Two Months Down South

My first two weeks in Chile have been both warm, enlightening, and troubled.
Altogether, I'm still looking forward to the full 2 months!



Leaving Home

I started my journey to foreign lands by first traveling diagonally across the entire United States. I started the trip with good friends in San Francisco, who are borrowing my car while I'm away-- thank you both; then I traveled to Denver, Colorado for the Division for Planetary Sciences 2013 meeting (DPS2013); and I finally ending my stay in America by literally living in a trailer, in my parents' backyard, in Naples, Florida.  After 4 days of living my dream to be that special kind of redneck, I hitched a ride with American Airlines from Florida to Dallas to Santiago to La Serena and back to Santiago.  Oh what a wonderful few weeks it has been!

New Friends

My first friend in Santiago, Nestor, greeted me at the door with a great big smile and a hug.  Having been friends with the nicest person in the world, Rodrigo, who is from Santiago as well, I expected Chileans to be nice people, but now I know that they are all the nicest people in the world; okay maybe not all of them, but the astronomers are rather amazing!

Nestor was accompanied by one of the official drivers (Juan) for the Las Campanas Observatory.  Nestor and I would be calling LCO home for the next 2 days, while we observed our funny little wobbling stars in the sky.  The 4 hour trip from the airport to the telescope was both beautiful and daunting.  Although I was exceptionally tired from the 9.5 hour flight from Dallas to Santiago, I was overwhelmed and excited to hang out with my new Chilean friends and explore a new language and culture that I planned to immerse myself in over the upcoming 2 months.  Both Nestor and Juan were more than happy to tell me about Chilean culture, the mountains we were driving through, and the telescope facilities as well.  Most of the trip was open country with a spotted houses, but then we crested a hill and BANG!, there's the Pacific ocean!  It was immense and beautiful.  I stared at it for the remaining 30 minutes that it was in sight, until we crested the next ridge.

The observatory, LCO or Magellan, is at 2500m (8200ft) and is so named "Las Campanas" or "The Bells" because there are rocks there, when hit with other rocks or triggers, sound like bells.  The neighboring observatory, which you can easily see from LCO is called "La Silla" or "The Chair" because it apparently looks like a chair.  I can personally verify that many rocks at LCO do indeed sound like bells.  As for the Chair-esque view of the neighboring observatory hosting mountain? Not so much!

Observing like a Real Boy

Immediate upon arriving, the host of the mountain walks out and hands me a very cool looking water bottle that says "Las Campanas Observatory" in white, on a pretty metallic blue facade.  The funny part about this is that he didn't say "Hola! ¿Cómo estás?", he just looked at me and handed me the bottle.  Obviously water is more important than communication at 2500m in an arid desert.  Next we enjoyed a late lunch and chatted more about the observatories, the country, etc.  LCO must have the single best chefs in all of astronomy.  For a "simple late lunch" they had some of the best home made pizza I've ever had.  Granted, not all of their meals were as amazing, but this was a good start.

After lunch, I decided that a much needed nap was due to me.  So I venture to my private room for the respite that I was craving.  The room looked exactly like a 70's themed Motel6 (minus the prostitutes, if you know that story).   The bedspread was brown and orange; the curtains were brown and orange; the carpet was a orangy-brown!  Viva-la-70s!  None the less, it served wonderfully as a napping spot.

I woke up JUST in time for Dinner.  Again, a wonderful meal.  I think it was something like a meat stew, very similar to good a old home cooked meal, except with lots of salt.  The dinner was okay, but the company was even better.  It turned out that the people I randomly chose to sit across from were in fact using the same telescope as we were.  Of course, they were scheduled for this night, and we were scheduled for the next night.  But this provided an excellent opportunity to request a "showing around" of the facilities.  I was going to crash the party anyways, but at least now I had permission.

Following dinner, Nestor and I went out to see sunset, look around the base camp and play billiards; oh yeah, did I mention that LCO has a "wreck room"?  They have a billiards table, a weight set, a treadmill and a drum set.  I thought "hmm, I like to play the drums.  Maybe I should try it a bit".  I did, and it was fun, until Nestor dropped a few beats. That's when I found out that he needs to quit astronomy and go on the road as the next Dave Grohl.  I won't be able to hit a drum in his presence ever again!

Off to the observatory we went, which started out like "fra-la-la-la-la" and ended up like "breathe! breathe dammit! breathe!".  There should be a sign that says "The air here is thin, stupid, so don't run!"  But finally we met up with the team for that night, who were observing M-dwarfs, Brown Dwarfs and White-Dwarfs-- very interracial observing.  But I got to see the control room, the weather maps, the control screens, and meet one of the TOs (Telescope Operator).  Funny new fact: TO is pronounced Tee-Oh, but so is "Tio", which means "Uncle" in spanish.  So the Chileans refer to the TOs as the "Uncles of the Telescope".  After a few hours of wasting time and chatting with like minded fellows, we ran off to our rooms to work and try to stay up all night.

The point to showing up on the mountain a day early is that we get used to the altitude, lack of humidity, as well as the observing sleep schedule.  I think I lasted until about 3 or 4am.  This is not a bad try, except that I was convinced to wake up at 7am for the apparently awesome breakfast that LCO has to offer.  Admittedly, it was pretty good.  But I will not be waking up at any hour, while on an observing schedule, just for food, ever again.



Observing for Beginners

Finally, it was time for us to start observing.  Of course, this actually starts at about 3pm, when the sun is still up.  It shows rather interesting progress in my career that starting observations when the sun is up no longer surprises me.  We had to first run hours of calibration frames just to make sure everything was lined up, both physically and spectroscopically.  Additionally, Nestor had to show me the ropes.  I bet he could have started a 5pm, gone to dinner at 6pm, and been back for a night of observing by 7pm if he was on his own.  But like most things that I've been through in that last few weeks, I have many thanks to Nestor for helping me through it.

Now I know what to do and can truly call myself an observer.  This was the first time that I was at the controls of one of the worlds most powerful and capable telescopes ever made!  I feel truly honored to work with such great people, and to do such interesting and wonderful research with them.  If it were not for my advisors (Drake, Heather, Andres, Eve, Casey, Brian,...) and fellow grad students (Sarah, Ashlee, Nestor, Kamen,...), then I would not be the scientist I am today.

The rest of the night was more or less boring.  When things are working as they should, there is nothing to do.  I spent almost the entire time downloading the data from the telescope and running a script that Nestor wrote to get up to date photometry (measurement of photons) about the observing.  This allowed us to know if anything was going awry outside the sophisticated monitoring systems of the Magellan-Baade telescope.  Of course, I got bored with waiting for the script to run; so I reconfigured it to automagically store the old results, download the new data, rerun the script on the newest files and plot the updated figure.  Writing that took me a few hours, but that's all I had the brain power for at 2am, waiting for sunrise.  By the end, we observed from 8pm until almost 6am,  continuously monitoring our target; nearly 10 hours of observations!!  I was so excited to begin examining the data, but first: sleep!



Grand Departure

After lunch the next day, we frollocked around the mountain, "rang the bells", and took some photos for another hour or so before departing with my final view of the magnificent Magellan telescopes: Clay and Baade.

Although my adventures down south have just begun, it was actually daunting to leave LCO.  It might have been the excitement for all of Chile, but I felt that this place was the cornerstone of my entire life in South America.  Although it will be 2 months before I return for another observation, I will look forward to it every day!