Here we go…

The continuing adventures of the Pea hunting trip to Chile…

We’ve spent the afternoon finalising our target selection, preparing our observing strategy, and taking calibrations. The sun has now set and we’re already pointing in the right direction for our first target. In a few minutes time we will start our observations. We begin with a standard star, which will be used to calibrate the spectra of our main targets. The we are on to our first Pea candidate.

The SDSS Peas that Carrie studied were green in the SDSS colour images because they were bright in the r-band, actually the red region of the visible spectrum. On this occasion we are looking for similar object that are a bit further away, so we expect them to be very bright in the i-band (further into the red) ar the z-band (on the border between red and the near infrared). Tonight we are observing the i-bright objects, and hopefully we will get through about a dozen of them. The weather looks good, so fingers crossed.

Anyway, better concentrate on the observing.