A. Suárez MascareñoAbout to leave Tenerife to spend almost two weeks at the La Silla ESO observatory, in the Atacama desert (Chile). I will be observing with HARPS for several different projects and then fine tuning the new planet hunter spectrograph NIRPS. I have a long journey ahead! #astronomy #observation #exoplanets
Many times we, #astronomers and #academics, work in airports and during flights... Well, today I'm not really in the mood for that #AstronomerLife #footballmanager
Time to fly to Chile. Time to spend 14 hours like a sardine in a can #astronomy #AstronomerLife
In Chile now! When observing at the ESO observatories is quite usual to spend a day in Santiago de Chile before heading for the Atacama desert. The typical place to spend that day is the ESO guest house #eso #AstronomerLife #astronomy
Time to go to La Silla. New flight (Santiago to La Serena) and then a 2.5 hours on the road... And then I think I'll have to start working immediately. Instrumentation runs demand quite a lot of daily work and observing runs demand mostly nightly work. I'm getting quite a few of both this time! #astronomy #AstronomerLife #NIRPS
The skies were not very clear in La Serena, but we still expect a nice night at the observatory #astronomy #AstronomerLife
While it doesn't look very romantic, this is where the magic happens. This room controls 3 telescopes, including the 3.6m ESO telescope, that hosts HARPS and NIRPS #astronomy #AstronomerLife
This time it's a bit special. As #NIRPS is still a baby instrument, I'm in charge of baby sitting it. I hope it doesn't cry while I sleep! #astronomy #AstronomerLife #instrumentation
I can't believe I hadn't shared a picture of the #observatory! Not the best, but here you can see the 3.6m ESO telescope in the background (and the NTT right before it) . That is the #telescope that hosts #HARPS and #NIRPS. #astronomy #AstronomerLife
The magic is now happening! We are observing a star that has a planet candidate detected by transit. The goal is to measure the mass of the planet. Today we'll take a single data point which will be part of a radial velocity time series. We are using the #HARPS spectrograph, installed at the 3.6m #eso telescope. After almost 20 years of operations, it is still one of the best RV spectrographs in the world. #astronomy #AstronomerLife #exoplanets
The ring you see in the image is the target star, as seen by the guiding camera. With many modern spectrographs, we transmit the light of the star from the telescope to the instrument trough an optical fiber. The ring is the "leftover light" not actually going to the fiber. The dark hole in the middle is the fiber. The telescope uses that ring of light around the fiber to track the star #Astronomy #astronomerlife #Exoplanets
I am not liking those clouds! Last night was excellent. We had good and stable conditions during all night. Today is looking like it might not be as good. #astronomy #AstronomerLife #observatory
A nice little place at the #observatory. Really good to watch the sunset! #Astronomy #AstronomerLife
A winged friend flying over the #observatory. Today I went for a walk and saw a pair of #condors flying together. Didn't manage to record them before they split. One of them came back flying over me. #astronomy #AstronomerLife
More winged friends staying next to the control room of the #observatory. They sing in the morning when we finish the observations! #astronomy #AstronomerLife
The #observatory might be in the desert, but it's quite alive. This is the music of the dawn. #astronomy #AstronomerLife
One of the bad things of this pre-commissioning business is the sleep deprivation. 7:30 am and still up. I really need to go to sleep... #AstronomerLife #Astronomy
It was about time. Today I visited #NIRPS! What you can see is the vacuum vessel inside which the spectrograph is. The whole thing is also inside heat insulation inside a temperature controlled room. #NIRPS is designed to measure precise radial velocities, which require really good insulation from temperature and pressure changes. #astronomy #AstronomerLife #exoplanets
This his how a high resolution #spectrograph, designed for #exoplanets studies, looks from the outside. A big chamber, with isolation layers, tubes and warning signs #AstronomerLife #astronomy #NIRPS
Then on the inside is where the magic happens, the light gets dispersed into tiny colours, and everything is quite complicated #NIRPS #Astronomy #AstronomerLife #exoplanets
Tonight is my last night at the #observatory. I took the opportunity to go to se #REM at Notre Dome de La Silla! #astronomy #AstronomerLife
My chilean adventure is over! I'm already at the Santiago airport. Heading to Madrid in ~2 hours. I'll be in Tenerife in around 27 hours. It's been great! But I really want to go back home. #AstronomerLife onomy
Madrid airport again. 7 hours layover here before taking off to Tenerife. Just having breakfast while I finish drafting a press release #AstronomerLife #astronomy
I could barely sleep in the flight from Chile. The time is quite inconvenient for it. By the time they turn the lights on in the cabin (breakfast + getting ready for landing), is something like midnight to 1 am in the place I woke up. I tried to sleep earlier, but even in a bed I would have had trouble sleeping at 19-20h! I'm probably not getting any decent sleep until tonight. #AstronomerLife #astronomy
Arillien@asmasca Buen viaje! :3
Segebodo@asmasca For anybody else who's interested:
https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/develop/instruments/NIRPS.html
If you didn't know what the radial velocity method is you can learn about it here:
https://www.planetary.org/articles/color-shifting-stars-the-radial-velocity-method
What is very astonishing is that the NIRPS has a precision of <1m/s.
That means it can tell the speed of a star based on its color shift more accurately than humans can approximate the speed of most things.
@asmasca Would they let you sleep soon?
@arillien I went to sleep around 8:30. It's the problem of trying to coordinate night work and day work in Chile and Europe. Also with very few people . We are just 2 in the mountain. It was quite a bad time. Too late for me, too early for the other person.
@asmasca Do you at least manage to do all the stuff you wanted? Or are beyond schedule?
@arillien I had to stay longer just to start one calibration run. The last hour I was mostly just waiting for the right time to start the calibrations.
@asmasca Sorry to hear. How did the calibrations went?
@asmasca Amazing :3
Olivier Hernandez (il/lui/him)@asmasca marvellous !
Dr. Alexandre Santerne 🌍Nice @asmasca, long time without being there.
Maybe people think this control room is boring ?
Watch this #TimeLapse #video I took from that same control room. #Astronomers are very busy while observing the #night #sky using #ESO #telescopes - even if we don't see the stars directly.
A night in the control room of ESO La Silla
@AlexSanterne I love it! That's fantastic. I recognize a few people!
Mark H@asmasca I'm not an astronomer but I did visit Cerro Tololo not too far from you a few years back so here's the control room for the Victor M. Blanco 4m telescope along with some emergency equipment I hope yours has too.
@neonbubble In this one we have classic rock during most nights!