Mon July 26, 10
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 20, I went to the San Jose Airport near SETI Institute to meet in person for the first time in person Takayuki Kotani and to give him a ride [...]
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 the observatoire de Paris, arrived the first time at the Lick Observatory. The picture below was taking as they were climbing the stairs of the Shane telescope building at [...]
Sun July 25, 10
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 the lab later today.” Below a picture of these mysterious black crates. What can we found inside these crates? That’s a long story that I summarize today.
During a long [...]
Tue July 20, 10
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 Adaptive Optics Systems. If you have been following my blogs and/or the scientific articles of our group (you are courageous…) you should know that this is the scientific topic [...]
Sun July 18, 10
The heat is on…
As the title tells, Europe is currently quite a hot place, but also my own life has been very hectic lately. The last months I have been preoccupied with finding my next job, figuring out where to move and in general what to do after August when my contract at ESO ends.
I have been three [...]
Thu July 15, 10
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 astronomy. Today I decided to write a short post on observations that we did using the Keck telescope and its AO system about Io.
Like last year, my summer is [...]
WISE saw the solar eclipse
WISE is still being eclipsed by the Earth, an effect known as night for those of us living on Earth, but on 11 July 2010 WISE also got eclipsed by the Moon. The graph below shows the output of a coarse Sun sensor (basically a solar cell) falling rapidly as the sunlight powering WISE [...]
Wed June 2, 10
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 is not over. Before telling you about my great trip at ESA-Madrid where I was a few days ago, I would like to mention recent developments in our numerical [...]
Mon May 31, 10
One million and counting
WISE downloaded its one millionth 4-color frameset last night. It was taken 29-May-2010 20:23:14 UTC and centered at (l,b) = (90.33,14.53). The survey continues…
Tue May 18, 10
JPL Open House
Saturday morning I volunteered at the JPL Open House, which was May 15-16 this year. Finally the WISE booth had real WISE data. Tens of thousands of visitors came to learn about space projects ranging from Earth observing satellites to the Planck mission studying the most distant parts of the observable Universe. [...]