3 nights of worse than grade 4 weather (tau ~.4, i.e. the atmosphere is nearly opaque) have given me a few interesting results. 1. Non-detections of CS 5-4 in a few bright BGPS cores. My best guess is that the pointing was off, though, because I definitely got down to a noise level around 50mK. 2. Lots of CO 2-1 mapping, 13CO/C18O too. That means I can now use this plot: http://dustem.astro.umd.edu/pdrt/co3221web.html to try to measure the incident flux. 3. I can't do homework at the summit. Maybe it's just that I can't do stellar structures homework, but I really am not processing this stuff well. Damn. 4. Running at altitude uphill is really, really hard. All the running I've been doing the past N months has not even come close to preparing me. Need to correct that... 5. "I am inappropriate." I probably violate a bunch of those rules... the important ones... 6. gotta get back to the mountains. Really. Seriously. OMFG. 7. ARGH those papers need writing! Lots of it! For the next observing run, need the following: 1. Pre-prepared A3 rasters 2. Larger selection of summit music 3. Better sleep schedule preparation 4. More caffeinated drinks per night 5. Cloud cannons.
Observing this weekend
whoops, never made this post. Turns out I got rained out - 3 inches of rain on my night. Sad, no DIS time for P Cyg.
Offset symbols?
Orion in the Infrared and Millimeter
This composite image of the Orion A Giant Molecular Cloud star-forming complex shows infrared emission from the WISE and MSX missions in 4 micron (red), 12 micron (blue), and 22 micron (green) emission with Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey 1.1mm emission overlaid in yellow/orange. The Orion A region is frequently featured in astronomical images:
but its tail tends to be ignored. This quiescent region is the source of the next generation of stars, although the relatively small mass concentrations imply that no massive stars like the bright Theta 1C that powers the Orion Nebula will form. The infrared colors show all sorts of stars including protostars. The infrared can pierce through the dust and find young stars still forming. The green and blue bands also see diffuse clouds of dust being illuminated by the central stars of the Orion nebula. The yellow 1.1 mm dust emission shows the coldest dust that is shielded from external radiation. These cold clumps contain enough mass to form new stars...
Outreach Observing
Some notes for this Friday... the ISS will rise at about 10:55 on Friday, July 18th, and 9:43 on Saturday, July 19th. Jupiter will be in the sky, but Venus and Mercury will not. Jupiter will rise in the Southeast
Denver, CO 2008/07/16 10:15 pm Sunrise/set: 05:46 am / 08:26 pmPredicted passes for: ISS daylight-saving time enabled Local Duration Date Time (min) Approach Max. elevation Departure------------------------------------------------------------------------2008/07/17 02:57 am <1 10° above N 10° above N 10° above NNE2008/07/17 04:30 am 5 12° above NNW 31° above NE 10° above E 2008/07/17 10:30 pm <1 13° above WSW 15° above WSW 15° above WSW2008/07/18 03:19 am 4 10° above NNW 16° above NNE 10° above ENE2008/07/18 04:54 am 5 15° above NW 78° above W 10° above SE 2008/07/18 09:19 pm 5 13° above SSW 29° above SE 11° above ENE2008/07/18 10:55 pm 4 17° above WNW 25° above NNW 10° above NNE2008/07/19 03:42 am 5 13° above NNW 32° above NNE 12° above E 2008/07/19 05:18 am 4 16° above W 22° above SW 11° above S 2008/07/19 09:43 pm 5 19° above WSW 71° above N 10° above NE
Outreach this past weekend
I did the thing at Vail, Starry Nights, and it went well.
P Cygni
P Cygni is a neglected LBV. You search for Eta Carinae on google and get hundreds of epic images of the fella, but nothing of P Cyg! Not even my Fe II image, which is now reproduced here:
Parallactic Angle
So it turns out parallactic angle and field rotation are essentially the same thing. While working on the data pipeline for the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey, I've needed to deal with this. The parallactic angle is dependent on the alt/az, and therefore the time, of the observation. So using an RA/Dec in J2000 coordinates to get alt/az isn't going to work, because my observations weren't in 2000.0.... my best hope is that the PA in the NCDF files is actually the correct parallactic angle. YARGH!
Photo Contest
Photos featured in an article
My photos, article by Jeff Marlow: http://www.atmagazine.co.uk/content/view/853/94/
