Monday, October 22nd/ Tuesday, October 23rd - Chaos of the Flame
As soon as the crew (Anita and Kris) returned from the East Coast on Sunday, they didn’t even have a chance to unpack their things before heading back off to complete some of the last-minute interviews in the Southwest United States. Monday in the office was anticipated to be the day to pack the gear and get all of the final details of the trip tied up, but an early morning phone call from the Los Angeles Forest Services made our day more interesting. We were alerted to the severity of the Los Angeles and San Diego area forest fires that were raging over the previous weekend. According to the forest services, the firefighters were in chaos trying to salvage what they could of burning homes and ranger stations. The rangers told us that it would be impossible for us to go up to Mt. Wilson in the Los Angeles hills on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Moreover, no media is permitted on the mountain until AT LEAST November 1st. This news threw our crew into a bit of a panic. Luckily, all of the trip’s changes were taken care of by 3pm that afternoon. All of our travel plans were moved up 2 days and thanks to the helpfulness of our observatory friends, we were able to move our travel plans forward, salvaging all of our interviews.
Tuesday morning, we met at the office at 7am to pack our gear into the rental SUV and prepare for the next two weeks of road tripping together. It took us about four hours and two Starbucks stops to reach our first destination, Lick Observatory in the San Jose Mountains. We met with Dr. Alex Filippenko from UC Berkeley who escorted us to the KAIT dome where the Automatic Imaging Telescope resides. The telescope, which looks like a miniature model of some of the larger telescopes that might be seen on Mauna Kea or Cerra Tololo for example, takes “snapshots” of distant galaxies, searching for changes week-by-week and year-by-year, hoping to spot a supernova burst. The telescope itself is controlled remotely and is controlled almost entirely by its own robotic system, using its mechanical components and its software to guide its nightly observations. Dr. Filippenko who we had interviewed a few weeks ago, was happy to show us the telescope and explain the developments made by his team over the last 10 years since the telescope was constructed.
We departed from the observatory after re-packing our gear and headed due east down the backside of the mountain toward the Interstate-5 freeway. We enjoyed the winding roads, lined with trees covered in gold, orange and red leaves, a pleasant autumn sight. The crew stopped in the town of Patterson, right off the I-5 and ate a celebratory lunch after hearing some good news about our progress in the NSF grant process. The NSF committee had sent the team an e-mail alerting them that their initial preliminary proposal had been accepted, the first step in the two-step NSF grant process. The team now needs to complete the full grant proposal, giving the NSF committee more information about the goals and the plans of the production already in progress.
Back on the road again, the team headed east, determined to reach the city of Mojave before deciding to settle in for the evening.