You might be wondering how is wind has an effect on the telescope. The answer is a strong wind can literally shake the telescope and have a damage on the telescope itself. The criterion for a strong wind is 35 mph (56 km/h). Therefore, every time the wind gets stronger, a telescope operator (a person who is responsible for moving the telescope and dome) will shut down the dome to protect the telescope from the wind and an astronomer can just sit there waiting for the wind to stop. If you think sitting and waiting for cloud to go away is bad, waiting for the wind to stop is even worse simple because you can literally see a clear night sky outside your dome, but you simply cannot do the observation.
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| A wind chart from 3/17-6/17 |
(Note: the data came from the same data source as a previous post.) You can see that most of the time, the wind speed is well below 35 mph threshold. However, there were couple days that the wind is greater 35 mph and those days will correspond to 'a terrible night' for the observation.
Other weather factors apart from cloud and wind that can have an effect on the observation includes temperature (if it is too cold, we cannot really operate the telescope otherwise we risk to have some components frozen as the temperature at the telescope has to be the same as the outside to reduce the thermal noise), humidity (too high humidity will cause water droplets to be formed on the mirror and/or the instruments which might damage those instruments. water droplets will form once the humidity is higher than a dew point). There are many factors that can contribute to the obstacles for the observation, so we should not take a great night for granted as it might not happen that often anymore. Lastly, I will leave you will two night panoramas from the mountain. You can say that it might one good thing on a terrible night at the observatory.
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| Panorama from Magellan Telescope during sunset |
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| Panorama to Magellan Telescope during daylight |
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