much larger, almost circular hexagon looking back at you. The mirror itself, all combined, has a square footage only slightly smaller than the house that I lived in.
Later that night, when we pointed the telescope at the faint dot in the sky that was Object X, the mirrors would concentrate all of the light from that immense area onto a tiny spot about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Our goal was to take that concentrated light and pass it through a system that acts as a prism, to spread the light out, and then look at the different components. By looking at this spread-out light—the spectrum—I hoped that I could determine what was on the surface of Object X.
I was scheduled to be at the telescope for two nights. I arrived in Hawaii a day early to begin to shift my body to a nighttime schedule and to do final preparations far from the distractions of home (including planning a wedding that was now only seven months away). I stayed up late at the observatory’s headquarters refining calculations on the computer, and then I went to sleep with the hope that I would sleep until noon so I would be fresh for the long night ahead. Instead, I woke up before dawn. I tried to force myself back to sleep, but my mind was uncontrollably running through the plans for the night, how I would set up the telescope and instruments, what would be the best way to collectthe most useful data possible. I gave up on sleep and walked over to the telescope control room to set up for the night.
The control room is arranged as a dense ring of desks around the center of the room, with an even denser ring of computer screens. At last count the room had something like twelve computer screens, all of which might be in use during the night. I checked the weather reports, the telescope reports, how things had gone the previous night. All of the nighttime staff from the observatory were still asleep, but there was plenty of preparatory work to do. At lunchtime, I walked to the shopping center to get some fresh Hawaiian poke from the grocery store.
Walked to the shopping center? No, there is not a shopping center on the desolate summit of Mauna Kea. I was in the little cowboy town of Waimea, only a couple of thousand feet above sea level and surrounded mostly by ranch land. To use the Keck telescope these days, astronomers rarely actually go up to the summit. Instead, we sit in the control room in Waimea and connect to the summit by a fast video and data link. We talk to the people there and control the instruments there, but we don’t go there ourselves.
The first time I used a telescope like this while being in a control room miles away, I felt strangely disconnected from what was going on. I couldn’t walk outside to feel the wind and humidity. I couldn’t check for cloudy patches or impending fog. I couldn’t hear the reassuring clanking of the dome and rumbling of the telescope. How could I do astronomy this way?
The answer is, nearly perfectly. Your brain doesn’t work very well in the sudden oxygen deprivation of 14,000 feet. Combine that with lack of sleep, and efficient work is extremely hard. Fish-eye cameras pointing at the sky are better at seeing clouds coming and going than your eye will ever be. Wind and humiditygauges work just fine. And the video link is so seamless that you almost forget that you’re not talking to someone sitting right next to you. Still, I always find it disconcerting when, on nights that I am working at the telescope and the sky at 14,000 feet is beautiful and clear and the humidity is low and we are collecting beautiful data, I think to look out the window and, outside the control room at 2,000 feet in Waimea, rivers of rain are being driven horizontally by gale-force winds.
Object X was going to rise above the horizon at about 8:00 p.m. I had finished setting everything up and was waiting anxiously to get started for the night. The crew arrived at the summit around 5:00 p.m., and we
Later that night, when we pointed the telescope at the faint dot in the sky that was Object X, the mirrors would concentrate all of the light from that immense area onto a tiny spot about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Our goal was to take that concentrated light and pass it through a system that acts as a prism, to spread the light out, and then look at the different components. By looking at this spread-out light—the spectrum—I hoped that I could determine what was on the surface of Object X.
I was scheduled to be at the telescope for two nights. I arrived in Hawaii a day early to begin to shift my body to a nighttime schedule and to do final preparations far from the distractions of home (including planning a wedding that was now only seven months away). I stayed up late at the observatory’s headquarters refining calculations on the computer, and then I went to sleep with the hope that I would sleep until noon so I would be fresh for the long night ahead. Instead, I woke up before dawn. I tried to force myself back to sleep, but my mind was uncontrollably running through the plans for the night, how I would set up the telescope and instruments, what would be the best way to collectthe most useful data possible. I gave up on sleep and walked over to the telescope control room to set up for the night.
The control room is arranged as a dense ring of desks around the center of the room, with an even denser ring of computer screens. At last count the room had something like twelve computer screens, all of which might be in use during the night. I checked the weather reports, the telescope reports, how things had gone the previous night. All of the nighttime staff from the observatory were still asleep, but there was plenty of preparatory work to do. At lunchtime, I walked to the shopping center to get some fresh Hawaiian poke from the grocery store.
Walked to the shopping center? No, there is not a shopping center on the desolate summit of Mauna Kea. I was in the little cowboy town of Waimea, only a couple of thousand feet above sea level and surrounded mostly by ranch land. To use the Keck telescope these days, astronomers rarely actually go up to the summit. Instead, we sit in the control room in Waimea and connect to the summit by a fast video and data link. We talk to the people there and control the instruments there, but we don’t go there ourselves.
The first time I used a telescope like this while being in a control room miles away, I felt strangely disconnected from what was going on. I couldn’t walk outside to feel the wind and humidity. I couldn’t check for cloudy patches or impending fog. I couldn’t hear the reassuring clanking of the dome and rumbling of the telescope. How could I do astronomy this way?
The answer is, nearly perfectly. Your brain doesn’t work very well in the sudden oxygen deprivation of 14,000 feet. Combine that with lack of sleep, and efficient work is extremely hard. Fish-eye cameras pointing at the sky are better at seeing clouds coming and going than your eye will ever be. Wind and humiditygauges work just fine. And the video link is so seamless that you almost forget that you’re not talking to someone sitting right next to you. Still, I always find it disconcerting when, on nights that I am working at the telescope and the sky at 14,000 feet is beautiful and clear and the humidity is low and we are collecting beautiful data, I think to look out the window and, outside the control room at 2,000 feet in Waimea, rivers of rain are being driven horizontally by gale-force winds.
Object X was going to rise above the horizon at about 8:00 p.m. I had finished setting everything up and was waiting anxiously to get started for the night. The crew arrived at the summit around 5:00 p.m., and we
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