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 [...]
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.
[audio:http://chrislintott.net/Audio/BK_Day2_2.mp3]
We’ll try and do the same tomorrow, and if [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Unbelievably, it’s already 2am on our first night on the mountain. Things are going pretty well; the seeing has improved somewhat and so far the camera seems to be performing well. More importantly, I’m managing to stay awake despite a bit of a slump for an hour and half – it turns out pots of [...]
Well, it’s dark (although only just by astronomical standards). If you don’t believe me, then you can keep an eye on the all sky camera.
We’ve just headed over to our first object, which is the galaxy below.
As you might remember we’re investigating the Galaxy Zoo sample of overlapping galaxies. This is a fairly typical [...]
Made it! This post is being written from the WIYN telescope control room. It’s 4pm local time, the Sun is still high in the sky and the first exposure of our observing run has been made. No, we haven’t gone mad, and I haven’t forgotten that this is an optical rather than a radio telescope; [...]
Just as we have all been examining and testing for merging galaxies within Galaxy Zoo, the folks at Hubble have released a catalog of beautiful pictures of 59 pairs of merging galaxies. Take a look at the images – some of them are really beautiful, and they make an interesting contrast with the SDSS images [...]
What will we use our merger data for?
Mergers are really interesting since they are the main process by which the universe evolves its galaxy population and creates more and more massive galaxies. Additionally, the collision between two galaxies involves ALOT of energy. This energy gets transferred into compressive forces when clouds of gas in the [...]