From: mar@physics.su.OZ.AU (David Mar)
Subject: DM's Telescope Postcard - 3
Organization: School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 19:11:50 GMT

Mike Callahan announces: "Postcard from DM. You know the procedure by now. 
Listen up if you're interested." He reads:

Thursday, 27 August

Hi again folks,

14:44 - I've just spent some time logging in back in Sydney and checking 
mail. I slept until almost breakfast time, but I think I need some more 
sleep still.

Over breakfast, Jason asked the cook where he could get a haircut down in
Coonabarabran. She said the only male barber was Harry "Hacker", but she
would recommend either _Clippers_ or _Deb's_Shearing_Shed_ instead. This
was reinforced by Quentin - another astronomer (there are several up here,
since there are several telescopes on the mountain) - who said that going
to Harry Hacker was taking one's life in one's hands. Jason drove down to
town after breakfast; I'll be interested to see if he returns alive. 

17:54 - Post-dinner. This is the time when things start to get fun, but it 
looks as though the weather is going to play games with us again. It is too 
cloudy right now, but looks as though it may clear up later on.

I just came in from the catwalk which runs around the AAT building at about
the seven storey height, where I watched the sunset. Very pretty, with
marvelous salmon pink colours and interesting shapes in the clouds. It's a
shame that the cloudy sunsets are always the best. 

Jonathan is not assisting us tonight - we have Gordon instead. The night 
assistants work one week on night shift and three weeks day shift. And yes, 
Jason made it back from his haircut alive. He went to Deb's.

19:52 - Gordon's official opinion of the weather is "abysmal". He has gone 
downstairs to the electronics lab to do some other work. Jason is up here 
in the control room working on a paper and taping a few songs from some of 
my CDs.

I have been working on the data we collected last night. The process of 
transforming the raw data into a useful form is long and labour-intensive, 
which is why I'm taking a break now. I've also just responded to some 
e-mail from folks who have said they liked the postcards so far (thanks!).

Something I meant to mention before, which Jason and I found quite amusing 
last night. As we were collecting the data, my PhD supervisor (who is 
currently on sabbatical in Cambridge, England) was logged on to the AAT 
computers and checking what processes we were running! He also did some 
quick data reduction via the overseas link to see what the data looked 
like. Talk about insatiably curious!

Quentin (mentioned above) normally works at the Schmidt Telescope, which is 
in a smaller building a few hundred metres away. Tonight, however, he is 
performing in _A_Funny_Thing_Happened_on_the_Way_to_the_Forum_ down in 
Coonabarabran, being put on by the Coonabarabran Drama Society. Jason was 
upset that he won't get to see Quentin in a toga and sandals because he has 
to stay up here and observe with me. :-)

21:44 - Guess what? The clouds have moved away just like last night! The 
photons from a quasar are streaming in and things aren't looking too bad. 
There is still some high cirrus around, which is causing the object to fade 
a little every now and then. Unfotunately, Jason says that there are still 
some heavy clouds around the horizon, so all is not tea and roses.

Friday, 28 August, 03:04 - We are still going with the quasar. We've been 
interrupted by some brief cloud, but haven't been doing too badly. Jason 
and Gordon have gone downstairs for a coffee break.

03:16 - Oops, I was just interrupted then by the end of the latest run. I 
had to take a calibration exposure of a lamp before starting up another 
quasar run.

The weather looks like it might hold until twilight, which will be great. 
Out on the catwalk (which is where we go to check the weather) it is quite 
cold and, if you stand in the wrong place, rather windy. But the view of 
the stars is magnificent. You look up and out, and lose yourself in the 
depths of the sky. Naturally, there are very few lights around here. You 
can see the lights of Coonabarabran in the distance and, on the other side 
of the Warrumbungles, the far-off town of Coonamble. But that's about it. 
It's just you, and the stars.

The band of the Milky Way stretches across the sky, sprinkled with the 
glittering dust of the stars. To the south lie the Magellanic Clouds. The 
red eye of Mars shines imperiously from above. You look at it and think: 
this is another _world_. Not a spot in the sky, but a _place_. As are each 
of the myriads of stars.

I walked around the telescope dome out on that catwalk. Orion was rising in 
the east, over the twinkling lights of Coonabarabran. I looked up into the 
heavens. My quasar is up there somewhere - I had no hope of seeing it. But 
as I stared, I saw the brief streak of white light that signals the 
destruction of a chunk of rock, whirling through space and smashing into 
the Earth's atmosphere. The night sky is a wondrous place.

In between all of the other stuff, I have been either working on reducing 
last night's data, or out grabbing a bite to eat. Or just sitting here 
being lazy with my body trying to tell me to go to sleep. :-)

04:04 - I'm _really_ starting to get tired now.

05:06 - Twilight is upon us. We have stopped observing the quasar and are 
now looking at a standard star so that we can work out how eficiently the 
spectrograph is collecting light. Another half hour or so and I'll finally 
be able to go to bed. I'm looking forward to it.

- Danger Mouse.
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