Franck Marchis

August 9, 2010

FIRST@LICK: Getting ready for the first night

After a complicated mounting of the instrument on the telescope, we spent the entire first 2 days and a large part of the beginning of the […]
August 3, 2010

FIRST@LICK: Mounting of the prototype

As I mentioned previously,  the FIRST fibered-imager prototype was rebuilt and tested successfully in the lab at Lick Observatory. On July 22, we were therefore ready […]
July 26, 2010

FIRST@LICK: Bring the reinforcement!

I mentioned in this blog that the FIRST instrument is the result of collaborations between several engineers & astronomers from everywhere in the world. On July […]
July 25, 2010

FIRST@LICK: Setting up the prototype

On July 14 (Bastille day), shortly after we received the crates, Guy Perrin, astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris and Elsa Huby, a graduate student at […]
July 24, 2010

FIRST@LICK: The Project

On July 13, I received a short email from Elinor Gates, my colleague at Lick Observatory: “The two crates arrived. I will have them moved into […]
July 20, 2010

Keck AO Observations: Multiple Asteroid Systems

I mentioned in my previous post that we observed several known multiple asteroid systems during our last observing run with the W.M. Keck Observatory and its […]
July 15, 2010

Keck AO Observations: Io Volcanism – "Mornes plaines"

It has been a while I did not write anything on this blog. As usual I am late on reporting some news in the world of […]
June 2, 2010

AIDA: A Projects Day at Harvey Mudd College

A new post on this blog is long overdue. I am busy as usual but I have been as well traveling a lot recently… and it […]
April 21, 2010

Venus: Another volcanically active world?

Dear Planetary enthusiasts, Over the past week, we may have heard a lot about a famous volcano in Iceland, named Eyjafjallajokull, which forced more than 64,000 flights […]