Bed

5.40am. Just as we were completing our data analysis activities, Simon Green said that the observing groups outside were having better luck, and the skies were clearing at least partially.


We made our way outside, and sort of randomly attached ourselves to a telescope that took our fancy. Roy found himself helping to resolve a common problem with artificially cooled CCD cameras (plugged in where the eyepiece would otherwise go) and high humidity evenings -- ice crystals. So imagine how surreal it must have been to hear the sound of a hairdryer being used to remove the ice crystals in the dead of night from a telescope all those miles away from home. Roy was evidently quite accustomed to the problem and was unfazed, nor really saw the funny side, which rather shamed me into silence.

In the dome being supervised by Roger (Parklife) O'Brien, they were observing Spica, the brightest star in Virgo at magnitude +1 (around the same as Betelgeuse). For the benefit of the interlopers, Roger brought out a great pair of binoculars. When a couple of others had looked through them, he passed them to me. I observed Spica, Regulus and I had just found Saturn when a shooting star passed through my field of view in the binoculars. Although I've seen them with the unaided eye once or twice before, it was the first time I'd seen one through binoculars. This, to me, was one of the night's money shots.

Saturn with its rings, almost edge on

As the group had finished what they were doing, Roger got the group to slew the telescope around to Saturn. We all crowded around to see. Sadly the rings are edge-on at the moment so they are barely visible, but we could still see it reasonably well. Sadly the Maxim DL software crashed as soon as it got Saturn on screen (and before they'd had a chance to process it), but it was good to see it.

Roger couldn't get the software to quit, so Kirsten took over, using the Task Manager to quit. Further problems arose because when she restarted Maxim DL, it wouldn't recognise the CCD camera. A speedy reboot failed to resolve the problem, and they spent about 20 minutes trying to get it working again, but it resolutely refused. Fingers crossed that half a day to think about it whilst it is switched off will resolve the problem.

Eventually, with no sign of dawn but with roosters crowing in the distance (last night it was donkeys and goat bells), it was time to switch off, close down and lock up the telescope domes.

It was distinctly cooler by then, and Anne-Marie was shivering in her jumper. When I got on the coach it was like opening an oven door, a blast of warm air hit me in the face (although I later discovered the 'warm' air to be just 14C), and straight away I knew it would not be long before I was feeling sleepy.

Got back to the hotel, and there was some talk of seeing whether the hotel would open up their bar. But when we walked in and saw that the bar was closed, nobody said anything, and everyone headed to their rooms.

I sleepily downloaded the photos and sound files from my camera and digital voice recorder, there's an awful lot of stuff there. I suspect I am going to end up running out of space on my USB drive if I copy them all across. Some reasonably good pictures, I'm pretty pleased with the ones of me running around like a maniac with a torch. Off to bed.