Astronomy, Telescopes, and Bears, Oh My! (Part 2)

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Welcome to Part 2 of my blog series documenting my amazing time as an instructor of a ground-based astronomy course based at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, AZ! If you missed Part 1, be sure to head over there and check out that post before you jump into this one! If you haven’t browsed through my photo album of the trip, you should do that also! And without further ado…

Tuesday, May 18th

As you may recall from Part 1, we had the last night of our observing run at the 2.4m and 1.3m telescopes at the MDM Observatory on Sunday night, meaning Monday night was the first night back on a normal sleep schedule. Because of this, there were no activities scheduled on Tuesday morning, but everyone was pretty antsy for Tuesday afternoon’s activity. Why, you ask? Well, we were taking a trip to the Arizona Desert Museum – that’s right, we were leaving the mountain for the first time in about 10 days! As much as I loved being up at the summit of Kitt Peak, I was also ready for a change in scenery, even if it was only going to be for a few hours.

When I think of the word “museum,” I generally think of various exhibits arranged in a strategic way inside a giant building. The Arizona Desert Museum was about as far from that as one can get – the entire museum was outdoors! I would have called it more of a zoo, actually, with different plants and animals native to desert ecosystems as the exhibits. Consequently, it was unlike any zoo I’ve ever been in. First of all, it was located in the mountains north of Tucson, meaning that at certain points within the museum there were fabulous views of the desert landscape in and around Tucson. Second, how often does one walk through a museum or a zoo that has cacti everywhere? (Side note: there were also little baby cacti in tiny pots in the gift shop! No, I wasn’t tempted at all…).

The first exhibit we walked through was a hummingbird exhibit, with the hummingbirds freely flying around and only a net keeping them from escaping the exhibit. I seem to recall having to duck out of the way of at least one hummingbird that zoomed right by my head…that was certainly the most…interactive….exhibit we encountered! We continued around the museum, seeing everything from birds to wolves to even some otters. The exhibit I was most excited for, though, was the black bear exhibit (especially after all the hype about the black bear roaming the summit of Kitt Peak). As per my luck, naturally there was no black bear visible when we arrived at the exhibit. However, our patience was rewarded and a few minutes later we spotted a bear lumbering around in the shadows! I was quite glad that this was the only black bear I ended up seeing during my whole stay at Kitt Peak.

The day ended with stopping for some delicious Mexican food and a margarita before continuing on to the mountain for the night.

Panorama at the Desert Museum

Black bear at the Desert Museum

Cacti at the Desert Museum

Wednesday, May 17th

Wednesday began with a lecture on optical and infrared telescopes. We talked about how telescopes direct light to magnify distant objects, the different ways one can construct a telescope, and the pros and cons of each telescope design. You might not know that there are at least five different basic telescope designs, each with their own pros and cons!

After finishing up the lecture talking about differences in telescope tubes and sizes and summarizing all of the major telescopes that have been built or are in the works, we took another tour of the WIYN and Mayall telescopes. This time, we were focusing on the physical construction of the scopes – mounts, structure, tubes, and the like. While at the 4-m Mayall telescope, our guide brought the telescope to its “service position” so that we could clearly see the mirror and the inner workings. We also got to climb into the “Cassegrain Cage,” or the chamber-like space at the bottom of the telescope below the mirror. Let me tell you, it’s a bit disconcerting sitting down there knowing there’s a 30-ton mirror and all of the other metal and telescope structure right above your head…

Thursday, May 18th

Two off-mountain excursions within three days?! This is madness! Yes, that’s right, we got to leave the mountain again! This excursion was pretty cool – we got to go to the CCD lab and the mirror lab to learn about how the camera CCD detectors and the mirrors of telescopes are made!

The first stop was the CCD lab. We were actually very fortunate to get a full tour of the lab, thanks to Sally’s connections at the University of Arizona – they usually don’t take groups back into the lab to see the CCD-making process up close and personal. But we got to see everything! Dr. Mike Lesser was our guide for the morning and he first showed us the chemical treatment baths used to treat and finish the freshly made CCD detector chips. So I guess we started the tour with a major spoiler alert, seeing the final step of manufacture first. We then got to see how the silicon pieces arrive at the lab (roughly cut to size but definitely not in their final shapes), how the tiny micro/nano-scale electronics are installed, how the chips are tested for quality (we saw the testing of CCDs that will be installed on LSST!), and finally what they look like once they are finished. I even got to take a selfie in one of the biggest CCD chips ever made!

A selfie in one of the largest CCD chips ever made (10k x 10k)

Where the CCD chips for LSST are made

After some delicious Chicago-style pizza for lunch, it was time to visit the mirror lab! Except, not quite…we were a little early, so we decided to check out the planetarium at the University of Arizona. Not a bad way to kill an extra hour! I was pretty excited, though, once we made our way over to the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. I’ve long been curious how the heck one would make a giant, 4-, 6-, or 8-m mirror that is flatter than the US would be if you blew everything up to that scale. And how one would accomplish this without breaking things.

It turns out that there is a single company that makes the special type of glass needed for telescope mirrors. Which is pretty scary, because if that company goes under then we wouldn’t know where to get the glass we need…I’ll just hope that doesn’t happen! Anyway, this lab made the LSST 8-m mirror, but unfortunately it had already started its journey down to Chile by the time we took our tour. However, they are currently casting the mirrors for another huge telescope, the Giant Magellan Telescope, which will consist of seven 8-m mirrors in an array. Just let that sink in for a second….

Here’s the basic process for casting your very own giant telescope mirror!

  1. The first thing that happens is a mold is made for the size and shape the mirror is supposed to be. Many mirrors nowadays are made in the “honeycomb” style – hollow hexagonal tube structures make up the backside of the mirror, which drastically cuts down on the amount of glass in and the weight of the final mirror.

  2. Then the mold (which can be 8 meters in diameter, remember!) is hand packed full of chunks of that special glass.

  3. The technicians build an oven around the mold. Yes, you read that right. This oven gets up to several thousands of degrees Celsius and the mold spins for somewhere around three days (the exact rate of spinning is determined by the final desired curvature of the mirror).

  4. Carefully slow down the spinning and cool the furnace for 100 days. Yes, that is one hundred days. This is a very delicate process! We don’t want any deformations at all in the final, cooled piece of glass.

  5. Pick up your several-tens-of-tons piece of glass and move it to the grinding and polishing station. Whatever you do, don’t drop it.

  6. Grind and polish for weeks. Literally. Remember, everything needs to be smoother than the continental US!

  7. Once the polishing is complete, the proto-mirror is packaged and sent on to its destination, where it will be coated in reflective aluminum and installed on the telescope!

I highly recommend reading this article about the casting of the LSST mirrors – the scale of the process is astounding!

An 8m piece of glass gets polished inside the Steward Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona

The day ended with shadowing a couple of observers at the 4-m Mayall telescope, one of whom was my own advisor at Michigan! It was a little weird seeing him and catching up on two weeks of research on the other side of the country…anyway, the students got some more insight into the exciting lives of 21st century astronomers – that is, watching multiple computer screens to monitor the telescope, data quality, and any alerts that might come up. That’s a little different from how things were even 30 years ago, when astronomers worked in rooms just off the main telescope room that had windows so they could see the telescope itself.

Friday, May 19th

Friday was another exciting day with another cool tour of one of the telescopes at Kitt Peak. This time, it was of a radio telescope with a 12-m dish (think satellite TV dish, except 10 times bigger). After a morning lecture about radio astronomy, we made the short drive over to the ARO radio telescope.

A cool thing about radio astronomy is that is doesn’t have to be done only at night – you can observe radio targets during the day! Consequently, this is also why all cell phones have to be set to airplane mode on the Kitt Peak summit, because you never know when the radio astronomers will be observing. All of this meant that when we showed up for our tour at 1pm, the astronomers were prepping the telescope to start observations. Don’t worry, though, we still had plenty of time to explore the telescope (including climbing inside its Cassegrain cage equivalent!) before the actual observations started.

Here are some tidbits you might not know about radio telescopes and astronomy:

  • Radio telescopes don’t actually need domes! The ARO telescope only does because they wanted a little more protection from the elements.

  • Radio dishes are made out of carbon fiber and coated with nickel. Some of the largest ones can even be made out of mesh or chicken wire.

  • The resolution of the telescope is inversely proportional to its size – that is, larger telescopes have coarser resolution.

  • The ARO telescope uses a prototype dish for the ALMA telescope in Chile, one of the premier radio telescope facilities in the world!

The ARO 12m radio telescope at Kitt Peak

Saturday, May 20th

Tonight was finally the night of the Alumni Star Party! This event invites UofM alumni (mostly local, but a couple of professors from UofM flew to Tucson for the party) to a reception and a chance to observe through an eyepiece through the 1.3m and 2.4m telescopes that the students used to take their data. With a list of targets in hand, including planets, galaxies, and nebulae, we began directing the telescope as one of the UofM professors explained the science and history behind the particular target we were looking at. We got to see Jupiter, its moons, Saturn and its rings, the Andromeda galaxy, and even a comet! All in all, it was a really awesome experience meeting these distinguished alumni of UofM and showing them some cool astronomy objects!

Jupiter as viewed through the 1.3m telescope at MDM observatory

Saturn as viewed through the 1.3m telescope at the MDM observatory

Sunday, May 21st

Whew, another free day…after a busy week, it was nice to have a day off to do some more exploring! After relaxing a bit and eating some lunch, I started making my way to a trail I found out about by talking to one of the Kitt Peak staff members. I had been craving some good rock climbing and hiking since I arrived at Kitt Peak! With a book in hand (well, backpack actually), I set off through the woods with the intent of climbing some rocks, gosh darn it.

I’m pleased to report that I was successful in that endeavor! There is a very prominent rock formation that is visible from many sites on Kitt Peak, and the trail went right to it. I had a great couple of hours exploring every nook and cranny of those rocks, climbing right to the tippy-top (sorry Mom!) and enjoying my book with the valley splayed out way below me. I even made a lizard friend while I was up there!

View from a rocky outcrop at the top of Kitt Peak

A lizard friend I made!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for Part 3 in this series!

Astronomy, Telescopes, and Bears, Oh My! (Part 1)

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….ok, I never actually saw the bear….but we were thoroughly warned before (and after) we arrived at the mountain that there was a resident black bear roaming the premises. And I can confirm that the bear was sighted during the time we were there, though not by anyone in our group.

This May, I had the fantastic opportunity to travel to Kitt Peak National Observatory, located about 50 miles southwest of Tucson, AZ, to teach a great group of undergraduates about ground-based observatories. Over the course of four short weeks, the students developed a science idea to test, wrote a telescope observing proposal based on that idea, took their own data using two telescopes at Kitt Peak, reduced and analyzed the data, and presented their results. And this was all done while having to sit in lectures, go on tours (both on the Kitt Peak site and off), and participate in several other off-site excursions! Thinking back, it’s really amazing how much the students were able to accomplish, and to such a high standard! (Can you tell I’m proud of them?)

As an instructor, I was fortunate enough to get an all-expenses-paid trip (plus a paycheck!) to a gorgeous mountaintop with greenery and wildlife, awesome telescopes, and beautiful sunsets. It was probably the best experience I’ve had in graduate school so far, so I am writing this blog post to memorialize it and share it with all of you! I’ll be splitting this experience into several posts, due to the jam-packed schedule and sheer number of things we were able to do and see over the course of our month at Kitt Peak. So stay tuned for subsequent posts in this series!

Oh, and make sure you check out my photos, too!  Stephanie’s Obnoxiously Long Kitt Peak Photo Album

Sunday, May 7th

After pretty smooth travels (aside from a two hour delay in Minneapolis) I FINALLY arrived in Tucson! This was my first time in Southern Arizona, so I was excited to see this new place. Of course, the first thing I noticed was all of the brown – brown ground, brown trees, brown weeds….and then Sally (the professor of the class) said as we were driving up Kitt Peak the first time, “Wow, it’s pretty green here still!”…WHAT? After she said it, I could see some green in there, but coming from Michigan pretty much anything else seems brown by comparison.

The students were assigned dorm rooms in pairs, while Sally and I would be staying in the guest house on site. Accommodations were basically what you’d expect from a facility constructed in the 1960s – wood paneled walls, fluffy carpet, a single ethernet modem that was very obviously wired after the house was built….not even kidding, there was an obvious hole in the exterior wall. Nonetheless, I was happy to be staying in a place with my own bedroom, a kitchen, and internet access (evidently the dorm where the students stayed didn’t even have ethernet! #firstworldproblems?).

After settling in a bit, we all piled into our giant 15-passenger van (a completely necessary vehicle with 12 students and 2 instructors, thankfully I didn’t have to drive it) and headed to one of the two telescopes we would be using the following weekend (the Hiltner 2.4-meter and the McGraw-Hill 1.3-meter) to shadow an astronomer who was using it for the night. It was actually super cool to see astronomy behind-the-scenes on the very first night at the observatory! We didn’t hang around too long though, due to our jet-lagged brains screaming at us for being awake at (what felt like) 3am…

Looking out over Kitt Peak toward the Mayall 4m telescope

Monday, May 8th

Day 1 of class was pretty uneventful, with a general introduction to the site and the structure of the class. In general, each day consisted of an AM, PM, and evening activity – these consisted primarily of lectures and site tours toward the beginning, but transitioned to more off-site excursions toward the end. More on those later! We were welcomed to the observatory by none other than the director herself, Lori Allen (side note: how awesome is it that the director of a major American astronomical observatory is a woman?!). We learned from her the difficulties that come with funding an observatory whose largest telescopes are now considered painfully mid-sized, and all of the hoops they need to jump through. The National Science Foundation was actually about to close this historic and beautiful observatory until its largest telescope was chosen to be used for a huge upcoming survey, DESI.

Tuesday, May 9th

Day 2 was a bit more interesting than Day 1, with tours to two of the bigger telescopes on site planned – the 2.3-meter WIYN telescope and the 4-meter Mayall telescope (where DESI will be installed). These two scopes are quite different in their designs; for example, the Mayall lives in an 18-story concrete/metal building, while the WIYN lives in a 4 story building….this has to do primarily with the way the telescopes are mounted and controlled. In the old days before advanced computers, it was much easier to align one of the telescope’s axes of motion with Earth’s axis of rotation. This way, when an astronomer was tracking an object across the sky, she only had to worry about a single axis of rotation.

The issue with this design is that by having one axis aligned with Earth’s rotational axis, one ends up with the weight of the telescope somewhat suspended in midair. Consequently, the supports for the telescope need to be much bigger in order to securely support its weight. A better design is one that doesn’t have to fight gravity as much – instead, have one axis be horizontal to the ground (like a merry-go-round) and have the second axis be a simple up-and-down movement. Unfortunately, this design was not practical until more advanced computers came along that could precisely control the two axes simultaneously in order to track an object across the sky. Now that that’s possible, however, telescopes built today use this second design. The pictures below show these two designs: on the left is the first and on the right is the second.

The Mayall 4m telescope’s equatorial mount

The WIYN 3.5m telescope’s altitude-azimuth mount

We wrapped up the rest of the day with a couple of lectures and a meal in the cafeteria. I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food up at the summit – I had heard horror stories about the cafeteria-grade food by some colleagues, but I enjoyed every meal throughout the month!

Wednesday, May 10th

I think by the third day, the students were starting to become aware of the work that would be required of them during the month…this was the day they needed to choose a telescope on-site that they would write five pages about, with only a couple of days until their project observing proposals were due, complete from choosing a topic to study to determining the amount of time and the instruments they would need on the telescopes to describing the science product they expected to obtain at the end. Let’s just say I much preferred the instructor role, available to help when needed but also able to sit under a tree with a book when I wanted…

In the evening, we had the chance to head over to one of telescopes we’d be using in just a couple of days, the McGraw-Hill 1.3-meter at the MDM observatory (fun fact: “MDM” stands for MIT, Dartmouth, and Michigan, in honor of the founding institutions of this subset of telescopes. MIT has since left the collaboration, and the remaining institutions have been joined by Ohio State, Ohio University, and Columbia University. Yet it’s still called MDM…astronomers, I tell ya). Was this the start of our observing run? No, actually we were going to watch an astronomer at the University of Michigan begin his night of observing from the comfort of his own office. This “remote observing” is quite bizarre to witness – imagine you’re sitting in a room surrounded by the computers that control the telescope, yet the mouse is moving on its own, the lights in the dome turn on and off by themselves, and the telescope just starts moving….yes, obviously there was a human controlling these things, but it was strange knowing they were doing so from 2,000 miles away!

Thursday, May 11th

Thursday was a pretty chill day overall, at least for Sally and I. For the students, it was a combination of stressful in the morning as they put the finishing touches on their observing proposal drafts and relaxation/decompression after said stress. The afternoon saw a brief lecture from me, but the evening is when the real fun started.

We piled into our 15-passenger van once again (this became a very common theme throughout the month…I had a love/hate relationship with that van) and made our way to the MDM observatory to get familiar with the instruments we’d be using. We of course watched the sunset before getting to work, as all astronomers do (what can we say, they never get old!). I’ve come to the conclusion that no sunset compares to those seen from mountain tops in the desert – the reddened sunlight just mixes so perfectly with the dusty brown/red landscape, and mountains are always gorgeous photo targets. I have no idea how many sunset pictures I took over the course of the month, but this one has to be my favorite:

Sunset from the 1.3m telescope at MDM Observatory

After sunset, we began standard procedures to prepare the telescopes for a night of observing. We weren’t officially scheduled to begin observing until Friday night, but we wanted to be familiar with the instruments and procedures before we actually had to do it for real. I took the helm at the 1.3m, while Sally was in control at the 2.4m. The start up and shut down procedures became second nature by the end of our four nights at the scopes:

  1. Fill the detector dewar with liquid nitrogen in order to keep it cold all night.

  2. Open exterior doors to the dome to equilibrate the air temperature inside the dome and reduce turbulence.

  3. Open the dome shutter, then open the telescope mirror covers.

  4. Open any field stops to ensure light can reach the detector.

  5. Tell the telescope to begin tracking Earth’s rotation. Then, move to a bright star and ensure the telescope is pointing where it thinks it is.

  6. Observe!

  7. Perform 1–5 in reverse to shut down.

It was after 2am by the time we had ironed out any kinks in the procedures and gained confidence in operating the telescopes, so with an unplanned half-night of observing under our belts, we went to bed eagerly anticipating our full weekend of observing ahead. Or, at least, I was – I’ve come to really enjoy staying up all night in the peaceful company of other astronomers and with the ability to go outside and see incredible night skies whenever I want. Maybe I’m crazy, or maybe I’m just meant to be an astronomer. There’s nothing like it!

Friday, May 12th — Monday, May 15th

Hooray, it was finally observing weekend! Granted, we had literally all of Friday to get through first, and maybe I was the only one actually excited about staying up all night to operate a multi-million-dollar instrument, but I think the students were eager as well….at the very least to operate said instruments. After submitting final drafts of their observing proposals and a lecture from me, and after arming ourselves with snacks and coffee, we were ready for our first full night of observing!

We watched sunset, as per usual, and then dispersed to our selected telescopes – I was again in charge of the smaller 1.3m telescope, while the majority of the students opted to use the 2.4m. Aside from being bigger, the 2.4m had different instruments installed that would perform spectroscopy (essentially decomposing all of the light from a source into the amount of light per wavelength), which most of the students’ projects required. This all meant that my job was actually pretty easy! Things went smoothly the whole night, at least at the 1.3m, and I was glad that the first observing experience (ever, for some of the students) went so well!

We wrapped up around 5:30am (I know, crazy), and then slept until the next afternoon. I always feel extremely lazy when observing because I wake up at 2pm or later, even though I stay up until 5:30 or 6am…I’m a night owl for sure, but definitely not nocturnal! Anyway, Saturday afternoon was our mock Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC)…even though we had observed already…oh well, the schedule can always be adjusted! The purpose of the TAC is to evaluate all observing proposals submitted, discuss strengths and weaknesses along with the impact of each, and then give each proposal an overall score. In our class, the top-ranked proposals then got the amount of time at the time of night they requested, while the lower-ranked proposals did not get all of the time they asked for (in the real world, the bottom-ranked proposals don’t get any time at all, if the telescope gets filled up!). I was incredibly impressed with the level of the discussions by the students about each proposal – Sally even said that it was at the level of a real TAC! Our observing schedule was modified slightly based on the evaluations of our mock TAC, and then it was nap time.

Saturday night went pretty much exactly how Friday went – gorgeous sunset, smooth observing, watched a couple of movies (animated Pixar films, obviously!), and wrapped up around 6am. After waking up in the mid-afternoon on Sunday, I decided it was about time I explored the summit a bit, so I took my book and set off to find the perfect secluded reading spot. And oh, did I find it! Look at this view! I definitely went back here several times during the month.

Panoramic view from my reading spot on Kitt Peak. The McGrath solar telescope is on the left, while the peak on the right is known as “Elder Brother” to the Tohono O’odham people.

Sunday night was much more of the same, and again we slept until mid-afternoon on Monday. I was so glad our observing runs went so incredibly smoothly! That all too often seems not to be the case, whether it’s because of some technical failure, a software error, or just Mother Nature. After a lecture and dinner, we all had Monday night off and were able to finally try to adjust back to normal sleeping hours. This is actually starting to become second nature to me…every time I go observing, it seems like I adjust to the opposite schedule even faster than the last time.

And I think I’ll wrap this post up here. I hope you’re enjoying reading about my Kitt Peak adventure so far! I’ll be back soon with the next post in this series, in which we actually get to leave the mountain after 10 straight days on the summit. Though to be honest, I was quite happy to return to 6750 feet after only a short time in the desert heat…

Until my next post, friends!

Hello!

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Hi! I’m Stephanie, a high-energy-physicist-turned-astronomer working toward my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. I’ve had a non-linear path to becoming an astronomer, even though astronomy has been my passion since about the sixth grade. Better late than never, right?

I’ve come to find myself studying the Solar System, and more specifically the small objects that orbit within a donut-shaped ring farther out than Neptune. While this isn’t what I’d pictured myself studying when I began graduate school, I honestly wouldn’t want to be studying anything else! These small, seemingly insignificant bodies in the distant reaches of the Solar System actually hold the key to unlocking its entire history! The much larger gas giant planets easily fling them about, so by discovering many of them and watching how they move, we can try to make educated guesses as to what types of interactions happened in their pasts. I think that’s what I find so cool and exciting about my research – we are pushing the limits of the best telescopes and cameras on Earth to search for objects that are a fraction of the size of Earth and farther away than Pluto or the New Horizons spacecraft. It’s truly amazing!

Throughout my time so far in graduate school, I’ve become really passionate about science education and public outreach and the importance of giving back to one’s community by passing on knowledge. I love talking to people about science, whether it be my own work or something completely unrelated. Science (but especially astronomy….though I may be biased :D ) is just so cool!

I’ve worked hard over the past several months to create this website and blog so I can share my passion and excitement for science (mainly astronomy, but probably some other cool things too!) with all of you. I’ve also created a travel blog to document my travels to wherever astronomy takes me around the world (starting now….as my family and friends already know, I’ve been several places already, including Chile and several European countries…). You can get to both of these from the “Blogs” tab at the top of the site. I hope you’ll find my blogs interesting!

Much love,
~Stephanie~