Cloudy and clostrophobic, but content

The amount of ground I covered getting here will soon be balanced by the amount of ground I cover each day.  That is to say, once you get to the telescope, there's no reason even to leave the building.  The commute to work involves two flights of stairs, and a short hallways.

I spent the last couple of days preparing my observations, and then learning how to observe with the IRAM 30m telescope.  Up to the last minute, we were deciding on a few crucial details of the observations.

One important piece of information for your observations is known as an "off-position", which is a position in the sky that you think will have very little (preferably none) light compared to your target source (at whatever wavelength you care about).  This way, whatever emission you do get from the off-position, you can assume is coming from the fluctuating atmosphere, and therefore correct your observations. Sometimes you just have to take a shot in the dark, or make an educated guess based on previous observations.

The other last-minute decision had to do with what's called "spectral resolution" of the observations.  You have a choice of how much detail you want to see, in exchange for the breadth of information you receive. Ideally you'd get both, but you can't have your cake and eat it too (an aside: they do feed us very well here, and that means multiple desserts every day).  The receivers needed to be precisely tuned to the specific wavelength(s) of interest, and if we tuned with very fine precision, we would lose some efficiency.

Fortunately, this is a very conducive work environment, with limited distractions, so I was mostly able to focus on the task at hand.  But, I occasionally caught myself peering out the windows at the changing weather conditions, and the occasional skier passing by.  And then I realized, I hadn't been outside in more than a day.  Some part of me thought, "Cool, maybe you should take the challenge, stay inside for a week straight, just to see what it's like."

It's totally feasible here, because we have accommodations, a kitchen (and wonderfully talented cooks), recreation facilities, and (of course) work, all in the same building, which is even connected to the telescope by a below ground passage. But, knowing that I'm atop a mountain at about 10000 feet elevation, overlooking the southern Spain Sierra Nevadas (even though we've been stuck in a cloud since I arrived), I just can't give into a silly challenge to stay inside the whole week.  I have to explore, I miss the feeling of sun and snow and wind on my cheeks.  So, at least I ventured outside for these photos...

At first it was so cloudy that I could hardly see the telescope.

The telescope sometimes appears to be peering towards the skiers as they come off the chair lift.

An older, smaller telescope is on the next peak.

Finally the clouds parted for a beautiful sunrise over the ski area below, and signalling the beginning of fantastic conditions for my observations.