When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
With the appearance, size and color of a rose, the moniker Reef Rose seems to fit. In reality these are the eggs of a large nudibranch, the Spanish dancer. Not at all hard to spot, I had been finding these for years before actually seeing the parent.
I always make a point to check the egg mass closely. There is another nudibranch, a tiny parasitic nudibranch that eats the eggs of the Spanish dancer, a species unsurprisingly called the egg-eating nudibranch.
Mercury is beginning a morning apparition this week. Look directly above the sunrise for a starlike object shining at 3.2 magnitude. The planet will be over 10° from the Sun today, rising a little further each day until maximum elongation on August 16th.
The Perseids are one of the most watched meteor showers. Occurring during northern hemisphere summer, the shower can be appreciated on a summer night. Quite a difference from the other reliable showers such as the Leonids and Quadrantids, that occur in November and January. Consider a warm summer evening under a dark sky full of stars, a picnic blanket, relaxing while shooting stars streak across the sky. What could be better?
The Perseid meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through a stream of debris along the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle. This shower has been consistent throughout recorded history, mentioned in Chinese, Japanese and Korean records as early as the 1st century. Active from July 17th to August 24th, the shower will build slowly for weeks before the peak. A week before or after peak the shower can still be seen with around 20 meteors each hour. The shower is a northern hemisphere event, for southern observers the radiant never rises above the horizon.
You could always tell when the interferometer was on-sky. Both telescopes would be pointed at the same object, both domes open to the same direction. Any other time you will find each Keck telescope doing its own thing. With the interferometer shut down, it will be an odd night indeed when the telescopes are pointed in the same direction.
The most common nudibranch I find on Kohala reefs. These fellows are active in the daytime and often found in the open. They are generally found on walls, or in the many small caves that penetrate local reefs.
Tomorrow morning I will begin to power down the systems. One by one I will open the switches on gear that has rarely been powered off in years. In a matter of minutes it will be off. Dozens of computers, servo drives, camera controllers, racks of gear, silent and dark. I will also shut off the liquid nitrogen to each camera in turn. This will take a bit longer, a couple weeks will be needed to properly warm and back-fill each camera with dry nitrogen for storage. Meanwhile, Brett will carefully cover each optical surface in optical cloth and plastic. A few bits of gear installed in the telescope will be removed to be stored in the basement. By the end of August the Keck Interferometer will be mothballed.
This is the last run, three nights of observations. Two of those are behind us, the third beginning, the end is rapidly approaching.
The plan is to carefully mothball the interferometer in place, in such a way as it could be reactivated with a few weeks of work. Maybe, some source of funding might allow the instrument to be used again, that is the hope. But we know how difficult the current budget environment has become.
Oddly, one of our laser spotters did not make it to the summit and I was obliged to fill in. Fortunately it was a lovely night on the summit, not very cold and with no wind to make it miserable. For a couple hours I relaxed in the Laser Suzan chair, watching the sky. Above me arched the Milky Way, somewhat dimmed by a bright Moon, but still beautiful. A few bright meteors punctuated the night. The scene was a made a bit surreal by three lasers, all targeting the galactic core, the very center of our galaxy. Beside me the camera regularly issued the soft sound of the shutter, taking images of the night.
The second night was a series of galactic targets and a couple AGN’s. The final analysis will take time, but initial indications are that we have good data on at least some of the targets. A couple targets proved too faint for the system to track on. No surprise, we planned to reach a little with this last run.
Thus we begin this last night, the practiced evening routine is complete, final checks done. The last targets a list of selected YSO’s (young stellar objects) to be observed in L-Band. We settle in for the night, hopefully a quiet night. As usual, if I am busy, things are not good. All is going well, a fitting end to the instrument and a testament to all those who have put so much into the system. Something to remember.