A last trip to the telescopes

Last week was spent on one last observing trip to the telescopes. First up was a few days at Narrabri observing with ATCA. I drove up with Vik in one of the work Priuses. I'm not the exactly the biggest fan of the hybrids but they're ok, naturally I'd prefer the usual V6 Commodore which has plenty of grunt. However the box of batteries has enough power to overtake the B-doubles and made it all the way on one tank.

Using ATCA we were observing at millimetre wavelengths over a long baseline. I'm more a of a low-frequency single-dish kinda guy so this was new territory for me. At these frequencies we actually had to worry about the seeing and pointing errors, it's practically optical! Also we were using the brand new CABB system which replaced the old correlator that I was used to. Surprisingly the set-up wasn't too difficult and (with a lot of help from the locals) the observations went smoothly despite the occasional wind-stow.

After I'd said goodbye to ATCA I drove off down to Parkes where Ramesh and Jonathon had already started our PPTA observations. I love that drive, there's little traffic, the Warrumbungles are beautiful and there's plenty of long straight bits to overtake on. I did have a near miss when a large section of angle-iron fell off the back of a truck but otherwise it was a relaxing drive.

I arrived at Parkes just in time for the wind to drop and observations restart. They went pretty smoothly and I took the opportunity between scans to turn on the floodlights and take some photos. I also visited the visitor centre several times to stock up on Parkes related merchandise :-). Marta and Maura were there and we had fun recounting Parkes stories in the evenings.

We also had a PULSE@Parkes run but this was from VSSEC so Rob, George and Jono (as in Jonathan not Jonathon) had gone down to Melbourne to cover it. On this run we had the students tweeting what they were doing. We had several astronomers following and even had a bit of press interest. It seemed to go very well and the kids were very enthusiastic.

It was an uneventful drive back but I stopped to take a photo of an old analogue railway signal sat all on its own by the side of the road. I always look out for it between Bathurst and Orange.

I was a bit sad leaving Parkes for the last time before I move to Germany. But I will be back before too long, counting the minutes until shift change! Still it won't quite be the same.

The Parkes open day

I spent my second weekend in a row at Parkes, this time it was the Parkes open day. Given all the visitors, helicopters and media broadcasting the RFI environment was bound to be terrible but George managed to persuade Vik and me that it was worth trying to get some observations for one of our projects.

As we gathered for the briefing on the Saturday morning there were already people queuing to get in. Some had come from Victoria and Queensland. It wasn't long before the line for the telescope tours was stretching around the telescope and was 3 hours long. Despite that everyone seemed to be very cheerful and enjoyed the tours. We were in the control room, one of the last stops on the tour and we became expert in explaining what we were observing in 60 seconds or less! George, Vik and I took turns talking to the relentless tours, doing the observations and checking e-mail.

There were stands from local groups, science outreach people from further afield, shows in the 3D theatre, walks around the grounds, science talks in the marquee and even a bouncy castle!

I gave a live interview on ABC radio in the morning. I was surprised that it lasted 5 mins or more rather than the usual sound-bite. Later a punter from Dubbo told me that he'd heard this fella on the radio talking about pulsars - fame at last! There was a lot of media interest with all the major TV stations sending at least one crew. The ABC arrived in their helicopter.

By the end of the first day we were all knackered. There was a BBQ and bonfires at the woolshed for the volunteers. We stayed late drinking beer (purely medicinal, to sooth our sore throats), telling tall stories and jokes.

The next day I had a talk to give at the main marquee and it was nearly packed. There were lots of good questions and interest and another visitor had heard my radio interview. It was great to meet so many people who are genuinely interesting in what we do.

Later on I took a helicopter ride around the telescope. It was a tiny thing with bubble like windows, you could feel every tweak of the controls and gust of wind. It was great to see the telescope from a different angle. It looked much more steeply curved than it does from the ground. I took a few photos and even some video. It was a great trip and has got me thinking about flying lessons again.

We drove through the night on Sunday to get back to Sydney and I decided that Monday morning just wasn't going to happen. It was a long, exhausting but fun weekend. More than 6,500 people visited and more than 3,000 of those took the tour through the telescope. And we may even get some data out of it!