A night of it

6.46pm. Just had an achingly long lecture by Simon Green on Near Earth Asteroids. This should have been very interesting, but with his droning and endless full facts, I am afraid I fell asleep. I was about the only person this week who has not yet fallen asleep in one of there early evening lectures, but it is still embarrassing, because everyone who has fallen asleep has snored. It's due in part to the fact that the chairs recline a lot because the viewer needs to look up, that the chairs are very comfortable, and that it tends to be a little warmer in there. Can't be helped!

After the lecture, it was coffee break time. The coffee was incredibly strong, and it felt like as though I was a bunny rabbit being fed on cheetah food.

8.02pm. Just had our planning meeting for tonight's project, Colour Magnitude Diagrams (CMDs). This project is all about examining the characteristics in two types of cluster, open and globular. I am project manager, Roy is Chair, Steve is note-taker. This latter one is an interesting choice, since he clearly has the onset of a Parkinsons' style disease.

Steve is completely charming, a lovely man to talk to, and absurdly intelligent too, I feel hopelessly stupid whenever I talk to him. He's already done some level 3 physics courses, so I'm not clear why he's here in Mallorca now, rather than a couple of years ago.

I have divided the rest into two sub teams. One will go out to the telescope to take bias, dark and flat images. The other will be in the computer lab, and will need to get finder sheets, then I will run these out to the group in the dome. The sky is partially cloudy tonight, so it is important that the group in the dome are put into a position where they can rotate the dome and take observations at a moment's notice.

I suspect I will be doing a fair bit of running around tonight. Whilst we are always marked on how we perform as a team, tomorrow night is the formally assessed project, so I am glad that I am running tonight's project instead. Nevertheless there is a modicum of pressure on.

Our tutor tonight is Roger O'Brien, who is excellent, really terribly clever, and I want us to do our best. It's not just SXR208 pride; I know Roger slightly because he also runs some of the e-tutorials on S282, so our paths will continue to cross after this week.

9.15pm. I'm in the computing lab. I've just got my sub-group to obtain finder charts for the three clusters that we have selected, and I took them out to the team in the Kepler telescope dome. These charts were fairly straightforward to locate, although printing them out at a useful size presented some challenges. Everything seems very slightly damp, especially the printer paper.

The telescope team are having some problems with their telescope itself. The telescope in the Kepler dome is one fitted with a GPS module (whose only function is to tell the telescope where on the planet it is situated), but that isn't working at the moment. This isn't too much of a problem yet, since it is cloudy. The moon is visible, just, as the cloud is high and thin. Roger is speaking to Simon to get this GPS issue resolved, as it appears we can't start observing properly until then.

We have just made a copy as instructed of one of the archive data sets, and we are printing off a copy of the associated log sheets. We are then going to start doing some data analysis on the archive data. It's a shame to have to use archived data instead of data gathered by the observational teams, but we can only do our best.

It's going quite well so far.

9.55pm. Just dashing out to the dome to see how my other team are doing, as I was told that because the dome sub-team had to move domes, they were feeling a little downcast. They have taken some flats, darks and bias images, and those look good. Very glad that they'd already done these in their new dome, so that I didn't have to look at the flats, darks and biases from the previous dome and say, "very nice, now do them all over again."

I've just been telling them how our archive data processing is going, in an effort to keep their spirits up.

The cloud is getting thicker rather than thinner, so I suspect that there will be no new observations done tonight unfortunately.

10.07pm. My team are combining the calibrated images, and we will then start to select a comparison star. The process involved in doing this is especially fiddly, and explained very poorly in the notes. It's going well for us, but the novelty of being the project manager is starting to wane. Still, I have been lead to believe that the major part of my role is to make sure that work gets done, rather than doing the work myself. Sounds a lot like managers in business, firm masterly inactivity. However I am pretty proficient on the data analysis, so I am letting the other team members have the lion's share. Roy, for instance, isn't especially good on Excel whereas I am, so he needs tuition more than I do.

11.06pm. I have taken a quick break, and I have gone over to the telescope dome. The data analysis part was getting very difficult, so I found Roger and sent him over to the computer lab to help fix it. He's very amenable like that, and he's always prepared to muck in with something specific. Starting to feel a little tired tonight, especially as the analysis has become difficult.

12.01am. Things came together very quickly with my group, after I asked Roger for some help with the data processing. It turned out to be something quite simple, we didn't have the V and B band images available whilst we were attempting the analysis. This was quickly resolved, and within a few minutes we had a nice looking H-R diagram, which was most of the object of the exercise.

I'm very happy with how we have worked together this evening, we have done something that I was dreading attempting.

Some other news, Anne-Marie says that the pre-school assessment results have been released by her, and will show on our StudentHome pages any time now. Fingers crossed. Anne-Marie has the tiniest little laptop I think I have ever seen, more of a palm-top really, but it clearly works for her. It's a bit like anti penis envy.

1.58am. Just analysed another open cluster, however this time we got more varied results, due to a couple of rogue data points. It's hard to avoid selecting stars in the image to analyse that turn out not to be part of the cluster. The sound of Norman's annoying Scottish monotone is beginning to grate, as he seems to be the only one talking. The Glasgow accent really is wholly unappealing.

Still, when Roger came along he said it was fine, simply a glitch, and he agreed we could take the rogue out. I'd been reluctant to do so, as I am not an expert, and it didn't feel right to simply strike out data, but Roger was happy. Otherwise the shape of our plot agreed very nicely with Roger's printout.

We've done an awful lot of work, yet we still have more to do. My sub team has analysed two clusters, the other sub team has analysed one. We then need to get both sub groups together so we can discuss our findings, and make some conclusions.

Quite tired now, yet there is over two hours to go before the night's work is over. Would love to be cuddled up to Alan right now!

Still cloudy outside. I am not sorry that my sub team didn't go out to the dome to attempt some observations, as it is very cool, very cloudy and the stars are very invisible. Better luck tomorrow.

5.52am. We thought that we had the analysis for two clusters, as the sub-team over in the computing lab (Roy, Peter, Derek) had been inundated with difficulty. When I asked Derek how things had gone, he shook his head and replied, "it's been a disaster."

It did not take long to realise that he was completely wrong, he was being a drama queen. Sorry, I meant 'git'. Their efforts had not been in vain at all, and their data was just as usable as anyone else's. This meant that we had performed analysis on two open clusters, and one globular cluster.

We had a long post-project briefing with Roger O'Brien, who seemed quite happy with the way we performed.

I've also managed to find out my pre-school assessment for SXR208, I got 83%. I'm pretty happy with that! Kirsten has also managed to achieve something that nobody else has done. She forgot to press the 'submit' button prior to the deadline, but Anne-Marie has managed to get the rules changed. As a result, Kirsten has passed the pre-school assessment, which is great news for her.

When she took me aside to tell me that she'd effectively managed to get the rules changed single-handed, she laughed and said, "and I didn't even have to suck anybody's cock to do it!" She probably would have, too. Her revelations continue to arise, as it turns out she has slept with more women than I have. "Oh women are hard work," she confirmed, conspiratorially.

I'm now back at the hotel. Feeling very tired tonight, I fell asleep on the coach, and that is not like me this week. Mind you I was rudely but amusingly woken up by Kirsten sticking a wet finger into my ear, to much laugher. Tomorrow we have a later start, which is very much appreciated!