Comments on: Space Studs

By: adventure south guide service

adventure south guide service — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:17:45 +0000

adventure south guide service…

…

By: moonflake

moonflake — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 14:00:33 +0000

$28,000 for a breakfast program does not sound like a bad idea. Anyone who’s ever observed at Sutherland in South Africa knows that bad food only makes the inhumane conditions worse. I mean, they deep fry the steak, boil the fries, and the dessert is sometimes so weird the japanese astronomers have been known to take photos of it. For me, that was worse than the cold, the altitude, and the isolation put together.

By: Slartibartfast

Slartibartfast — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 17:21:30 +0000

Hydrogen fluoride is for girly men! Wake up and smell the chlorine pentafluoride! If you can figure out what to put it in, that is.

By: Mark Martin

Mark Martin — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:54:49 +0000

“I feel like eating some raw meat and beating my chest”

Just coincidentally, King Kong does this a lot. But you know what? It’s a little known fact that Kong is… a professional astronomer. (His PhD thesis was in telescopic “banana” mounts, granted by Skull Island University.)

It turns out that’s why he climbed the Empire State Building; he was checking out the seeing conditions up there. If only he’d known that astronomy in New York is forbidden by a local ordinance. Thus, a squadron was dispatched to wave him off…

By: Harvi

Harvi — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:23:20 +0000

“Except that the truth is that most professional astronomers never need to get out of their swivel chairs these days.”

Gee, you are obviously not on my current observing run (13 hours a night, >10,000 ft, ~0 degrees C)! I just had to reset a 1.8 meter telescope by hand when it shut down in the middle of a long slew. That includes moving a derotator 180 degrees twice tonight when it really didn’t want to.

Oh, and I’m one of those whimpy women…

(though I did read this entry just before the telescope broke and there I was up there in the dome saying, “Come on, be a macho astronomer!”)

I feel like eating some raw meat and beating my chest, but I think I’ll just go to sleep… I hiked 18 miles this weekend through hot desert and now this 5 night marathon for my thesis.

By: Mark Martin

Mark Martin — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 03:29:59 +0000

Hi Jon,

I was at Lowell for several days in 2000, using the archives, when I went to Perkins as a side adventure. If I recall correctly, I think the lady’s name was Mellissa, from BU.

By: Jon Niehof

Jon Niehof — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 20:33:37 +0000

“I accompanied a lady to the Perkins telescope near Flagstaff a few years back”
Curious who it was, Mark. I know most of the people who have been The Official Observer/gradturkey/’scope wrangler for the last few years.

(More on-topic: there’s a bumper sticker in a corner of our TA office that says “Astronomers stay up all night.”)

By: Malte

Malte — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:52:45 +0000

Except that the truth is that most professional astronomers never need to get out of their swivel chairs these days.

Service observation, remote observing, space telescopes, data archives, virtual telescopes – and that’s not even counting all the astronomers who do cool stuff with computer models and even good old theory.

No, this particular macho turn on things is a biiig smokescreen, and of course the women astronomers already know this. If there’s macho posturing in astronomy (excuse me if I go serious all of a sudden) then it’s all about the big idea of understanding the mind of some deity, and escaping the confines of the body to train the brain on higher things.

I mean, Stephen Hawking hasn’t spend much time messing about with HF at 14000 feet, has he?

By: The Bad Astronomer

The Bad Astronomer — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 02:49:54 +0000

Ah, the Exorcist thing. I should post that here. Maybe someday; it’s long for a blog. I think I mailed a copy to Blatty, but I never heard back. Oh well.

Cindy, your memory is excellent. But this picture was when I was already getting a bit flabby.

By: aiabx

aiabx — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:20:52 +0000

The amateur astronomers of the world tend not to get so much altitude sickness, but make it up in exposure to freezing cold, alarming wildlife and drunken teenagers who want to see the “Rings of Uranus”.
-Andy B