A weekend at Acadia National Park

This is one of the most random trip that I have ever organized in awhile. Basically, one of my friends from Chicago is visiting Boston and she wanted to go to Acadia National park. So, she asked me whether I would know enough people to go to Acadia together. The target number for the trip is 5 people as it can fit exactly in one small car. I manage to find other 3 people fairly quickly so that we can start to organize the trip.

This weekend is pretty simple. We start by leaving Boston Friday afternoon so that we can get to Ellsworth (a small town near Acadia) before it is too late (5 hrs driving to get there). We stopped in Portland for some quick dinner before heading to Ellsworth.

Gorham Mountain with Sand Beach in the background

Wind is what we have to worry about

From the previous post, we were talking about observational astronomy. Specifically, we talked about 'seeing' and how weather can affect the ability for the astronomers to do observation. In this post, I want to talk specifically about wind.

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.

A wind chart from 3/17-6/17

Average Seeing on Magellan Telescope in the past 4 months

It has been awhile since I wrote my last blog post. I am not sure why. Maybe I felt like 'blogging' was no longer exciting and novel, or maybe I just spent too much time consuming media and did not create anything. Then, someone commented on one of my old data visualization works that I did several years ago about Bangkok. Thank you to that person since it made me want to write a new one again.

Enough about excuses. Today, we will discuss about something that is near and dear to my heart, which is observational astronomy. During my PhD study, I got a chance to visit Magellan Telescope in northern part of Chile (I mentioned a little bit at the end of my last post). However, coming to the telescope is not enough for this kind of works. Weather also plays a huge role in this kind of works. And as we all know, we cannot really control weather. More often than not, astronomers travel to the top of the mountains, sit quietly inside the dome, and wait for the cloud to disappear. But, how often? 

To answer this question, we have to pick a specific place and time to get a finite answer. Naturally, I picked Magellan Telescope and within the last 4 months as a starting point. I put the method and all the resources that I used in the note below.

Seeing at Magellan Telescope from 3/17-6/17

A Person without Home - Homeless person

I recently read a Thai essay about a person without home by Roundfinger (นิ้วกลม) facebook page and it made me realize how similar the idea was with my own idea even though I have not ever properly written it out. So, I want to use this opportunity to write about my value of home, places to sleep and traveling.

During the summer or winter break that I spent in the states, people often ask me like why I did not go home or how long I have been away from home. In the course of three and a half years I live in US (as of 1/2014), I went home twice. My first time was after graduating from high school in North Carolina and my second time was about three weeks after my second year of college.

So, why didn't I go home?

Mansueto Library of the University of Chicago (not my home, but I did spend a lot of time in there)