A Winter Observing Run at Swope

I am back at the Swope 1m Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Back in February I had an observing run here and I am back, along with a graduate student from the Universidad de Concepcion to continue the project.

I left Santiago on Saturday morning, happy to see the plane quickly climb above the smog that fills the valley during the winter.

The flight to La Serena was short and uneventful, and after a while hanging out at the basecamp in La Serena, we were on our way to the telescope.

I always prefer to arrive at the observatory a day early. It gives me a chance to get used to the altitude and to stay up late for a night before I have to do it while being productive at the telescope. This time, it paid off even more: no one was scheduled on Swope, so, with permission from the observatory director, we hurried to the telescope to try and gain an extra night of observations. We arrived around sunset—later than we would usually get to the telescope—but since it was a “free” night, it wasn’t a bad deal. The afternoon did not look promising, with clouds over the observatory, so we weren’t optimistic about our chances of being able to get data. But, it is important to always try – you never know what the night will bring.

In this case, we had no luck with the clouds. We opened the dome for less than half an hour – enough to chase a couple “sucker holes” in the clouds, but never obtained any usable data. Such is life though.

The weather the next few nights—our assigned observing run—was much better, and we were able to collect a good dataset for later analysis. I took advantage of the long integrations on our targets to go outside and take some night-sky photos from the minor summit on which the telescope sits. Being able to see and photograph the Magellanic Clouds and Galactic Center never gets old.