Tag Archives: VATT

ⓜ A summary of my science…

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This entry is part 21 of 33 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… A couple of weeks ago (on April 2) I ran an article written for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. This article also dates from that time; it was written for an “astroblog” set up by some IYA committee or another. No idea where it actually went up, but it’s a nice summary of where I was, scientifically, back in 2009… I’m writing this from the control room of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) on Mt. Graham, Arizona. Observing Centaurs, the proto-comets whose orbits cross Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn, is our project for this run; it consists of five minutes of doing nothing while the camera takes an exposure of these small iceballs, followed by a brief flurry of activity when the next picture comes off our CCD camera… a faint smudge moving from image to image across a background of stars and distant galaxies. Behind me, Bill Romanishin from the University of Oklahoma … Continue reading →

Observing on the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT)

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We had five nights awarded us for this observing run and were able to observe for less than four hours. It was foggy/icy, snowy, and finally just cloudy. On our fourth night, we were told to “go home” in the morning as several feet of snow was expected and they were going to close the road to all traffic. Here are two pictures of our time up at the telescope. The left picture is a view similar to one below, except for the snow and the cloud that obscures the Large Binocular Telescope in the background. The right picture was taken on the roof showing Gary Gray (maintenance manager) sweeping snow off the dome. So much for adding our most recent observing experiences to the original blog! Note: Nancy Lebofsky recently posted a blog: Adventures in EPO—Tucson Festival of Books. Most of the people who visited the Vatican Observatory Foundation tables are from Tucson and southern Arizona. Unfortunately, many do … Continue reading →

Hunting for Saffordites East of Mt. Graham and the Vatican Telescope. pt. 2

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This entry is part of 2 in the series Hunting for Saffordites

In my previous post, I discussed tektites – a byproduct of asteroid impacts, and obsidian, which can sometimes look like tektites. Finally, to my trips to the location of the Saffordites. The area where I have hunted is east of Mt Graham and southeast of the city of Safford in southeast Arizona, several hours east of Tucson. It is a fairly flat area and the known area where Saffordites have been found covers many square miles, maybe tens or hundreds of square miles. Since these are many million-year-old weathered volcanic rocks, they may have been transported to their present location, so their source is unknown. As it turns out, this location is on my way to observing at the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope on 10,000-foot Mt. Graham, but that is another story. Above are three pictures taken just before we started looking for Saffordites. On the left is me with Twink Monrad, a closeup of snow on Mt. Graham, and a view of one … Continue reading →

Diary: Where does the money go? (Part I)

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This entry is part 9 of 58 in the series Diary

In a recent post, I put out a short beg for folks to actually subscribe at $10 a month (more if you want!) and keep this blog, and the Foundation, going. This has brought up, quite rightly, a question about where exactly this money goes. The first item, of course, is to pay for the cost of this blog itself. At the moment, that’s covered. But the bigger goal is to have surplus from this funding go to support the Vatican Observatory Foundation and its works. What is it that the Foundation does? If you want to know what the Vatican Observatory Foundation has been up to lately, click here for a pdf of our most recent newsletter. What about the details of our funding? Where does it come from, where does it go? That’s covered in our annual report, (click here). The numbers in the annual report are the accountant’s numbers, which is different from actual cash flow. For one … Continue reading →