Plutologue

Sunday, June 28, 2015

T-1 day: Mt. John preparations

[posted for Stephen Levine]

I had a chance this morning to walk along the south side of Lake
Tekapo. The weather was clear and windy (as it would be for most of
the day). In the afternoon, I drove up with Rob, and we got POETS
sorted out and ready for Jay and Bryce to install. Then I went over
to the OC61 and setup the near IR camera. The day was windy, with
average wind speeds over 60kph and gusts up to over 100kph. The wind
did not abate much after sunset, and later clouds moved through as
well.

While walking along the south shore of Lake

Tekapo, I saw this group of gulls sitting on a rock in Lake Tekapo.

Mt John is behind them, and the observatory buildings are visible on

the ridge line.

Looking west from the OC61 dome a bit

after sunset. This was one of the few pictures not blurred out. To

get this, I was facing into the wind, which was about 60 to 70 kph.

Readout from the Mt. John weather station. For

much of the late afternoon and evening,

the wind was variable out of

the west, between about 60 and 80 kph,

and peaking over 100 kph.

An enticing sign at the start of the trail

from Lake Tekapo to the summit of Mt. John.

Sign at the start of the trail from Lake Tekapo to Mt. John.

The 61cm Optical Craftsman telescope. The near IR

camera that Henry Roe lent us is the blue box mounted at the back end

of the telescope.

T-1 day: Almost Ready

[posted for Chris Stockdale]

Luke connects up the PICO
camera to the telescope

Steph ponders the GPS cables

Steph & Luke review the MaximDL settings

T-2 days: Cloudy to clear(ish)

The stars of Sagittarius (center) and Capricorn (upper left) peek through clouds in Flagstaff.

Today in Flagstaff did not look very promising for observing tonight. Thick clouds built up during the day and we heard some thunder. At night, these thick clouds stayed, hid the moon completely, and even let loose some rain in town and at Anderson Mesa and lightning at the DCT. To make matters worse, CTIO was also socked in.

Discouraged by the weather, I set to work on looking at last night's astrometric data to see what the updates to the occultation path might be. In the middle of this work, I had a scheduled call with folks on SOFIA on their test flight, to test communications for tomorrow night when we'll send email and call on the satellite phone to give a last-minute prediction update. As I stood out in the middle of the street (bad cell reception in the house), talking to people in a 747 flying over the ocean south of New Zealand, I looked up and saw the four stars that make up the handle of the Sagittarius teapot asterism. Definitely a welcome sight, as it means that Pluto is near (its location is marked by a green circle in the image above, but Pluto itself was not captured here).

See SOFIA's flight path on FlightAware

I came back in to find emails from observers at all four telescopes saying they got at least some data tonight! That's a lot more than I was afraid we might get, given the weather today and tonight. Now on to data analysis!