it was “fun”…)

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The WHT is really huge (for scale, look at the monitor in the bottom right corner), it has a mirror diameter of 4.2 meters. Mercator feels a bit smaller since we saw this :S We got a short introduction to the research done with the WHT, and a tour around the telescope itself. We even got a chance to take pictures of ourselves in the main mirror :) It was really impressive. The clouds and I stayed until sunrise (the students went down to sleep at around 3 AM), too bad that I am only productive in the last hour of the night. I guess this messed up day/night rhythm is not really good on a long term… Anyway, I still love observing.

Tonight we have good weather, so the students can finally work according to their projects, but I need to help them with the system and to give advice about exposure times, etc. It is almost continuous supervising. So the progress of my work will not be fast… But at least no one can say now that I am not taking my part from the teaching duties. Honestly, I like the role of the support astronomer very much :)

A scenic ride through the clouds

GPS data and short description is available here.

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Riding in the clouds at 2300 meter

When you go to sleep at 9 AM after a long night of work (we talk about at least 12 hours at the telescope), then it is not that easy to fit in a short ride before the sunset as you wake up on the afternoon at 4 PM. And it is impossible to do if you have to work again during the next night. But as this was not the case for me yesterday, I went for another 52 km (with 1100 m of elevation gain). As it was only 14°C when I left (yeah, the weather this high is quite chilly compared to the 26°C in Santa Cruz), I am glad that I put my knee and arm warmers on (plus a wind vest, but I was quite sure about wearing that from the very beginning), because the descents with 45-70 km/h were a bit cold. This is the first time I used them ;)

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Looking at the photo (and the crystal clear blue sky) above it might be hard to believe that I had to ride through clouds just before and after that picture was taken. But that’s how it was. The wind from the N just pushed the low clouds from one side of the ridge of the mountain to the other, so there was a continuous flow of wet and cold air from my left or my right, depending on which way I was riding. Video here :) Basically I did the same route as five days ago, just went a bit further down and up at the easternmost and westernmost point of the course. I can hardly feel now that I am riding more than 2 km higher than I usually do, so it is time for something bigger ;) Oh, and I met another cyclist, so I am not the only crazy one here (though I doubt that he brought his bike from Belgium on a plane…). I won’t have observing duties tomorrow, so I will probably read articles during the night. After tonight, I have only one more night at the IAC-80 :(

Honestly, I could live like this for much longer. Let’s say, being a support astronomer here on Tenerife or La Palma, working at the telescopes, then riding the bike around in my free time would be a good combination. (But first I need to finish my PhD :D) Though I think I would miss the Belgian chocolate, the great waffles, the beer and the fries, and I might get a tiny little bit lonely after some time… It is a bit sad that I would miss more Belgian stuff than Hungarian :( Pfff… I think I will stop thinking about this topic right now.

4th night at the IAC-80

The fourth night was finally photometric, with low humidity (8-20%) and stable seeing, so I could observe the targets from our main program. (Yeehaw!) The start of the night was a bit scary though, as the humidity went up to 86 percent during dinner, but then, in one hour it dropped down below 15%. I have never seen such a rapid change in my life. Anyway, just to show something new, I merged some frames together from the footage of the 3rd night, to create photos with star trails.

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Thanks to the perfect conditions, the time lapse video of this night is probably the most boring one, but it is still quite nice, I think. And if you watch carefully, you may notice a bright meteor just above the Teide around moonrise. Ok, for the lazy ones, and those, who want to have a look lasting longer than 1/24 seconds, I show you the frame with the shooting star.

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This night is not mine, so I am at the residencia, but I have to stay awake if I do not want to mess up my night/day rhythm. Which you do not want to do in the middle of an observing run, believe me…

3rd night at the IAC-80

Finally, the third night brought good weather over Tenerife. The humidity was still not low enough to have cloudless skies (so no photometric conditions), but what is not good for astronomy, that can be perfect for photography. The clouds at the peak of the Teide were amazing.

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And as the sunset came closer, the colors and shapes kept changing continuously. Then – as almost every day – the shadow of the volcano was again visible over the sea towards Gran Canaria as the Sun moved below the side of the mountain. Yes, what you see below is the shadow of the mountain’s slope (the dark rays from the middle towards the top right)!

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There were some clouds during the night, but not that many – most of the time only the Teide’s lenticular cloud was hanging over the moonlit landscape. I made a time lapse again, which can be seen here. I have some nice things to show in tomorrow’s post already (it was really hard not to include it right now)!

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