Antarctica

Today starts the trip to the cold of Antarctica. Members of Europlanet community are travelling to the Spanish Base in Deception Isle. 

Felipe Gomez, from Astrobiology Center in Madrid and coordinator of activities TNA 1 and JRA 2 of Europlanet RI project will be blogging directly from Antarctica. We are waiting right now for the ship that will transport us to the isle from Punta Arenas in Chile.

It will be a trip of four days. During two days we will be travelling along the Hoces Sea, one of the most stormy area in the world. We expect a "funny" travers to Antarcica. We will tell you in some days after all. After those four days we expect to have internet access to continue with our blogging activity in the Europlanet webWe will be posting the progress of the trip, pictures and the work we will be implementing along the following month in Antarctica.

Just we arrived to Gabriel de Castilla Spanish base. This base is managed by Spanish military personnel fro Defence Ministry. It is a pleasure for us to be here with these nice people supporting us for any necessity we could have in our work.

The team we are here is composed by Graciela de Diego, Mercedes Moreno, Olga Prieto and myself, Felipe Gomez.

We pretend to study the microbial diversity along the traverse between a thermal environment in the top of “Cerro Caliente” (hot mountain) and the permafrost in the down part of the valley.

Gabriel de Castilla Base is located at Deception Island in Antarctica, which is the tip of an active volcano with hydrothermal sources around. This is the part in we are interested on, in contact with the cold environment of the permafrost.

The first work day was yesterday with a very bad weather, snow and hard wind in the top of Cerro Caliente.

We arrived to the Spanish Base a couple of days ago after the traverse of Hoces Sea. We traversed this area in Las Palmas ship, a military vessel. Hoces or Drake Sea is one of the stormiest areas around the world, and normally, the traverse is very hard with strong movement of the vessel.

More news from Antarctica:

The methology to apply for sampling is drilling with an electrical engine for taking samples at 1 m. We will do three different drills at three different locations: at the top of the hill where a heat source is located, a nearby location where not so high temperature is located and, finally, just in the valley, where permafrost is located.

Today we started to drill in the top of Cerro Caliente. The place has a wonderful view to the entrance (Neptune docs) to the internal sea of the cone of the volcano. But, as usually, the weather was hard to deal with. But, finally, there is good news; after a hard drilling day we got samples at 80 cm deep. The temperature of the samples was 167 ºC. The temperature gradient just promises good scientific conclusions. To be continued…

Europlanet and the Future

We are gathered together at the beautiful Austrian Academy of Sciences to discuss the future of Europlanet.  We are nearing the end of the current project, which has been funded by the European Commission's Framework 7 programme for the 2009-2012 time period.  In this phase, Europlanet has covered a wide range of activities: it has brought together Europe's planetary scientists at the annual European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) and science workshops, enabled personnel exchanges, developed of modelling tools and catalogues, and even organised field trips to places on Earth that resemble Mars and Europa.

But what does the European planetary community want for the future and how can they go about achieving their goals?  It's an interesting topic leading to lively discussion.

In the shorter term, the announcement went out yesterday for EPSC 2012, which will be held in Madrid. The meeting will cover the scope of planetary science with typically 50 sessions of different types.  For details, see http://www.epsc2012.eu/

Europlanet's National Outreach Nodes meet up in Meudon

Europlanet Outreach Nodes (left to right): Magda (Romania),
Martina (Austria), Zdenek (Czech Republic/Slovakia),
Livia (Italy), Eleni (Greece/Europlanet Core Team),
Thierry (France/Europlanet Coordinator), Olivier (webmaster),
Emil (Germany), Jean-Pierre (Europlanet Outreach Advisor),
Anita (UK/Europlanet Core Team) & Hanna (Switzerland)

Thanks to all the Europlanet national nodes who attended the biannual node meeting at the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon on the 23-24th May.

The meeting was an opportunity to share experiences and update each other on activities, as well as to learn some new skills.

Olivier Marco, Europlanet’s outreach webmaster, gave a morning workshop on using new features on the website, plus an overview of Social Media tools available, including Twitter, Facebook.   This led to some very interesting discussion on differences between social media use in different countries and how much social media requires a personal face and how to manage the personal/professional divide in forums like Facebook.

During the meeting, two case studies of outreach projects were presented by Livia Giacomini, the Italian Node, and Emil Khasili, the German Node:

Livia presented a practical case study of how INAF have used social media to promote and develop a community for the Italian team entering the International Astronomy Olympics.  Before setting up the project Livia and her colleague, Stefano Sandrelli, spent some time finding out from the audiences they were targeting (teenagers and professional astronomers) which social media tools they used. This highlighted how much variation there is in social media use by different age-groups e.g. the Olimpiadi Italiane Di Astronomia Facebook page has been hugely successful for building a community of Italian teenagers. However, Livia’s survey showed that the same audience would not use Twitter at all. Download Livia’s presentation.

Emil presented a very honest and interesting review of a Saturn-themed schools event that he organised in Heilbronn, Germany, in April 2011.  The presentation generated a very useful discussion on how to build networks with educators and existing outreach providers, how to plan events that fit in with the constraints of a school’s curriculum and timetable and how to evaluate the success of an event.  Download Emil’s presentation

Success on Saturn

Tonight the observing gods are on our side - clear skies, low to zero humidity, and no problems with the telescope or its instruments. So Tom Stallard and I managed to get ~2 hours observing Saturn, whilst the Cassini spacecraft took a series of infrared images. Our infrared spectra of H-three-plus are designed to complement Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS).

Our spectra on the Keck II telescope have nearly 100 times the ability to find the emission lines of individual molecules. But VIMS gets a much broader sweep of the whole spectrum of Saturn. Our spectra scan the planet from north-to-south, but only at one longitude - the noonday meridian, where the local time on Saturn is 12 noon. Cassini VIMS, however, gets a full picture of the northern hemisphere facing the spacecraft.

Tonight our Keck observations are also being backed up by Henrik Melin and James Donaghue working on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. They are getting images of the northern and southern aurora, at a wavelength sensitive to the H-three-plus emissions.

That means that, between the ground-based observations and the spacecraft, we should build up a really good picture of what's happening to Saturn's atmosphere on a semi-global scale. And that's important, because it enables us to understand all the pressures pushing and pulling the ringed planet.

Europe's planetary scientists have not been so good at carrying out this ground-based support for their space missions as their American colleagues. That's one of the reasons for Europlanet's NA1 "Ground-based support for space missions" activity.

Yet more frustration

Following on from Henrik Melin's and Tom Stallard's blogs, it's a shame to have to report that the weather on Maunakea is still playing with us unfairly. Tom and I are currently using the Keck II telescope. This is one of the William Keck Observatory's two 10-meter telescopes on the summit. Our target is Saturn; our purpose to support observations being made by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting the Ringed Planet.

Except ... just when the sky is clear, the air immediately around the telescope has decided to get rather too moist for observing. The danger is that drops of water, or even ice crystals, will start to form either on the primary, light-gathering, mirror, or on the secondary mirrors, that focusses the light back down into the instruments. So, after a few short observations to show that we really could get the spectra of Saturn that we wanted, the weather has decided that we can't! And it looks as if by the time we can open the telescope again, Saturn will have dropped below our horizon.

It's at times like this when you realise that astronomy really is real-time. Saturn will never be quite the same again, and if it had been doing something really, really interesting, well - we missed it. Never mind, we have another shot at it in two days time - weather permitting.

So our plan had been to try to measure the spectrum coming from Saturn's upper atmosphere at a very high spectral and spatial resolution. The upper atmospheres of giant planets are composed mainly of molecular and atomic hydrogen, into which a bit of helium has been mixed. Sunlight and the impact of high-energy electrons, hurled at the planet from its magnetosphere and the solar wind, create a third form of hydrogen called H3+ (H-three-plus) that consists of three hydrogen atoms joined together and then ionised by the loss of a negative electron to form a positively charged, molecular ion.

H3+ is a signature molecule; it shows up where energy is being deposited into Saturn and energetic processes are occurring. Tracing where it is to be found, how much, and how hot, helps us to understand just how the saturnian magnetosphere - that region of space controlled by Saturn's magnetic field - couples into the planet itself. And we are hoping that will then help us to understand some other key questions - like why is the upper atmosphere of Saturn (and Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) much hotter than it should be, based on the amount of sunlight the planet receives.

Tonight, Tom and I are not actually on the summit of Mauna Kea (4,200 meters above sea level) but at the much more comfortable 800-ish meter altitude level of Waimea. For the Keck observatory, working astronomers are kept pretty well oxygenated at the main HQ itself, communicating by video conference with the telescope operator, who is at the summit controlling things. It works pretty well, although I still prefer the hands-on feel of being at the summit and sitting next to the telescope operator.

PS we just got open again and onto Saturn - for one minute. Hey-ho!

Begin again

Sometimes the weather just doesn't treat you right, especially at 4km up a mountain. It is essential that, as an observer, you don't let it effect you. Getting mad at the weather isn't going to help, so you just accept your fate and wait it out. We finally came down the mountain, knowing that we had, at least, gotten three half nights of decent data. We brushed ourselves off, and slowly the weather cleared.

Now, it is round two. We have a second set of observations, this time, perhaps, even more important. Not only is Cassini observing Saturn's aurora, not only is Hubble, but now we have observations on both IRTF and Keck. Two of the best infrared telescopes in the world, both observing at the same time. Needless to say, it feels as if the weight of the long, slow run without result has lifted. Our IRTF observations begin tomorrow, but tonight is all about Keck.

The twin telescopes of Keck. In our observations, we will be using NIRSPEC on Keck 2, the dome on the right in this picture.

Keck consists of two separate telescopes, each of which have a ten meter dish, still considered close to the largest telescopes on Earth. Tonight, for a span of only two or three hours, we will focus in on the aurora of Saturn, hopefully producing the richest auroral infrared spectra ever seen from the planet. You can even look in on us between 11am-5pm on Friday 15th (BST).

Thunder and lightening, very very boring

The thing we fear most arrived with a certain inevitability. A massive storm front crashed into the Hawaiian island from the North. I awoke yesterday to rain and hail so loud, I thought I'd left my heating fan on overnight. Today, as a change, I awoke to thunder. Astronomers fear high cirrus clouds because they block the view of the night sky, and they fear summit cloud, because the rain and snow can cause black ice, a real danger. We have both in great supply. And so the mountain turns from being a hard working environment, to an incredibly dull, unsatisfying one.

The all-sky camera at UH2.2 - during the day this typically shows clear skies and telescopes on the horizon, at night the milky way in all its glory. This is the picture today, rain on the lens and fog obscuring the telescopes

Instead of preparing for observations, observing at the summit and reducing the data the next day, we are caught at 3000m trying to do other work, work that doesn't interest us, all at the high altitudes that make concentrating so difficult. It is a lonely time at 3am, the entire building dark, when you're the only one awake. And now it is almost as quiet, 3pm, up before everyone because sleeping at the mountain is always a gamble. I usually sleep better than most, but in these conditions, the daily rhythm broken, I sit in a quiet office, trying to plow through admin work from back home as the mountain storm gently rumbles to me in the background.

Mauna Kea is regarded as one of the premier observing sites in the world, due to its dry clear air.