First stop. Madrid Airport. 8 hours to spend here.

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

@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?

@arillien I think they went well, but still don't know if they were useful for their purpose. We are waiting from news from Europe.

@asmasca Hope you had good news from Europe today!