Observatory life

Equator crossing! Live acquisition of 30-th spectrum with HARPS

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We acquired the 30th spectrum with HARPS on February 27th at 8.40 UTC from La Silla. James Silverster was the observer at La Silla and he send life updates of the moment. His team is using HARPS in polarimetric mode to make measurements on stellar magnetic fields. We will have an article at palereddot.org from them soon, so you can see how stellar magnetic fields can be measured in practice.

Here is an extract of the twitter and Facebook live feeds of the event:

08:30 UTC :All green lights at ESO Astronomy La Silla. One more spectrum and we will reach 30/60! Standing by!

LaSillaDimm
Meteo monitor information. Image quality looks really good, seeing <1" (bottom right panel, the seeing tells you how 'point-like' a star would look through a telescope). 1" arcsecond would be awesome in any decent observatory. For the high chilean observatories (La Silla, Paranal, Las Campanas, Gemini-S, etc.), <1" is routinely achieved, which is why the high Chilean mountains are such a good place for astronomy, besides being dry and mostly cloudless.[/caption] 08:45  UTC : @jimmysilvers > @Pale_red_dot Photons are being collected as we speak!

08:46 UTC : @Pale_red_dot > Cool! Send us a picture!!!

08:58 UTC : @jimmysilvers > here you go!

harps_fibre

08:50 UTC : @Pale_red_dot > Yesss, that’s a live image of Proxima’s photons being sucked by HARPS science fibre (dark central hole). Awesome

08:55 UTC :While we wait for the integration to end, how about a stroll and a look at the sky from La Silla? Thx @jimmysilvers

[caption id="attachment_1251" align="alignnone" width="474"]Southern sky at the end of February from La Silla observatory. Credits : James Silvester Southern sky at the end of February from La Silla observatory. Credits : James Silvester

09:15 UTC : Integration complete. File saved, stored, and shipped to ESO’s HQ at Garching. Thanks James for sharing these moments.

The raw file reaching ESO's archive at Garching marks the end of a successful observation.
The raw file reaching ESO’s archive at Garching marks the end of a successful observation.

09:20 UTC : @Pale_red_dot > success! 50% data collection achieved! #palereddot

Status update Feb 27. One bonus spectrum was obtained on Feb 25.
Status update Feb 27. One bonus spectrum was obtained on Feb 25.

09:30 UTC : Bedtime for the observers. Really high success rate so far. Lots of updates and articles next week! thx for following