The five best things that happened to me and Emily Cunningham during our 12 am – 6 am shift at the 0.9m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory last night:
5. Mastering the art of filling the dewar with liquid nitrogen.
4. Overcoming a myriad of technical issues, including the fact that the telescope would not move at 6 am.
3. Not falling asleep.
2. Managing to obtain several good images of Segue II, a candidate dwarf galaxy, for science!
1. Taking exposures of the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula in four different filters. We hope to combine these to make a beautiful picture when we get back to Haverford!
Better than all of these things: not finding scorpions or snakes in our beds!