Guest Blogger: A Student's Eyes on the Skies

This is the first of a new regular feature for Next Generation, a guest blog by a student scientist. If you're a student working in the areas of astronomy, space research or any related field and would like to write a guest blog post in coming weeks, let me know at dlc@davidlchandler.com.

Today's blogger is Rachael Beaton, a first-year graduate student at the University of Virginia who has had a chance to make observations at some of the world's leading observatories, including the newly-commissioned Large Binocular Telescope outside Tucson, Arizona. She has already made a significant discovery -- a dwarf galaxy that is within our local group, a companion to Andromeda, but is moving too fast to be part of the group and must be just passing through.

Here's Rachael's post:

The job description for a graduate student in astronomy can seem fairly grim on paper. We spend our days in class, working towards the ivory towers of our "dissertation", attacking our homework assignments, grading papers and doing whatever tasks fall under the definition of "teacher's assistant."

When we’re lucky, in the evenings we escape our offices and teach sections of observing labs or operate telescopes for introductory classes. This can make for a grueling eighteen to twenty hour day.

If we had a union, we'd most certainly strike and picket the department chair for less work -- but I must admit that I have been somewhat dishonest in my portrayal and have left out the perks of the job.

For a handful of nights every year, we astronomers pack our bags, fill up our coffee cups and settle into an observatory to collect the data we spend the remaining 350 odd days of the year trying to understand.

In an effort to avoid the lighting that accompanies modern life, astronomical observatories have been pushed to highest, driest, most remote and -- by no coincidence -- most beautiful portions of the earth. Getting to these sites make all the trials of air travel only the beginning of the trip. Access roads to observatories vary greatly. Observatories like Kitt Peak outside of Tucson, AZ, for example, have luxuriously separate lanes for each direction of travel.

In contrast, the Multiple Mirror Telescope has one dirt lane with few guard rails, stomach wrenching over looks and can result in white rental cars changing to a delightful shade of brown (oops). When making the trip in the evening headlights are not allowed, once requiring me to lean out of the passenger window with a flash light to illuminate the road ahead.

Finally, the jet-lagged astronomer arrives at the helm of a multi-million (or even multi-billion?) dollar facility, jived more on anticipating the night ahead than on the gallons of coffee downed on the journey. Or, in my case, doses of Dramamine.

Large aperture telescopes ( > 4 meters in diameter) are magnificent feats of engineering. I don't think I've been introduced to one that hasn't taken my breath away. They have the same majesty of Roman architecture, one feels dwarfed and yet is so taken by awe as to feel a part of the structure itself.

Despite their enormity, modern telescopes move with the greatest of ease to any point in the sky. Its a sin to come so far and not spend a significant amount of time admiring the object that does the brunt of the work for your data collection. Normally, I watch the sunset and take in the telescope, as the telescope operator puts in the last bits of liquid nitrogen to keep the instrument cool for the night. As the Sun sinks below the horizon, the real romance of astronomy begins. I take my seat at the instrument controls, and the operator theirs by the telescope controls.

My thesis project involves a deep survey of the outer limits of the Andromeda galaxy in an attempt to characterize its newly discovered stellar halo.

Often the data I collect are the very first deep images of a region of the night sky. So, when the first image in a field comes up on the computer screen, mine are the first eyes to trace the stars and count the galaxies that it contains.

Viewing your data for the first time is the most exciting part of observing. Sometimes it's breathtaking in its perfection, and other times it''s numbing in its unforeseen problems (winds, bad focus, or pointing inaccuracies). During the course of the night, I routinely go outside and check the weather. Naked eye astronomy at ~10,000 feet is incredible. The skies are alive with stars and the arms of the Milky Way are encompassing, seeming to embrace the Earth within them.

What is more impressive, however, is that the telescope is pointed at an area on that sky that is infinitely dark to my eyes, but that is revealed to be replete with stars and galaxies. Its times like these that the hours spent bent over a computer or an assignment feel so worthwhile. Every night that I observe, I get reminded of the awe and curiosity that fuel my scientific endeavors. Once and again, I fall helplessly in love with astronomy.

The last perk to being an astronomer is seeing the sun both rise and set on a single day.

Most people are lucky or perhaps loathe to see either, let alone both. Just as I watched the sunset from the telescope dome to start my night, I watch it rise from there to end the night. Sometimes I see that the telescope operator too has paused in his work to stow the telescope to watch the Sun return. When our eyes meet, it's one of those wordless conversations that one can have with someone they do not know well.

At the end of the night, I receive a call from my adviser. As my eyes droop and the adrenaline from the night begins to fade, I mumble a report for the night. Then pack up my things and head down to the dorms to grab a few hours of sleep before starting it all over again.

Observing  is a very solitary event and I am usually craving the company of friends and family by the end, but even so leaving the mountain is sorrowful. I spend the afternoons scrambling around the observatory taking in the scenery and getting my fill of the desert. At night, though accompanied by the operator, I spend much of my time lost in my own thoughts about the data that we have, the data we’re taking and the data to take next. This, however, is only a muted form of the astronomer's romance.

Before the advent of the CCD camera, the astronomer prepared glass plates, rode with the telescope all night and then developed the plates, getting only a glance of sleep before doing it all again.

Still, even in its isolation, observing is what drives the observational astronomer. It's only with the collection of new data that we really get to stretch our legs into new discovery and push the limits of our field. I spend most of my time locked into that grim job description of the ever working graduate student, but for a few precious nights a year, I feel more like Columbus sailing through uncharted waters in search of the Indies, except I ride on the back of a telescope, my oceans stretch to the very limits of the Universe and I am searching for whatever the data will reveal.

Photos: top, Rachael with the KPNO 4 meter in the background (by George Trammell); middle, University of Virginia graduate students with the Large BinocularTelescope; bottom, access road to Cerro Tololo Intercontinental Observatory, Chile