Telescopes and Solitude
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!!!!!
My alarm clock insists that it’s 5am, a time of day I rarely see. At first I don’t believe it but after a few more BEEP’s, I relent and agree. This is the start of the observing day for solar astronomers. As I look up at the ceiling, I think to myself, Christ this is early. I hate this time of day.
Like a lonely monk, I sit up on the side of the impossibly narrow, absolutely one person only bed, and get ready to start my day.
Still in my boxers, the persistent tent-pole that has been here since I arrived pointing my way like a ship’s obscene figurehead, I head into the dome to get the equipment ready for today’s observing run. I smile at the irony of my ‘predicament’ in this monastic setting.
The pre-dawn New Mexico sky illuminates the telescope and equipment as I crank open the shutter on the dome. The smell of pine fills my nostrils, soaks my hair and fills the dome with a saloon-saturated thickness so powerful it makes me wrinkle my nose with allergic twitches. There are some stars still visible, but they are rapidly fading with each passing moment. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, this is going to be a good day, I’ll get lots of data today.
The glow of the Sun is easily seen in the east as the dome shutters hit their stops. I have about an hour before I need to have everything on and running.
I walk back into the office area to make some coffee. Goddam this tentpole, I can’t figure out if it’s because I’m longing for her or if it’s that I’m doing the one thing I love most in the world: using telescopes, taking data and trying to figure out how one tiny bit of the universe works.
Ahh, who am I kidding? It’s her…
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As the coffee brews, I begin powering up the instruments.
First, the spar, the bit that holds everything and tracks the Sun as it travels across the sky. Huge relays click and motors begin to whirr. I pull the spar handles, leaning with all of my weight to get it moving until the main objective of the telescope is centered on where the solar disk will be when it rises above the trees.
I drink my coffee and boot up the computer, camera, filters and associated accessories until the dome interior is abuzz with fan noise, a variety of clicks and snaps, and the spin and clicks of motors and filter wheels.
I look with pride at this instrument because I helped build it. I also wrote all of the software for it. This instrument will provide measurements of the magnetic field of the two million degree solar corona. No other instrument is providing this kind of measurement. I’m here for a five day observing run to gather more data and upgrade the software.
I’m suddenly startled by the automatic tracking on the spar - the Sun has risen above the trees and is being centered on the camera. As soon as I start the observing program, the computer will begin tuning the filter to predetermined wavelengths in the near infrared (10747nm) 10 times per second (10 Hz), and the camera will simultaneously take 10 millisecond exposures of the solar corona in two different polarization states. These images will be combined later by other software to allow us to infer the line-of-sight magnetic field. Eat your heart out MDI.
The dome interior is awash with light now because the Sun is well above the treetops. I stand at the base of the open shutter, extend my right arm and block out the disk of the Sun with my thumb. The sky around my thumb is a dark blue. This is a good sign because it means that the sky is not scattering very much light, these are exactly the kind of skies one needs to be able to see the corona. My friend Steve calls them coronal skies, I always thought that would be a good name for sailboat.
I start the observing program and the camera begins sending data to the 250GB external drive I have connected to the computer. The camera will take images 2048 x 512 pixels in size with each pixel storing 12 bits of data from eight different channels. That results in a 2048×512x12 = 12MB per image. The camera is doing this 10 times a second. I’m gonna need more disk space.
Luckily I’m not doing this continuously, I’m getting data in big chunks every three minutes or so, I can wait till this afternoon to get another drive. There’s absolutely no trace of a cell phone signal here so maybe I’ll head down to Alamogordo and use this as an excuse to call her? mmmmm…. Yes, that would be nice.
As I stand there watching the instruments run and the data being written to the disk, I realize that I’m still in my boxers, tentpole and all. Except for the loneliness in my heart, I’ve never been happier.
The observing run ends at about 11am, by now the skies are scattering light everywhere and there are high, thin cirrus forming. I hold up my thumb against the solar disk to confirm what the images and sky brightness monitors are already telling me, then begin the shutdown process. The external drive is already over 25% full, I’m going to need a couple more before I leave here.
Only after everything is properly shut down and the covers replaced do I go to the office and get dressed. I have a phone call to make, it’s an hour and a half drive round trip to get to the nearest place with a cell phone signal. I hope she answers the phone.
TO BE CONTINUED….
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POSTED IN: about me, telescopes
5 opinions for Telescopes and Solitude
julie
Jun 11, 2007 at 9:35 am
Lovely. I like mucho.
julie
Jun 11, 2007 at 9:35 am
Very prose poetic.
Frederica
Jun 11, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Agreed. I enjoyed reading this, maybe you can write a little every night, so we can have a bedtime story !?
Shannon
Jun 13, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Wow that was lovely, so descriptive I felt like I was there. That was very good writing, emotional and powerful. I loved it, and I’d like to read more.
Frederica
Jun 14, 2007 at 10:22 am
Poetry/astronomy… sure way to keep your head up there in the stars Tony… and look ! See how good it works ? You got all the hot chicks attention now. LOL !
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