Observing updates – live from Kitt Peak, April 12/13, 2012

(0220 UT) All set up to start work. Worrying clouds have at least temporarily receded. While being checked out by a staff member to make sure I won’t break things, I’ve checked the telescope pointing on a couple of bright stars (Castor and Pollux, in fact) and am just waiting another few minutes for it to get dark enough to critically focus the CCD camera and TV acquisition system. Then off, for starters, to a couple of galaxies that SDSS data suggest might have very extended dust lanes beyond the optical disk.

(I’ll plan to update this over time).

And to all you cosmic partiers, happy Yuri’s Night!

(0345 UT) Got data in B and I filters on one pair, suggested particularly by JeanTate on the forum thread, but those images are pretty ugly because of stray charge from bright stars that will take some processing to fix. Now off to our best case for a spiral with extended dust and no sign of interaction to cause this.

(0507 UT) Looked at SDSS 103427.72+102506.2, still seeing evidence of dust lanes very far out in the galaxy disk. Now doing an edge-on system with dwarfish companion in front.

(0830 UT) Still working away between cloud patches. Now have data on SDSS 1002+1413, UGC 5528, NGC 3605/7. Working on NGC 4377. Reached the stage of night where Mahler seems appropriate to keep alert.

(1025 UT) Nice images of Mkn 238. Now taking a detour, Kazarian 199 for the AGN=companion Galaxy Zoo project. Data from the SARA 1m suggest [O III] clouds which might trace ionization cones, so I’m taking a closer look with the larger telescope. About 1.5 hours left in the night if I arrange the last couple of exposures with their filters in the right order.