I was scheduled to observe at the 61″ Kuiper Telescope tonight.
Alas, mother nature decided this was not going to work, and gave us clouds and lightning. As such, we didn’t get to start observing at all and are now off the mountain.
In other news, the observatory is pretty nifty. I’ve never been at this one before.
Damn You Mother Nature!
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5 responses to “Damn You Mother Nature!”
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What were you going to be observing?
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A exoplanet transit.
Alas, I don’t recall the exact name of the planet, but I have it around here somewhere… -
I’m surprised you can see that from an earth based telescope.
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It’s a pretty good telescope. 🙂
You can’t actually see the planet transiting the star. Indeed, the star just appears as an effectively-one-dimensional point (spread out a bit by the atmosphere, but still very tiny). Rather, one is able to measure the brightness of the star as a function of time; the brightness decreases when the planet moves in between the viewer and the star.
From this and other measurements, one is able to deduce various properties of the planet. -
Just as a clarification, we were supposed to be observing HAT-P-6b. I’m one of the two P.I.s on this project, so I am even angrier than Pete that we didn’t get data.
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