I must report the most amazing experience I've just had in a visit to Palomar. I don't want this to be gloating, but an expression of amazement and even gratitude. Working on optical followup of an ultraviolet project using the GALEX satellite, and thanks to a collaborator at Caltech, we got an allocation of four nights at the 200-inch telescope, using the Large-Format Camera. This is an array of six large CCDs at the prime focus, covering an area about 0.4 degrees across in each shot. I was pretty jazzed about this, being fond of using new observatories and mindful of the whole historical mystique of this mountain. My only previous visit was as a tourist maybe 25 years ago.

My first day on the mountain, the local folks were great about letting me in to the other domes to get pictures of the other telescopes (18, 48, and 60-inch). It may have helped that at least one already knew about some of my web stuff including the telescope gallery. Palomar will get promoted from "tourist photos" to "used facilities" shortly.

I did get notice, a few days before leaving home, that a hardware problem had stuck the dome rotation in one position until repairs could be completed, just before or during our observing run. This meant you could look at whatever you liked, as long as it was close to azimuth 54 degrees sometime during the night. On the first night, my collaborator was not too interested in chasing random objects through the dome slit (since our satellite fields were all near the equator and distinctly never visible at this dome position). The site manager phoned in a message saying to have fun and look at whatever I can that seems useful. Whee! Let me spell this out. I'm sitting at the TWO-HUNDRED INCH TELESCOPE, which carries the fingerprints of Hubble, Baade, Sandage and Schmidt, and I'm supposed to have fun with it observing whatever I can find out the dome slit!

Targets with science value (of a kind that I'm competent to think up on short notice) would be good, but I'm a galaxy type and there's lots of Milky Way at that azimuth this time of year. There were some other projects I could contribute to late in the night, so I could make good scientific as well as esthetic use of the time. But otherwise, I sure have no objection to taking art shots.

And it happened again the following night, after a weld breaks during repairs, so I get a second night of the same kind. That night was capped off as three of us watched Discovery and ISS pass to the south only a few hours after undocking. The image harvest of these two nights included M57, NGC 6888 (the Crescent Nebula, a big stellar-wind bubble), nearby galaxies NGC 891 and NGC 7331, Stephan's Quintet, NGC 1275 (also known as Perseus A, a bizarre active galaxy in a cluster), the powerful radio galaxy Cygnus A, NGC 206 (the brightest association of young stars in the Andromeda Galaxy), and some alphabet-soup radio galaxies at highish redshift.

Getting some of these to look good from a 6-CCD array will take a while. In the meantime, here's a link to a single one-minute raw green exposure of the Ring (snipped out from a small part of one chip). Nicer versions will be along someday.

And the rest of the run? The dome has been repaired and now turns, but we've been under a thunderstorm this afternoon. Maybe it will dissipate after sunset...

Awesome, ngc!!

Not many people have a 200-incher in their backyard.

The only way you could top it would be if you had spotted an incoming delegation from Niburu... :wink:

ngc that is awesome. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's jealous (in a good way) of your observing run. Will we be seeing any pictures from the runs?

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

DAGNAPPIT!

When that happens, you call me. I can give you a suggestion or two... :P

But very cool. You post those images someplace when you process them.

(bolding added)

Is ANYONE here not jealous? Getting to play with that telescope? (grumble, hrmpph, grrr).

Fantastic!

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The meek will inherit the earth ... the rest of us will go to the stars.

very cool, ngc3314, but you could have checked out Nemausa--you could have watched it move. About 10 arcsec per hour, I thinkI thought I knew all the acronyms...

I think he meant Dagnabit! I concur ... I got to use the 100 in and the 120 in but only got to see the 200 in from the visitor's gallery.

He did, but since this is a child friendly board, he used the less offensive version. :wink:

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

That dome orientation didn't point anywhere close to the ecliptic - else I would have done some shots of Planet Not-Yet-Officially-Named, currently near the celestial equator as well.

We did get last night on the main program, and tonight would just about finish that off. I brought along coordinates for 2003 UB0313 just in case...

Dagnabbit, it's dagnabbit not dagnappit or dagnabit. :P

I tried to find an audio clip of Walter Brennan's version, but could not...dagnabbit!

Nice to see so much lemonade come from the lemon situation, ngc3314. We look forward to you sharing some of it soon, once you stir-in all the sugar. :wink:

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Umm, ahhh -

What is dagnabbit, the puzzled non-native speaker is asking (if the solution contravenes the rules on foul language employed on this board - I will tolerate a PM containing the translation for this one time

Looking forward to those pretty pictures of yours sooo much, ngc!!! 8)

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

It is a call to the god "Dag" to come in and remove an ugly situation by nabbing it. Ok, I made this up but it almost fits. :P

If you ever heard Walter Brennan say it, you'd always feel comfortable using it yourself. I'm glad to see the BA use it eloquently.

It is a little like your..."Acht to leva un Hiemla" (horrible spelling, sorry), yet it has no reference to heaven. "Dagnabbit" is simply an exclamation without meaning, I think.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.