purplecthulhu

Am in Santiago again, at the ESO guest house. Not much to say about today. Got up, had lunch/breakfast, got my data and got the van back to La Serena and the plane to Santiago. That took all day.

Weather on the way back was great, with nice views of Chilean desert all the way back to the coast. Two colleagues from home who are looking after the next run report good data coming through, so we might be doing rather well out of this stretch of observing.

Have to be off reasonably early tomorrow, so now it's time for bed. Not sure when I'll be able to post next, but this may be it for the observing run reports.

Am in Santiago again, at the ESO guest house. Not much to say about today. Got up, had lunch/breakfast, got my data and got the van back to La Serena and the plane to Santiago. That took all day.

Weather on the way back was great, with nice views of Chilean desert all the way back to the coast. Two colleagues from home who are looking after the next run report good data coming through, so we might be doing rather well out of this stretch of observing.

Have to be off reasonably early tomorrow, so now it's time for bed. Not sure when I'll be able to post next, but this may be it for the observing run reports.

Things have settled into a rhythm by this stage of the run - half way through the second night. I've moved to fainter objects as well so they're not coming quite as thick and fast, but we're still getting high redshift sources regularly. Being able to see their spectra when they come up on the screen is really good instant gratification astronomy. I know there's a paper coming from this, though maybe not yet all of what will go into it. With some other projects you need to do a lot more work than taking the data to be sure you have a result. That's not the case here.

So many galaxies quasars, so little time.

Things have settled into a rhythm by this stage of the run - half way through the second night. I've moved to fainter objects as well so they're not coming quite as thick and fast, but we're still getting high redshift sources regularly. Being able to see their spectra when they come up on the screen is really good instant gratification astronomy. I know there's a paper coming from this, though maybe not yet all of what will go into it. With some other projects you need to do a lot more work than taking the data to be sure you have a result. That's not the case here.

So many galaxies quasars, so little time.

We're on the sky and we're taking data!

Conditions are good so I should be able to get quite a bit done tonight. We're already two objects done and with a third being observed as I type.

Results so far...

First object really rather boring - nothing obvious in the raw spectrum except for a possible absorption line. Almost certainly means this object is not what we're looking for on this trip. Not a good start...

Second object. My goodness! That's one of the weirdest spectra I've ever taken! Most probably a highish redshift (z~2.5) broad absorption line quasar. Just the kind of thing I'm hoping to find on this run! Yay! Success! More of these please!

We're on the sky and we're taking data!

Conditions are good so I should be able to get quite a bit done tonight. We're already two objects done and with a third being observed as I type.

Results so far...

First object really rather boring - nothing obvious in the raw spectrum except for a possible absorption line. Almost certainly means this object is not what we're looking for on this trip. Not a good start...

Second object. My goodness! That's one of the weirdest spectra I've ever taken! Most probably a highish redshift (z~2.5) broad absorption line quasar. Just the kind of thing I'm hoping to find on this run! Yay! Success! More of these please!