happy turkey day, and signing off 11.25.04
another announcement 11.21.04
an announcement 11.21.04
chile at night 11.13.04
mira! 11.11.04
when insomnia attacks 11.07.04
antofagasta again 11.06.04
valle de la luna 11.03.04
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happy turkey day, and signing off 11.25.04 03:04 hello all, a most pleasant dia de accion de gracias to you all. that's not what they call thanksgiving here, by the way, that's just me having a random fit of spanish in my sleep deprived delirium. last night a couple of us stayed up all night (later than a club night even) doing a semester's worth of work, and then spent today doing the rest of that semester's work instead of taking naps. so...yeah. why am i not in bed? funny you should ask. i'm waiting on my laundry to finish washing, actually, so i can put it in the dryer and wake up with a nice clean and dry load of t-shirts to take south with me. yes, south. as if i wasn't far enough south already. seven of us are flying out of la serena at noon tomorrow for temuco, where we'll catch a bus and head to pucon. i'm sure there are accents somewhere in there, but frankly, i'm too lazy to format them in. pucon is a town down south in the lake district with easy access to several national parks and el volcan villarica, one of the most active in chile, which if the weather's nice we'll climb to the peak of. woo! so in other news, this is likely to be my last post before i come home. leaving for the south tomorrow, coming back monday, exams on tuesday, goodbyes on tuesday night, leaving for argentina wednesday, coming back to north carolina a week and a half after that...ayy. where did all the time go? i'll certainly be sad to leave chile, i've had a wonderful time. but i can think of at least a few people i'm looking forward to seeing soon after december 12th when i pull up at the gate in terminal a at rdu. so my promises of pictures from isla damas sort of came true; i stole some from adam's camera to keep you people occupied until i come home. and also i threw in some pictures from cerro tololo, and posted two more astronomy images. enjoy. i think my laundry just buzzed, so i'll be on my way to bed. much love to you all, and see you soon. top |
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another announcement 11.21.04 12:17 oh yeah i forgot. astronomy announcments! the swift satellite, the one that our prompt telescope is going to be getting its gamma ray burst locations from, has finally launched, entirely successfully at that. it'll finish testing in maybe a month, and then start sending data to ground-based observing units like good 'ol prompt. which is now more than a hole in the ground, fortunately--one of the dome structures is pretty much done, and all the telescopes have arrived, though last i heard we were still waiting on the mounts. so maybe it'll be partially up by the time swift's ready for it. *crosses fingers* and another announcment is that we FINALLY got to go to soar again, though it's still not observing anything scientific. we hung around with the engineers and watched them tweak the optics. which was kind of neat, i guess, to just hang out. sunset was nice too, as always. that was our last trip up to either cerro pachon or cerro tololo, a sad goodbye as it's utterly fantastic up there, the view at least. there was new snow overnight on the higher peaks the last time we stayed up on cerro tololo, too, which was neat to wake up to. or would've been, had we gone to sleep properly. to notice in the morning at least. oh and a word on pictures. adam has a bunch, don't know if they're up yet, but i finally got around to linking his site, and i've got some but they're of course not yet developed and the usual delays. but look for them before i head out to argentina in a couple weeks. top |
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an announcement 11.21.04 11:56 the announcement is that chile is officially the most amazing place in the world. like i hadn't already decided that, but eh, you know (cachai, if i wanted to be properly chilean). yesterday we went to reserva nacional pinguino de humbolt, a set of really cool islands where there are PENGUINS! and seals and gigantic diving birds and lots of likewise cool stuff. the crazy thing about this place is that it's actually north of here. something about ocean currents makes it possible for the seals and penguins to hang out there. i have to say that chile is probably the only place in the world where you can see penguins, seals, llama relatives, cacti, and palm trees all in the same day. it was quite amazing. i got quite sunburned, despite the fact that it was quite overcast all day and quite drizzly in the morning. but it was well worth it. we took a boat out to the island with the seals and penguins, and hung out around the edges of the island, managing to actually get really close. seals smell awful, by the way, but they're such neat animals. oh yeah, and i forgot the dolphins, we saw dolphins too. those are less exotic (i see some out at carolina beach sometimes), but they were definitely showing off for us--two of them jumped a couple times, i swear, it was like something out of a movie. and then the whole pod of them headed towards our boat, like they were attacking us or something. very cool. and then we wandered around on a neat beach on a different island, that was covered with flowers (which'll all be gone soon, so we had excellent timing), and came back to the fishing village from which we launched for a large lunch. mmm seafood from a fishing village. nothing quite beats it that fresh. we tried a shellfish called "loco," in empanada form, which was quite tasty and also satisfying to eat something called an empanada de loco (for those lacking in spanish, that's basically a pastry of crazy). and then we headed out, stopping by a neat beach on the way home, playa de conchitas (little shell beach), which had no sand, only shells. layers and layers and layers of shells. very neat. and in other news from la serena, i'm currently on my last sunday i'll spend here. was supposed to spend it in pisco elqui, but chileans are slack about organizing things and the people we were supposed to go with never called us back, and our own lazyness and lack of sleep won out over trying to get there ourselves. ah well, i've been near there before at least, when i went up to vicuña, and we've been a million other gorgeous places in chile so i can't complain too much. will do me good to stay home, too, because we've got a lot of work to do (for the first time this semester, i know, but still...several papers, projects, problem sets) in not a lot of time. leaving for the south on thursday, need to get it all done before then. *sigh* top |
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chile at night 11.13.04 20:05 this is a strange update, though both do fit the title. i just put together a page with a few astronomical images i've taken and edited, and another page full of pictures from our group going out. hope you enjoy. things are sort of winding down here in la serena; we've got a couple more weeks left before we all head out to argentina and then back home, and one of those weekends i'm spending down south in the lake district. that trip will be mighty exciting, i'm looking forward to doing such things as backpacking (though only for a night or two, it looks like) and climbing an active volcano. yes. an ACTIVE VOLCANO. rahh! top |
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mira! 11.11.04 02:33 i'm going to bed after a couple days' battles with insomnia, and crossing my fingers for more success tonight. but before i do, i have to share, because i've started processing my images from last friday's observing run and they're really cool and i can't contain my excitement until i have enough of them to make a page to link to under pictures, so anyhow, check this out. i took it i took it i took it! yay! it's a false color image, but it's still pretty. and the result of a lot of images added together and subtracted and manipulated and a lot of work, but most of all it's pretty. and it's...some galaxy, i don't know if it has a name or if it's just ngc1365. anyhow. off to bed i go. top |
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when insomnia attacks 11.07.04 02:26 ladies and gentlemen, i'd like to announce that i've inadvertently completely reversed my sleep schedule, and have very little chance of finding something more productive to do with the ensuing sunday night insomnia than update this site. alas. but i'd also like to announce that i've FINALLY finished sorting through and posting all the pictures i've developed, so this will in all likelihood be my last update for a while. wait, scratch that, i'm hoping to get some astronomy pictures up here, after i process them, and assuming they turn out looking good. bryon and gerald and i spent the night on cerro tololo friday getting some awesome images with our 14'' scope (unfortunately soar's not doing anything exciting still, and prompt is a hole, well, six holes, in the ground). this, as you may've guessed, is part of why my sleep schedule's messed up. the other parts are just sillyness, like a long night up hanging out talking, and a night out at sundance, the consensus favorite club. it's been a good weekend though, or, rather, the nights have been...couldn't tell you about the days. yep, so there are two of the sunrises i mentioned having seen, the one friday morning, from staying up talking, and the one saturday morning on the mountain. now that sunrise, that goes up high on the list of prettiest sunrises i've ever seen, if it's not the best. granted, when you're talking about sunrises i've seen, it's a short list, especially if you narrow it to ones i've actually gone out and observed instead of just trying to hide under the covers or duct tape sheets to the windows to avoid seeing. but the point still stands that this was an incredible sunrise. i have pictures. they'll likely not appear for a few weeks still. the remaining sunrise, in case you were curious, is from november 1st...chileans celebrate halloween too. sundance was packed. so anyhow, the new pictures that are up are from santiago and valparaíso, where clara and i went...err...a couple weeks ago, don't remember exactly when. clara has second cousins and great uncles and all manner of obscure relatives there that she'd never met but who invited her and a friend to come visit, so we went down to see them. i was worried that might be awkward, but they were all great, and hey, clara'd never met them either, so i didn't feel particularly out of place. it was amazing to get a chance to see santiago with the locals. we spent a couple days there just wandering around the city. we went to a lot of neat buildings, the metropolitan cathedral and palacia de la moneda among them, and checked out one museum while we were at it. wasn't anything particular to santiago; it was museo interactivo mirador, which is like the museum of life and science in spanish. lots and lots of fun though, to play with everything and act like a kid and learn basic science in spanish. i think i have a picture of clara playing in the bubbles up. oh no! i don't! i'll have to go back and fix that. but yeah, it was a blast. we rode the subway and the micros (buses) everywhere, which was a great experience. the micros in santiago are... interesting. people get on and sell ice cream, they get on and beg for money, give political speeches, and my favorite, rap. two kids about 15 years old got on and rapped for us. it was quite amusing. hmm what else did we do...oh yes, the planetarium. so you know it was inevitable, that i'd go to one if i found one...and the one in santiago is essentially the only one in the country. and i know i'm biased, but the good 'ol mpsc puts it to shame. they actually use an identical projector to the one at the mpsc, but our show programming is so much better. anyhow i won't go on at great length; suffice it to say that it was neat to talk to the guy running the shows there, and he was excited to talk to someone enthusiastic about the gory details of their projectors and control system. and he complimented my spanish! i have a weak spot for people who compliment my spanish, since i usually spend so much time apologizing for it. so that about covers santiago, except for the cerros, but there are pictures of those up, so there's no point. on monday we went to valparaíso, with noa, and took a quick harbor tour and spent the rest of the day wandering around the town, riding the ascensores (elevators) that go up some of the bigger hills, and wishing we lived in some of the really neat houses there. we tried to see pablo neruda's house, but just our luck, it was closed. alas. we did see it at least, from the outside and through a gate. and then noa caught a bus back to santiago, and we went to see "el espanta tiburones" ("a shark's tale") until it was time to catch ours back to la serena. it's a good movie, probably better when not dubbed over in spanish, but eh, we do what we can. and...yep, i think that about does it for this update. i have to wonder if anyone's still reading. sorry i'm so long winded. top |
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antofagasta again 11.06.04 17:59 more pictures are up. this time they're mostly from antofagasta and places nearby, with the one exception being a lingering picture from san pedro. and...yeah, don't have much to say about them. i think that's mostly because i'm tired. i've seen two consecutive sunrises, and three in the past week. fun stuff. so i think i'm going to go take a nap. top |
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valle de la luna 11.03.04 23:44 first round from my latest roll of film. i didn't actually take that many pictures of valle de la luna, considering how amazing it was, but that's because we biked out there and my focus was primarily on not dying instead of taking pictures. it was one of the most insane things i've ever done in my life. all day, more than twenty kilometers, through the desert, up hills, at an elevation of about 2500m...wow. and i got the worst sunburn of my life. i'm actually sort of still peeling from it. but, wow. incredible. so valle de la luna is in english valley of the moon, and it's just an area of incredible desert landforms. there are dunes, canyons, weird lumpy things that i can't come up with a good name for, and it really does feel like you're on the moon sometimes. we had a guide, though...rocko, a stray dog we picked up on the edge of town. he just started following us, and we expected him to turn back, but he never did. stayed with us the whole time. so, of course, we named him, and started to think he was pretty cool. he went crawling all through the salt caves with us, and up over the hills we climbed when we stopped for lunch, and kept up the whole time. as soon as we got back to the edge of town though, we lost him. he just disappeared... guess he was just looking for a day's adventure. so that's more or less valle de la luna, and san pedro too. there's one random picture of the church there, not quite sure where i'll put it. eh, you'll soon find out. and so since this has become a blog of sorts, let me at least mention current events...RAHHHR! ok i've mentioned current events. let us hope that we can do something to make this a better four years than the last. top |
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