Work Continues

A week or so ago, I mentioned setting up a weather monitor at the site (click here to view its output).  This is a photo of the station itself.  
Several days ago, the major shipment which I had been alluding to arrived in San Pedro.  It contained the MBAC receiver and the associated electronics to make it work.  Here is the shipment itself on the back of the truck stopped at ALMA while the driver took a quick medical exam.  The drive up the mountain took several hours, between the medical clearances and the fact that the truck couldn't go very fast up the steep slope.  

Its worth noting that, in general, trucks have a terrible time with the mountains here.  On the Paso Jama road, which leads from San Pedro to Argentina, we have observed the same truck broken down at the side of the road for two or three days.  In another instance, a truck trailer was parked in the middle of the road, sans truck, for the entire weekend.  
Here is Dan working on some soldering in the mid-evening a few nights ago.  Note the computer giving the weather station readout.  We've typically been on the mountain from around 10:30 until about 7.  

Update: At around 11PM tonight, Lyman Page (Princeton), the principle investigator of ACT, arrived in San Pedro.  

Waiting, and ALMA

As I may have mentioned previously, ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) is a billion-dollar astronomy project taking place just a few miles from ACT.  For the past several days now, we have been waiting for a shipment, carrying MBAC, to arrive here in San Pedro.  In the meantime, we have been tidying up around the site, installing the weather monitor, etc.  

When the shipment finally arrives, we will have to escort it up the so-called "ALMA road" (our own road is too rough for a large truck).  This process involves navigating the behemoth ALMA safety scheme, including providing advance notification of our use of the road, having the truck drivers undergo a brief physical and radio to "la seguridad" every 10km.  

Lots of Salt

Since Dan and Danica arrived last week, we have worked on a number of odds and ends up at the site (we are waiting for MBAC, the telescope's "camera" to arrive in a few days). Reed and I have continued to paint the inside of the telescope (with the paint continuing to not dry). We've also tried to fix a weather monitoring system we have and have worked on bringing the cryogenic compressors into operation.

We went out to diner last night at the so-called "meat place", known for its enormous skillet of meat, served at the table. There was also Lomo "a lo pobre" (meat of some sort with egg on top) and a very green mint liqueur for dessert.

We took today off and went to two popular sites in the area. In the morning we drove to the "Los Flamencos" reserve, via the town of Toconao. In the evening, we revisited the Valle de la Luna, which was found to be much more impressive at sunset.

Tomorrow, we are going to practice taking the ALMA road up to the site in preparation for escorting the MBAC delivery later in the week.

Here are some photos from today:

Here, Danica and Dan gaze at nearby Flamingos from an observation deck in the "Los Flamencos" reserve.  Note all of the white stuff, it is salt.  
An Andean Flamingo taking flight with the Altiplano and its volcanic peaks in the background.  
Part of the village of Toconao, about 40km south of San Pedro and on the road to the Salar and Flamingo reserve.  The towns copious water supply flows through the pit in the foreground.  
In the evening now, this is me atop the so-called "Great Dune" in the Valle de la Luna.  I wouldn't really call it a dune, since it is rather rocky.

The Great Dune itself.  After climbing it for the sunset, we picked up a pair of college-student bicyclists in the foreground parking lot and drove them back to San Pedro.  

Valle de la Luna (Second Day Off)

Dan and Danica should be arriving at around eleven tonight.  In the meantime, Reed and I went on an epic, 19.5 mi round-trip bike ride to and through the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). The area is supposed to have lunar character.  To me, it looked like a long valley with a lot of salt. Nonetheless, it was a very striking, interesting place.  

This is a sand dune that we encountered at the end of our ride.  What was particularly striking about the place was, despite its status as a tourist destination, the total lack of people.  Here's Reed studying the map on a completely deserted stretch of road.  We were in the actual park for about 90 minutes, and only saw two cars.  

You can see a the route we took on Google Maps (its the blue line, yesterday's ride is the red line) by clicking here.

Day Off

Dr. Devlin left early this morning to return to the United States.  Until Dan and Danica (graduate students) arrive tomorrow night, Reed and I have time off to "tour".  

Today we walked into downtown San Pedro for lunch (at a Chilean pizzeria, it was nice to have some food that doesn't taste quite the same as everything else) and some trinket shopping.  Then, we went for an 8 mi bike ride on the road that leads south from our complex.  We followed it through the middle of nowhere until we came to the San Pedro-Toconao road.  Along the way back we saw a man and his flock of sheep moving across the semi-desert.  

Tonight, we are going to act as super-tourists and go on an "Astronomy Tour".  

Summit of Cerro Toco

Thanks to the inability of Sherwin-Williams Corothane I - Mio Aluminum paint to dry in our extreme conditions, we spent several hours today climbing Cerro Toco, the mountain that our telescope is located on the side of.  From the telescope site, the climb in 600m to the top of the mountain (shown above).  We made the ascent in a little less than 90 minutes.  Climbing to the summit at 5604m (18385 ft) was by no means easy: the partial pressure of Oxygen at this elevation is about one half of what it is at sea level.  I can't imagine what it would have been like to make the ascent without having worked at the altitude for the last week and a half.  In the image, you see Reed and Dr. Devlin.  Behind them is Licancabur, a taller volcano on the border between Chile and Bolivia.  The lake you see to the right of it is located in Bolivia.  The mountains further to the right of that are mostly in Argentina.  Thus, you see three countries from the top of Cerro Toco.  

Dr. Devlin has a thing for smoking cigars at high altitude.  When we reached the summit, he enjoyed a celebratory smoke.  Lacking matches, another tool had to be used:

He is likely the first person in history to scale Cerro Toco (what I am told is the world's 156th highest peak) with a blow-torch.  Also, to prove I was there:

San Pedro de Atacama

This is San Pedro de Atacama, the town we are staying on the outskirts of:

Note the dogs.  Some dogs in San Pedro have owners, others do not, but all seem to wander the town at their will, soliciting food and affection from the public at large.  They are also, along with the pedestrians who never use the sidewalk here, a menace to traffic.  

Last night, we went out to dinner at one of the many restaurants in town.  For about ten dollars per person we ordered a giant grill (literally, a giant pot with coals underneath) of meat.  Each person got a pork chop, chicken breast, steak, blood sausage and a third of a potato.  

The weather up at the site continues to be wonderful, with temperatures around freezing but with no wind.  You may recall that in a prior photo-update, I referred to our vehicle as our "as-yet trustworthy Mitsubishi".  It turns out the "as-yet" part was warranted, as we struck some sort of object (we weren't able to find it today) on the way down from the mountain yesterday and rendered useless the four-wheel-drive functionality of the truck.  Today, a man from Hertz came and gave us a new truck, now a Nissan, which is sorely lacking in suspension, horse-power and cab space.  

We continue to paint the inside of the telescope with special paint.  

Sun Screen Finished

Thanks to some surprisingly good weather today (freezing, but with no wind), we were able to finish installation of the sun screen we have been working on for the past week.  Installation had been delayed by several days due to technical difficulties with the lift (shown at right) and two days of snow.  

The screen is a lightweight, reflective canvas attached to an array of bars mounted on the back of the telescope.  It is designed to prevent the telescope's primary mirror (actually an array of seventy-some smaller mirrors) from warping when the instrument is hit with sunlight.  The addition of the screen could allow operation of the instrument in the morning and evening, when light is striking the telescope.  

Photo Update (cont'd)

More photos:

Snow on top of the mountain just east of Licancabur.  In the foreground: scrub brush that covers much of the slope to the east of San Pedro.

Our so-far trusty Mitsubishi truck on the road out from the site.  Note the snow.

Photo Update

Here are some photos I've taken that go with what I've done so far:

Reed and Dr. Devlin in the control room, or "warm room" at the site.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope itself, as seen from the West.
Sunset over one of the nearby mountains.  I'm not sure of the name of this one.
Clouds roll in over Licancabur, a giant volcano that is the tallest peak in the area.
The transmitter that connects the ACT site to the real world, or, at least, San Pedro de Atacama in the valley below.  

Snow!

One of the main projects we have been working on is the installation of a sunscreen (made of a special kind of canvas draped over bars affixed to the backside of the telescope). After four days of work, we finished installing the support bars yesterday. Today we started work on the canvas itself by seeking out a "cherry-picker". We borrowed the device from the Max Plank "APEX" project nearby and, after a considerable effort getting the thing to work, were prevented from attaching the screen due to snowfall, which had accumulated about one inch when we left the site.

Three Days on Cerro Toco

I have now been at the telescope site for three days (we sleep at a lower elevation in San Pedro de Atacama). The first day was the night of our arrival, where we stayed for only about 90 minutes and tried not to pass out. The second day was rough, with us on the mountain from 1030AM until about 5PM. While things were still difficult today, we had no trouble staying from 10 to 6.

I've noticed my ability to function at the altitude improve from day to day. I've also noticed that my natural rate of breathing has increased quite a bit and blood flow to the extremities and to digestion seems to have been decreased. I find I have zero appetite when at the full 17,000 feet.

Yesterday, I worked with Mark Devlin on starting to instal the superstructure of a solar screen to put on the back of the telescope. He continued that work today with a Princeton grad student (who will leave tomorrow, Tom) and has finished 8 of the 19 struts.

Today, Reed and I worked on, among other things, assembling a plastic structure that will eventually house a water-less chemical toilet. As an example of the toll altitude takes on your ability to do work, it took the two of us the better part of a day to put the thing together. More on the actual chemical toilet later.

This evening we ventured into the commercial district of San Pedro, which is actually quite interesting. We ate at a restaurant in one of the many adobe storefronts along the dimly-lit main street in town. It was very nice.

The night sky here is spectacular! (That's why the darn telescope is here). One is clearly able to make out the Milky Way, something you can never do in Philadelphia.

Still traveling (Now in Santiago, Chile)

Estamos in Chile! We arrived in Santiago about two hours late this morning in very thick fog, at around ten AM. The airport is very modern and nice compared with the typical American airport. After checking in for our flight to Calama this afternoon, we had lunch at the "Gatsby American Buffet" (where no buffet was being served). We are now resting comfortably in the domestic terminal, waiting for or flight to leave at 3:50 PM. We plan to go up the mountain for about an hour this evening, just to test the waters.

A Day in Miami (Coral Gables)

We got up at 9 this morning, had breakfast at Deny's and went to the University of Miami's Physics department to visit with a professor and grad student working on BLAST (Baloon Borne Large-Aperture Telescope). Reed and I helped the grad student pack some things for shipement while Mark and the professor consulted remotely with the people cutting BLAST's mirror (work that is not going well). We had lunch on-campus at the University of Miami (which has a rather tropical campus) and dinner at a local Mexican restaurant in Coral Gables.

We are now at the Miami airport, waiting for our flight to Santiago and on to Calama. Hopefully, no more delays!

Stuck in Miami (Coral Gables)

The Plan: Leave Philadelphia, Fly to Miami, Transfer to Santiago and then on to Calama and San Pedro.

The actuality: We arrived at PHL at around 4:30, checked-in, went though security, bought a snack and boarded the plane. Then, the only storm of the week set in just as we were waiting to take off, the airport was closed for a time, a backup occurred and we were two hours late arriving in Miami.

Having missed our flight to Santiago, we have checked into a Holiday Inn in Coral Gables, FL, ate dinner at the local TGI Fridays and will try again to fly to Santiago tomorrow night. During the day tomorrow, we will meet with some of Dr. Devlin's BLAST people here at the University of Miami.

Trip Date Set

Welcome to ChileBlog, where I'll be keeping track of my month-long trip to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile from June 18 until July 18, 2008. For those of you who aren't aware, I will be working for Mark Devlin of the University of Pennsylvania Physics Department on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope.

It will be a few weeks until the next post, when I will begin recounting my experiences in South America. I may make another post in the next few weeks with details about what ACT is, for those who don't know, and such things.