Also, in non-work related news, yesterday was Constitution Day here in Puerto Rico. It’s an official holiday so I spent the day reading the new Harry Potter book. It was a relaxing way to spend a day!
My work is also going well, though I was at a bit of a standstill for about a week until this afternoon. I’ve finished looking through all of our data cubes for galaxies and have compiled a list of what I think are possibilities. My advisors now have to do the same. They split the work and one has finished, but I’m waiting for the second half. While I’m waiting, I’ve been working on another little project. I’ve been looking at the continuum sources (sources that emit light at all wavelengths) in our data. I made a list of the 25 or so brightest ones. Then I looked through our data divided by frequency to see if there’s any hydrogen emission or absorption near the continuum sources. If there is, that could help us understand more about the continuum sources (if it’s emission) or about stuff, like gas clouds, that might be between the continuum sources and us (if it’s absorption). I’ve completed the list of possible emission and absorption. It didn’t look too hopeful to me, but my advisor seems to think that the data I compiled may be worth something. So, now, if I have time, I can do the same thing for the smaller section of sky for which we also have data. The bad news about this is that the work is tedious and not particularly interesting. However, if my advisor things it’s worth doing, it probably is and it would be cool if some new information came out of my search.
The good news, however, is that I now have something else to keep me busy hopefully until my second advisor finishes looking through his half of the data cubes. This afternoon both my advisors surprised me by coming into my office to teach me how to use the program Miriad to get spectral data from the galaxies on our compiled list. The program’s not too complicated. I’m just telling it where my object is in our data cubes, how large of a range of velocities it should us to calculate the spectral data, how to calculate the noise in the image. Then it plots the flux against the velocity, measures the velocity, the velocity width, and the flux across the velocity range I specify (the galaxy). It also finds a better position for the object than the one I give it. In addition it tells us things like how much noise is in the data and gives us various ways to measure the flux. For now, I’m just making the plots and saving the output information. When I finish with that, or at least have a good start, my advisors are going to teach me how to actually analyze all that information. It’s looking like we have some good stuff. We may have about 30 galaxies!!
Let’s see, what else has happened? Each weekend for the first couple weeks I was here, we went on a trip somewhere. The first weekend we visited an island called Vieques off the east coast. The highlights of that trip were seeing wild horses on the beach and going to a bioluminescent bay. The bay was incredible. We went out in kayaks. At first we didn’t see anything and then we started to see light when we made a stroke with our paddles. It was as if our paddles were on fire with some magical white flames. It was so cool. Then the water in our kayaks started to glow if we moved around in it. They let us get out of the boats and swim around in the water. That was really neat. Our whole bodies looked like they were glowing.
Me in front of a cool cafe in Vieques.
Another weekend trip took us to a small town that used to be a U.S. Navy base, but in now just home to a small airport and the main U.S. Coast Guard station. Most of the group was away that weekend, so there were only four of us on the weekend trip. A retired observatory worker lives there and he acted as our tour guide all weekend. We rented bikes and rode around the coast, doing some of the hardest off-rode riding I’ve ever done. We went down this narrow, steep, root-covered trail to get down to the coastline. It was quite the bumpy ride. I was amazed at how much the mountain bike tires could take as long as I had a bit of speed.
Me on the trusty mountain bike.
Once down at the coast, we hit some thick patches of sand that were a bit of an adventure to get through. Often these encounters resulted in us pushing rather than riding the bikes through to solid ground. We rode to a great, calm snorkeling spot and poked around there for some time. It was my first time snorkeling. It was pretty cool. A neat thing about PR is that in a lot of places, the reefs come right up to the shore. You don’t have to go out very far at all to see some neat fish and coral.
Saturday night was the beginning fiesta for San Juan, el bautista (San John the Baptist), the patron saint of PR. Our guide’s next-door neighbor agreed to take us to the celebrations. We went with her and her boyfriend to a crowded beach to wait for midnight. At midnight, or as close as we could figure with our five watches marking different times, we walked into the ocean where we proceeded to fall backwards into the water 3 times. According to the Puerto Ricans this is tradition and is supposed to bring good luck. No one seemed to know exactly why, but I assume the falling into the water is supposed to be a reenactment of baptism. Probably reaffirming your faith in this way each year is supposed to make your life better. As with so many originally religious traditions, this one has been absorbed by the culture at large and the night is now just an excuse to have a big beach party with all your friends and do something that now seems rather silly because it’s tradition.
The full beach on Sunday, the day of Saint John the baptist.
We spent the next few weekends here at the observatory or on day trips. We visited El Yunque, a rainforest on the island. There are biology students there also doing an REU. We got to meet them and see their research station and parts of the woods that are off limits to the public. We enjoyed a lovely afternoon in and around small pools above a small waterfall.
The whole group in front of the waterfall in El Yunque park.
Me with a huge plant in the rain forest.
My two roommates, Amanda and Cat, and I in a tower overlooking the hills of El Yunque's cloud forest.
Another weekend, the students from El Yunque visited us at the observatory. We all went to the Camuy caves, near Arecibo. The caves house the world’s third largest underground river. Having visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and various other small caves near Berea, the Camuy caves weren’t that impressive to me. We basically just visited a large cavern hall and a bat cave. The neatest parts were seeing where the river used to run through the cave we visited and where it now runs about 100 feet below the cave, drinking from the natural spring, seeing the huge sinkholes that have opened the cave up to the ground above, and then realizing that we could fit two them inside our telescope!!
Diana filling her water bottle from the natural spring.
Me, Camille, Diana, and Amanda in the cave park sitting on a sculpture of a coqui, a tree frog that fills the night with sound.
Matt grilling hot dogs for lunch at the observatory during out cookout with the biology students.
Another highlight of their visit was that I finally got a real tour of the observatory. Our REU coordinator took the biology students on a tour and I tagged along. I got to hear the explanations of the various devices in the control room for the first time. We also went under the dish, which we can do whenever we want since they’re not using the telescope this summer. Still, it was a unique experience because, on this particular day, the painters weren’t working on the platform suspended above the dish. This meant that we could walk under the hole in the middle of the dish. Usually we can’t go down there because something could fall on us from above and kill us from the velocity it would gain in the descent. We went to the very center of the dish and could look up at the platform and Gregorian dome above. We also got to climb up some stairs into the dish itself. It was so cool to stand in the middle of the 1000-ft in diameter dish. It really gave a different perspective on its hugeness. We could see up into the Gregorian dome and see the secondary and tertiary mirrors. Since they’re painting up there, we haven’t been able to take the usual REU student tour up there. That’s our big disappointment of the summer, so being able to see inside, even from 450 feet below, was a big deal.
Me in the dish with the Gregorian dome above me.
Me standing inside the radio telescope's primary reflecting surface (the dish).
Another highlight of the past weeks was the 4th of July. Since Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, it’s in the delightful position of celebrating double the number of holidays; they celebrate all the American holidays as well as the traditional Puerto Rican ones. We went back to the old navy base town for the 4th of July. Since the U.S. Coast Guard has their main station there, they put on a fireworks show for the town. We spent the day at a tiny, but lovely beach. It was literally down a cliff from our guide’s friend’s house. The entry into the water was a bit rocky and the waves were a bit strong, but we had fun splashing around and jumping in the waves.
A view of the shoreline from our guide's friend's house.
The small group that went to the beach.
In the evening, we joined the party in our guide’s neighborhood. We enjoyed the fireworks from the roof, barbequed our dinner and tasted the delicious Puerto Rican food our hosts made. We also had a bit of a dance party in the backyard, making up ridiculous dances about everyday activities and sharing and dancing them all in a circle. Some of the favorites were “climbing the banana tree and eating a banana,” “surfing,” “checking the mail,” and “blowing a bubble with bubble gum.” It was a hilarious evening full of ridiculousness!
So, things are going well. The other students are going to start leaving this coming week, which is going to be sad. We all have to be here 10 weeks but we arrived at different times. I’ll be one of the last to leave. I’m enjoying myself, but I’ll be excited to get home. I’ve been gone for a long time.
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