Astronomy Blog

The Life of a Research Astronomer

I've been very remiss not to mention Rob Simpson's trip to the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Hawaii. Rob is an astronomy PhD student at Cardiff and has been using the HARP instrument on the JCMT to observe spectra from objects such as M74 as well as regions in Orion and Taurus. While he was there he did some great live blogging from the top of Mauna Kea giving a good impression of a night in the life of a professional astronomer.

One of the dangers of working at a professional optical observatory is altitude sickness. Unfortunately, on his third night of observing, Rob became unable to breathe and had to descend the mountain. He has a great post about his altitude sickness which was treated very quickly by the folks in the Hilo Medical Centre. Unable to return up the mountain, Rob is now recovering in San Francisco before returning home. Thanks for all the blogging Rob and get better soon.