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
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