The day at Siding Spring
Feb 25th
Although I sleep at 2 a.m. last night, I woke up at 8 a.m. in the morning. It's already pretty sunshine outside. At 10 a.m. Rob came and guided me to the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). I'm very lucky because today they are going to remove the 16-t mirrow for maintanence, which occurs only once a year. The procedure will take a whole day to complete so we only checks at some important time. By the way -- the 3.9-m AAT is also the largest telescope I have ever seen.
After short checks on the AAT, we went to see the 1.2-m UK Schmidt, visit the observatory shops and have lunch, have a great chat with the assistance (she's not a professional but an astronomer -- it's still pretty nice to me the way she works, although not a professional one). After that we went back to the AAT, and the 16-t, 3.9-m giant had just been removed, and we watch it was put onto the ground floor. After that we still visit the 1.0-m and the 2.3-m AAT telescope (it marked the second biggest I had ever seen), and see the in-built Sky Mapper dome in distance.
The weather became very clear today (last night it wasn't, but Rob still show me the software and facility of Siding Spring Survey). At sunset, quite a number of kangeroos went out and ate grass, and we observed a nice sunset at just outside the dome of the 3.9-m.
[[Image:Other/080225a.jpg|550|In the 3.9-m AAT dome -- the telescope is too large to be include in this photo]]
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