Zooniverse at Mauna Kea, Day 5: The Wind Strikes Back

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

After few good days of observations the wind has returned to ruin our fun. The CSO telescope is supposed to be closed when the wind is above 35mph. Curiously the telescope itself doesn’t have its own anemometer, so we have to rely on readings from the other telescopes on the mountain to decide if it is safe to open the telescope building.

Feeling this entire situation was quite unsatisfactory, I decided to build my own anemometer using a clipboard with a ruler and Becky’s boot, giving you the answer to Chris’s question from earlier tonight:

Shout out to Mrs Beck’s AP Physics for me understanding this

Using the above chart we tried to workout the wind speed. We had to do a bit of fudging. We decided the boot was a perfect cylinder (drag coefficient 0.82), and that it weighed about 300g. We also decided not to take into account lower air pressure. Finally when Sandor and I calculated it independently, we got wildly different results, so it was a futile exercise in the end. (Also CSO buy an anemometer)

Sandor doing the hard work!

Since then, we’ve been playing chicken with the wind. Sometimes having to close the dome. Sometimes thinking we can be open, only to have the telescope struggle to stay on target. Sometimes we hear Meg Schwamb‘s wind tracker say “Warning High Winds”.  The conditions made us miss out on a second night of observing Comet Lovejoy, and everyone seemed pretty down for most of the night.

Around 1 or 2am the wind finally let up and we were able to start observing, so the night wasn’t a complete loss. Hopefully the weather tomorrow is better.

A Few Notes:

• It’s really hard to get enough sleep. Sleeping at altitude is hard anyway, and adding in trying to sleep during the day gives us all points for degree of difficulty. Everyone has lovely bags around their eyes.
• This is the last day Chris is with us. We’ll be all alone tomorrow night.
• Sandor is succumbing to the static curse now too.
• @GeertHub on Twitter wanted to me to post a screen shot of the telescope software:
• All the Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is helping us touch the sky.