[Astronomy] Chile 2012 part 3 - end of the run

I write this from my room in the ESO guesthouse in Santiago, having finished my observing run and made my way down from the mountain. The last two weeks have passed surprisingly quickly, and what seemed to be turning into a repeat of my lame duck observing run from last time ended up as a very successful trip to La Silla.

Since my last blog post I’ve observed almost every night. I lost the whole of Saturday to high cirrus cloud, strong wind, and high humidity, which was irritating. I also lost a few hours at the end of the night on Friday to similar problems, and the start of Sunday owing to strong wind and high humidity. But every other night saw the dome of the ESO 3.6m telescope firmly open, even if we were pointing restricted on many of the nights. The wind was hovering around 14m/s for a lot of the week, which is the wind speed that restricts the telescope to pointing more than 90⁰ away from the wind direction. Even with that though I was able to carry out most of my scheduled program of observations. There was one night that didn’t look promising at all; I woke up at 4pm to find myself right in the middle of the clouds! But rising pressure towards sunset pushed them down below the observatory, so we were able to open in the end after all.

My last night was the most successful from a personal point of view. The weather really cleared up for my night off, and was equally good for my observing the night after. That was the night during which I was taking spectroscopic transit observations for an as yet unpublished WASP planet, and after just over 5 hours of measurements I found myself with a beautiful Rossiter-McLaughlin curve. It was a very satisfying way to finish my observing run.

During my time at La Silla I’ve met a lot of very nice fellow astronomers, and spend a lot of time up at the Swiss telescope. The three telescopes that share the main control room are all ESO owned, but there are also several that are owned by different countries that lease land on the mountain from La Silla. The Swiss is a popular destination for visiting astronomers; their building has a proper kitchen and living space, as well as a shower, a very good telescope, and a spacious control room. One of the advantages of owning the building is that they can bypass the ESO restrictions on food and drink, and they frequently host cheese fondues for any astronomers that care to attend. I managed to make it to two during this trip, both of which were very enjoyable. The second was rather multicultural, with a Swiss man, an Irishman, an Israeli man, a Lebanese man, and myself. The talk was, unsurprisingly, rather political, but very enjoyable. Dominique, the Swiss man, was also hospitable enough to invite us up the Swiss every evening for a glass of wine before dinner at the main building, and I took full advantage.

The trip down was reasonably routine, although I was somewhat annoyed when I got up to get the bus at half one, only to be told that the later bus (too late for my flight) had been brought forward for myself and the other astronomers that were travelling down to Santiago. So I waited around for 2 hours that I could have spend in bed, but in the end got to take a coach rather than the minibus. The flight went smoothly, although I did have to put my bag into the hold after a staff member decided it was too heavy (through the very scientific method of picking it up!). Sadly that seems to have broken my eReader, which I forgot to take out before I boarded.

My flight tomorrow is, thankfully, at a sensible time of the day, so I can have a leisurely breakfast before making my way to the airport.

Final note: Thankfully my flights home were far less eventful than those on my way to Chile. Everything ran on time, and I even managed to get some sleep (though still less than I would have liked). The only blemish was the lack of my eReader, which I didn’t manage to fix, which made the 3hr wait at Amsterdam rather tedious. Thankfully I had the iPod that I’d borrowed to keep my sane!