February 2nd – Blog_log#0

It is Superbowl

Sunday. Doing homework. Now

I shall begin it

The trip to Arizona was so enlightening in a lot of ways for me. We hit the ground running and immediately started cool stuff. The mirror lab tour was out of this world. Just being in the room with those things was special. Knowing that they would be shipped off to Chile along with the others that had been manufactured there, that will be doing some really cool science in the near future. I think also throughout the trip I was starting to get a grasp of the wealth of career trajectories that can be followed after I graduate. It being the second semester of my senior year I find that to be on my mind more and more. After the tour of the national park which was absolutely gorgeous (and educational), going up to the mountain was really special. After arriving, getting settled, and starting our first night observing I started to really enjoy it. It was like summer camp for astronomers up there. I’ve always enjoyed the hands on experience when it comes to science, and this just further cemented that for me. It was probably the most stars I have ever seen in a night sky. It was really something. More than anything I realize I would absolutely be open to being an observer after meeting all the different kinds of scientists and engineers on the mountain. Our reading and discussion of the giant telescope opened my eyes a little to be all the bureaucracy that goes into the work we do as astronomers as well as providing valuable context about the place we would be spending the next four nights.

During the actually observing run, the role of me and my cohorts we’re to essentially operate the telescope and all of the mechanisms and procedures that go into making the WIYN 0.9 meter operate. Fortunately we did not have any large hiccups, besides the fact that the guiding was failing throughout the entire run. But thankfully, nothing malfunctioned, nor did anybody get hurt. My colleagues and I rotated doing two major tasks: logging and driving. Those tasks we’re divided into personal sub-tasks that each of us would handle personally. I admit that driving was more fun than logging, but all of it was experience I value.

HDI is a really cool instrument. Thankfully it was repaired in time for our run. We we’re able to use it. It had arrived back from The University of Hawaii in October/November (?). We we’re sure to be very careful with it. The most interesting part of the instrument to me was the fact that we didn’t have to take darks. The instrument provides to little dark current to the signal it would have been redundant to subtract the darks from the science frames. From the proposal I knew we we’re going to be looking at YSOs. What I am learning and thinking on more now is the science questions that can be tackled with the data we have taken. I had known about the variability of the targets on the scale of the length of our entire observing run (8 nights), but what could be determined with these light curves and other information that we will retrieve from the data. For our project in particular, we are looking at longer wavelength bands in the Presepe and TESS feilds in order to get rotation curves in order to get an idea of an age of a population of stars in the Presepe, and do an exploratory search for other YSOs in the TESS field outside of the six already determined.

The immediate steps i should take once the data is in hand is try and organize it with my scripts I already have as much as I can, make edits as needed and hopefully calibrate and align all of the images. After this the process for further reduction I do not have an idea of how to do it since we are not going to be following the same roadmap when it comes to the aperture photometry that we did last semester. It appears we are going to be taking rotation curves of our targets. So there will be a time in the roadmoap for learning how to do that. Currently I think the main goal is to get the data in hand and start to organize it. By next Wednesday if we can have all of the master calibrations I’d call that a win.

In terms of the data that we will need it should boil down to R and I band images of the Praesepe and TESS fields. The images should be as follows:

Science Frames:

Night 1 Praesepe Images:

• 140-144 (R)
• 145-149 (I)
• 161-165 (R)
• 166-170 (I)
• 182-186 (R)
• 187-191 (I)
• 203 – 207 (R)
• 208-212 (I)

Night 1 TESS images:

• 219-222 (R)
• 223-225 (I)

Night 2 Praesepe images:

• 155-159 (R)
• 160-164 (I)
• 177-181 (R)
• 182-186 (I)
• 198-202 (R)
• 203-207 (I)

Night 2 TESS images:

• 218-220 (R)
• No I band data on night 2

NO DATA ON NIGHTS 3 OR 4

Night 5 Preasepe images:

• 140-144 (R)
• 145-149 (I)
• 179-183 (R)
• 184-188 (I)
• 213-217 (R)
• 218-222 (I)

Night 5 TESS images:

• 160-162 (R)
• 163 – 165 (I)
• 196-198 (R)
• 199-201 (I)
• 230 – 232 (R)
• 233 – 235 (I)

Night 6 Praesepe images:

• 174-178 (R)
• 179-183 (I)
• 207-211 (R)
• 212-211 (I)
• 242-246 (R)
• 247 (R)
• 248 – 252 (I)

Night 6 TESS images:

• 190-192 (R)
• 193-195 (I)
• 223-225 (R)
• 226-228 (I)
• 259 – 261 (R; log comment says the object label is wrong)
• 262-264 (I; comment now says label is correct
• 271-273 (R)
• 274-276 (I)

Night 7 Praesepe images:

• 137-141 (R)
• 142-146 (I)
• 170-174 (R)
• 165-179 (I)
• 203-207 (R)
• 208-212 (I)

Night 7 TESS images:

• 153-155 (R)
• 156-158 (I)
• 186-188 (R)
• 189-191 (I)
• 219-221 (R)
• 222-224 (I)
• 231-233 (R)
• 234-236 (I)

Night 8 Praesepe Images:

• 181-185 (R)
• 186-190 (I)
• 214-218 (R)
• 219-223 (I)
• 247-251 (R)
• 252-256 (I)

Night 8 TESS images:

• 197-198 (R)
• 199-201 (I)
• 230-232 (R)
• 233-235 (I)
• 263-265 (R; comment reads 242 looks crazy)
• 266-268 (I)

Calibrations:

Night 1:

• 1-13 (Bias frames)
• 20-24 (Dome flat R)
• 25-30 (Dome flat I)

Night 2:

• 236-245 (Bias frames)
• 252-255 (Dome flat R)
• 2 – 5 (Dome flat I)
• 23-15 (Twi flat I)
  

Night 3

• 221-231 (Bias frames)
• 9-16 (Dome flat R)
• 17-22 (Dome flat I)
• 34-38 (Dome flat I)

NO DATA TAKEN ON NIGHT 4

Night 5

• 1-6 (Dome flat V)
• 7-17 (Bias frames)
• 2-6 (Dome flat R)
• 7-11 (Dome flat I)

Night 6

• 1-11 (Bias frames)
• 282-286 (Dome flat R)
• 287-291 (Dome flat I)

Night 7

• 309-313 (Dome flat R)
• 314-318 (Dome flat I)
• 319-329 (Bias frames)

Night 8

• 248-252 (Dome flat R)
• 253-257 (Dome flat I)
• 261-275 (Bias frames)