Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 3 - Machu Picchu!

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 4.

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I woke up at 4.30am to had some breakfast since it will be another long day for me. I left the hostel and get the bus station at around 5am and had to wait for 30 mins for the first bus to leave towns. As I was waiting in line, I saw the same 3 siblings just got to the line and also met the same group of American whom I met in the hostel in Cusco. We exchanged a little bit but didn't really end up stay together in the end. I arrived at the gate for Machu Picchu around 5.45am, but since the gate opened at 6, I had to stand in line for couple minutes. The wait didn't last long and I finally got inside.

5.30am waiting to catch the first bus up to Machu Picchu

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 2 - Aguas Calientes

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 3, and Day 4.

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The next day started pretty early as I had to take a taxi (again) to the nearby town to catch the train to Machu Picchu. This is a disadvantage for people who travel alone as you have to pay for a taxi by yourself and public transportation is not really an option here. The hostel called the taxi for me and he sent me to the train station about an hour before the departure. I was early. I also managed to talk to the driver to set up the time for him to pick me up on the way back the next day. The train that I took was from PeruRail which is about $150 for a round trip. It is not cheap by any standard, but the cheapest option is to take a van and a bit of hiking (several hours), which I don't really want to do. Most of the seats in the train are in a pair of 4 with the table in the middle. I was alone so I will definitely have to join some groups of people on this journey. Luckily, they were the nicest people that I have ever met during my time of travel. They are the 3 siblings (I think) from Warsaw, Poland. We didn't talk much at the beginning, but because the train took 3 hours to get to Aguas Calientes, which is the town near Machu Picchu, we ended up talking to each other for the last hour of the journey. Having been travel alone for the past few days, having a good conversation with people who shared the same experience was such a great break from being alone.

On the trail near the train track to the Waterfall (Cataratas)

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 1 - Cusco

Before I start this post, I had to say that I didn't try to write the whole miniseries about this trip, but as I wrote about the story, there are more and more stories that I wanted to write down as a reminder for myself and share to other, and the post becomes really long for my typical post. So, I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.

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Even though this trip comes from the observation in South America as a starting point, I will not talk about my observation run, as this is my fourth time going to Magellan, and I already talked about it few times in previous posts.

Instead, I will start the story with my first flight from Chile to Peru. I had to stay in the airport from around 9pm to catch the flight at around 5am the next morning. That was 8 hours layover. It wasn't super exciting since everything close around midnight except Starbucks in the terminal. I tried to sleep in the airport, but couldn't really fall sleep as I was worried about my luggage. Unfortunately, this flight was delayed until like 6am, which made my flight landed in Lima, Peru at 8am which is just one hour before my next flight. I had never been to Lima before so I don't really know what to expect at the airport, how the custom works and where I should head too. Once I landed, I had about 45 mins to get to my next flight. I ran to the custom, ran inside the airport, and finally reached my flight in time with about 5 mins to spare. And that was just the beginning of the trip that I travel alone.

Plaza Mayor de Cusco with Cusco Cathedral in the background

Journey to the Total Solar Eclipse 2017

The planning for this trip is very different from any other trips as it was the first time that the focus of the trip is one particular event at a particular time and nothing else. The trip was formed rather quickly as I found one of my physics friend who is also interested in going to see the solar eclipse. We looked up the map and decided where in this solar eclipse path that we can potential go with rather cheap flight tickets and no driving involved. After few hours, we decided that we will fly to Atlanta and will take a bus to a nearby (4 hours drive) town, called Columbia, SC without knowing anything about the town or anyone there. I later learned once I got to the city that it is actually the capitol city of South Carolina. You would not have guess that if you did not visit the state museum there. 

We flew Spirit to Atlanta on Saturday afternoon before catching a late evening bus to Columbia. We had to wait for the bus in the middle of the night for an hour. I thought that the station should be indoor with restrooms and restaurants. I was completely wrong. We in fact had to wait on the sidewalk. The bus took about 4 hours to get to Columbia and 3 AM. I was tired (from traveling and probably jetlag from my previous trip). We managed to get to the hotel with a plan that we will visit the state museum the next day for the eclipse glasses. 

SC State Museum with the telescope dome at the top pointing to the sun

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