Telescope at Kitt Peak

Dr. Moustakas, Megan, Kevin, and I have been up at the Mayall Telescope on Kitt Peak for the past two nights. We have had a fantastic Operating Assistant, Amy, here with us. The worst part about the time being here is that the weather has been terrible. Clouds, rain, ice, humidity, and wind have all kept us from observing. But that has given us time to see and learn about the telescope, how it is ran, and the dome it is kept in. We got some books and explored the building the telescope is in. Now we have just been coding and keeping up with the weather hoping for a change!

Week 5: Update

This week Dr. John Moustakas, Kevin, and Meghan prepared for our trip to Arizona. We were given access to the Desi Wikipedia page. This is to ensure that we have all the information needed to run the codes and to get the data that we will be getting while in Kitt Peak. 

We are going to Kitt Peak to observe in the telescope that will be completely gutted and renovated to hold DESI (the dark energy spectroscopy instrument). This will be to gain beginning information and data that we can use for my simulations, as well as Kevin's and Meghan's. the trip will be funded by Dr. Moustakas's NSF (National Science Foundation) grant. We will be leaving Friday into Tuesday, Observing every night we are there. The telescope Located at Kitt Peak is one of 22 operational telescopes. DESI will be conducted on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory starting in 2019 even though construction begins in 2017.

While we are there we hope to have clear skies, good weather, and a smoothe observation cycle. It will just be the four of us and I will be sure to keep this blog updated while I am there!

Week 4: Progress report

This week Dr. Moustakas and I have been working on the short paper discussing the theory behind our project and then the results of the gravitational lens detection. As I have been doing a literature search and review, Dr. Moustakas and the other collaborators on DESI have been cleaning up the codes. This is why we have not been able to get any more figures or run more simulations this semester.

We are hoping by the end of this week all of the codes we need will be up to date and we can run the simulation. Our goal is to use SDSS data and apply a redshift to the emission line galaxies, ELGs. Once that is applied we will then apply noise to the luminous red galaxy , LRG, spectra as well as the ELG spectra and then run those combined spectra through the code Red Monster to detect the gravitationally lensed ELG. This will hopefully be accomplished by next week.