I’ve just finished my fourth night of observing at the MDM 1.3-m telescope. Tonight was quite windy but fortunately it did not get above the magic number of 40 mph which would have forced me to close the dome.

The telescope is pointing at the zenith (straight up, its stowing position), the dome is closed and the instrument filled with liquid nitrogen. It is definitely time for bed. However, at this point in the night I always like to stay up a little while and savour the moment. Watching the sky get brighter in complete solitude is a magical time. That and I’ve drank so much coffee in the last 6 hours sleep is out of the question.

The instrument, in this case a pink CCD camera, has to be filled from the liquid nitrogen at the start and end of every night. This is the last task before bed.

Sooo….. hi. I got purchased my own website on a bit of an impulse. I figured I should probably put something onto it. So here is a first entry/attempt at a blog.

I’ve no idea how much I’ll use this or what I’ll post about. For now all I have to say is that I’m up a mountain. A mountain called Kitt Peak which host the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO). I’m using the 1.3-m telescope at the MDM observatory which is a couple of miles from the main KPNO site. The Sun’s still up so there isn’t much to do yet. I’m looking for stars which vary on short periods, less than 30 minutes or so, in the Kepler field of view. The reason for this is that the Kepler spacecraft does not download to Earth all the pixels in the field of view. Instead targets must be preselected ahead of time. If we don’t know about interesting sources we can’t observe them. So I’m trying to find new interesting things.

Oh, last night the mirror cover got stuck shut on the 2.4-m telescope nearby so me so the observer on that telescope hit the stuck bit with a broom until it become unstuck. Who says science isn’t glamorous.