Fresh off the telescope, I wanted to share with you this spectacular spiral-spiral pair. Both of these galaxies probably look alike, but we’re seeing one edge on, and the other face on. (The bright thing on the left is a star, surrounded by reflections we haven’t had time to remove yet). The bright knots you can see in the face-on galaxy are likely to be bright star clusters, probably of young stars. Not only does this system look good, though, it’s pretty much ideal for our project. The edge on galaxy is clearly behind its face on neighbour (and these two are close together), whose spiral arms run in front of it. It’s also nice and smooth, so we can predict what light will hit the nearer galaxy - and use that to deduce its dust properties.   

It’s been a bit busier tonight; small problems with the software to deal with, and a group of migrant astronomers wanting help with their telescope among other things. In the meantime, here are the two most interesting objects of the night’s crop.  Goodnight all.  

Just before tonight’s observations began, I managed to record a quick interview with Bill. The background noises you can hear are the sounds of a telescope being rapidly prepared for action; listen very carefully and you’ll hear the ‘beep’ of the slewing telescope up in the dome.

We’ll try and do the same tomorrow, and if you have any questions for Bill (or Anna or myself) post them in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer

In the meantime, we’ve resorted to music to keep us all awake. As discerning people with eclectic tastes, we’ve resorted to attempting to compile a relevant playlist. If you can help us get beyond this, we’d be most grateful.

While Bill is once more pointing the telescope at the wall (in order to measure the noise in the camera), I thought you’d want to see the telescope that’s providing us with our beautiful images. The WIYN 3.5 m is the most modern of the big telescopes up here, and was opened for business in the mid 90s; as you can see from the image below, it has a very unusual and distinctive structure. Read more

It’s 2pm local time, and I’ve just managed to drag myself out of bed ready for our second night’s observing. During the day Kitt Peak is essentially a tourist destination; I just popped into the visitor’s centre to buy some water and found the third tour of the day getting briefed before setting off up the mountain. There’s also a public sky viewing program in the evenings, and they even rent out some of the smaller (but still substantial) telescopes on the mountain to anyone who wants to use them. It’s still sunny, and it won’t be long before we have to start preparing the telescope, but for now more prosaic thoughts dominate. Breakfast time…

P.S. If you want to follow our exploits in more detail this evening, we’ll be updating the newly established WIYN twitter feed.