For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Claude Plymate. I’ve worked for the National Solar Observatory (NSO) at Kitt Peak for the past 16 years. I currently work as the site manager for the McMath-Pierce Solar telescope facility (McMP). (This sounds much more prestigious than it really is. I have the job through attrition. Most of the talent that used to work on the current NSO telescopes have gone on to other projects.) Last month I had the esteemed privilege of attending the 6th annual Observatory Site Managers meeting. This year’s meeting was held in Chile with site visits to several of the astronomical facilities currently in that country. Surprised is an understatement to my reaction when the NSO management informed that my request to attend the meeting had been approved.

I had attended the previous year’s meeting that happened to be held in Tucson. The observatory didn’t hesitate sending me to the meeting when it was in our town. I felt like a very little fish in a very prestigious pond. Intimidated is too weak of a word. I learned a tremendous amount from listening to the site managers from around the world discuss their common problems. I had little to add to much of the discussions but found it comforting that facilities large and small share many of the same difficulties as we’re facing at the McMP.

The meeting was scheduled for Sunday, 30 September through 5 October. Most of the meetings would be held in La Serena, Chile with visits to Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO), Cerro Pachon (Gemini South), the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla site, Carnegie’s Las Campanas facility and the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama desert in northern Chile.

I contacted Miroslav to inform him that I’d be gone for a week and asked his understanding if I might be late with an assignment. His reply was quite understanding and he suggested that I write up a summary of the trip to share with the rest of the class. It’s taken me a while to get caught back up and to write this up summary to the trip. Let’s get started…

Saturday, 29 September:

After a burrito for lunch at the local Mexican restaurant, my wife Teresa dropped me at the Tucson airport for my “adventure” to begin.

There was no line at the check in counter. I was checked all the way through to La Serena in a few minutes. Security at Tucson International was a joke, even with the “heightened security” following the September 11 attack on New York. It didn’t take more than ~10 minutes to check in and get through security. They wanted only to see me turn on my laptop. They didn’t even want to see my camera when I told them was also in the bag!

I passed the hours waiting for my flight by working on Astrophysics problems. Once onboard, the flight attendant apologized and told me that they didn’t receive my vegetarian meal. They had been notified of my request for vegetarian; they just didn’t get any delivered. They gave me the normal meal – chicken wrap & chips. (Aargh.)

The flight was far from full. I was the only one on row 14. The attendant took pity on me, bring me a fruit salad and roll from first class. I can’t complain, she was really being good to me. The flight was smooth, left on time and allowed enough time for me to catch my connection in Dallas.

We were descending toward Dallas just as the Sun set.

Sunday, 30 September:

There was ~40 minutes for me to make my connection to Santiago, Chile. The plane was an MD-11 tri-engine jet. It had good legroom & was fairly comfortable! I can’t call the dinner great, but it was vegetarian & welcomed. The leg room let me stretch out & get some sleep. It was 6:56 am (3:56 Tucson time) when the captain announced that we’re 180 miles from Santiago, landing in 25 minutes. He said that Santiago was currently 46 degrees F (brrrr).

On approach to Santiago, clouds & snow is all I can see out of the window. BIG mountains everywhere. Once lower, I was actually looking up at the very rugged mountains! Wow.

I had a long wait at Santiago airport after clearing customs and paying the mandatory reciprocity tax of $61 before boarding the Lan Chile flight to La Serena.

They announced the flight will depart from gate-21 about an hour before departure. There, I found Bruce Gillespie from Apache Point Observatory talking with Gordon Talbot of ESO at La Palma – I was in the right place! A few minutes later Skip Andree who I know from Kitt Peak appeared. He’d been touring the area since Wednesday & told us all about Santiago.

Left to Right: Bruce Gillespie, me, Gordon Talbot

1st problem: when boarding, they wouldn’t let me carry my carry on! “Too heavy, too big” they told me. I grabbed everything valuable from it before giving it up. There I was in seat 13J, flight 172 with camera around my neck, computer, textbook & notebooks piled on my lap. I just hoped that my “carry on” would make it to La Serena. (The woman at the gate assured me that it’d be fine.) Overall, I was quite impressed with the airline, Lan Chile. It seems to be well run.

My bag didn’t come off of the plane! I stood there, showing the luggage tag & describing the bag as best I could to exclusive Spanish speakers. They went back to the plane and dug around until it was finally found (whew). The four of us from the meeting that been the Lan Chile flight (Bruce, Gordon, Skip & I), all piled into a tax to get to the hotel were the meetings were held.

La Serena is a beautiful area. Santiago reminded me of Portland, Oregon. La Serena seemed more like northern California but with the Sierras right next to the coast.

La Serena seemed quite quaint but it has a tremendous problem with graffiti. Everything has been “tagged”. I was told that the graffiti is a new phenomenon starting with the introduction of American satellite television a few years ago. It’s an odd cross of quaint old word, modern 21st century west, with a bit of Mexican border town thrown in. The ubiquitous graffiti is a bit depressing.

Sunday evening a reception was held for the participants to meet and say hello. This was my first intro to Pisco Sours. Pisco Sour seems to be the National drink of Chile. They

are hand them out at every reception, dinner, and break. I don’t know what exactly they are, but I avoided them after seeing the effects they had on the other attendees. (I think one guy’s tongue might have started to go numb. At least that’s what his speech sounded like. He also didn’t look very good the next morning.)

Monday, 01 October:

Monday morning’s meetings were quite useful. They mostly focused staffing concerns at observatories – recruitment, retention, and motivation. It’s both interesting and a bit reassuring for me to see that all observatories face many of the same problems. Sharing how the different facilities deal with these issues is the real goal of these meetings.

After the meetings we departed on a bus headed for CTIO. The valley between La Serena & CTIO reminds me very much of Sonoma County in California including poppies, eucalyptus, horses, and vineyards. Very scenic. The route follows the valley, slowly rising up into the hills. Passing a large dam across the valley we came to a large lake with cactus on the surrounding hills. Suddenly, I’ve left California and am back in Arizona. The route continues to get drier with altitude. I spot some domes on one of the peaks ahead. We turn off of the highway and follow a small dirt road up the mountain. Just below the observatory, there’s a flat grassy area where the bus is stopping for a catered picnic lunch.

I had a good veggie sandwich waiting for me in a spectacular setting looking up at CTIO, then back on the bus for the remainder of the trip up the mountain.

CTIO is the sister observatory to Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO). Both are operated by the Association for Research in Astronomy (AURA). AURA also manages the NSO for whom I work. CTIO was built in the early 60’s to give southern hemisphere access to US astronomers. My first impression of CTIO: If you’ve seen one AURA-built 4-meter, you’ve see them all. The biggest difference is that there is no OSHA. They let us “ride” the catwalk of the 4-m while rotating the dome! I could never get away with that back at KPNO. The complex is more compact than pictures make it seem. You see almost no one wandering around – it feels really deserted. There are always tourists if nothing else wandering about KPNO. We only had an hour at CTIO and then on to Cerro Pachon to see Gemini South. Gemini is an international consortium developing twin 8-meter telescopes; one in Hawaii and one on Pachon.

View from Tololo 4-meter

Impression of GEMINI: At some point, you run out of superlatives; Gemini is just big – really BIG! It’s not as pretty as some telescopes such as the WIYN 3.5-m at KPNO, but BBBIG. While touring through, in walks Nigel Sharp! Nigel is the telescope scientist at the KPNO 4-m and happened to be at Gemini working on it. It was really nice to unexpectedly see a familiar face so far from home. I couldn’t resist the offer climb up to the altitude bearing so that I could look over at the mirror. Pictures can’t show the scale. The dome has more the feeling of a factory warehouse. Of course, in another decade, 8-meter telescopes will likely be thought of a “moderate” aperture.

Me in front of Gemini mirror

The mirror is sputter coated, not the normal metal evaporation process. The sputtering leaves a bulls eye on the mirror between the strips of coated area. This pattern shows well in the image above.

Gemini South

After leaving Gemini we were treated to a snack at the Pachon kitchen while we watched the Sun sink into the South Pacific.

We were given 15 minutes between returning to the hotel & getting back on the bus to go for dinner being paid for by AURA. That was quite a banquet! Tuesday morning some of the participants look fairly hung over. (No Piscos for me!)

Tuesday, 02 October:

The Pan-American is a modern highway that parallels the coast. Continuing my comparison to California, the Pan-American looks just like Highway-1 in Central California. I felt right at home. The drive took ~2.5 hours while the scenery slowly changes to arid Mojave-like desert. The bus eventually turned off the Pan-American onto a small dirt road. On our left was the peak of Las Campanas; to the right is La Silla, which is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). We were stopped at a guard gate at the base of La Silla. I was told it was another few kilometers to the observatory.

La Silla is really remote! The only thing I could see on the horizon was the other observatory. The number of domes on the peak appears similar to Kitt Peak, around a dozen. La Silla must be a very expensive complex to operate. La Silla is about 100 km north of CTIO. I could just pick out the Gemini & 4-m domes on the horizon out of the bus window.

First stop, the 3.6-m. Built in the mid-70’s, the 3.6-m appears a bit like the KPNO 4-m. The horseshoe bearing is farther down the RA axis than the KPNO 4-m with short forks extending up to the declination bearings. We then moved on to the New Technology Telescope (NTT) – a 3.5-m that saw 1st light in the late 80’s. The NTT was the prototype for the current generation of 3.5-meter telescopes. The similarity to the WIYN and Apache Point Observatory (APO) 3.5-meters is obvious. The nasmuth instrument platform is walled off from the telescope. This leaves the “hot” instrumentation in a room that’s insulated from the telescope.

NTT from the 3.6-meter

The NTT uses 8 blowers to flush air across it’s primary. We’re talking about implementing a similar system at the McMath-Pierce telescope were I work. Here, they do nothing to try to get the flow laminar; they only worry about keeping the air over the mirror isothermal. I’m getting really nice tours of the individual telescopes, but this isn’t giving me a feel for how the observatory as a whole is operated.

I found that everything in Chile operates on “Chile time”. Everything took longer than was scheduled. This, unfortunately, ate into some of our scheduled meeting time. The tours were wonderful, but the NSO was paying for this trip and I wanted to get as much substance out of it as possible. I hoped that Las Campanas would get us back on our meeting schedule.

La Campanas chef pouring the Pisco

We stopped for a fantastic lunch at the Las Campanas café. I can’t call this a cafeteria. It has real chefs that trained a culinary school, table service, wines, and gourmet food. Unbelievable! This is the classiest observatory I have ever seen! Carnegie truly knows how to spend money. The meeting following lunch focused on Laser Guide Star (LGS) technology and its associated safety/legal issues. The FAA and its counter-parts in other countries are quite restrictive about LGS. How will astronomy deal with these issues when nearly all new large telescopes are likely to be equipped with LGS technology over the next 10-years?

We were again behind schedule as we headed to the Las Campanas 2.5-m. From inside of the dome, it looks almost identical to the KPNO 2.1-m. The big difference is again no OSHA; we’re allowed to climb wherever we wish!

Magellan I & II

Magellan – a twin 6.5-m telescope interferometer project. Externally, they appear two over-sized WIYN-like telescopes. The telescopes were designed jointly by Carnegie & LNF Ind. (the same company the designed and built APO). The mirrors are 6.5-m F-1.52 spin cast mirrors from the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. I was told that the cost of the facility was $7.5M. It’s all brand new and very pretty! It even has the “new telescope smell”. The mirror for Magellan II had just been delivered and hadn’t yet been mounted into the telescope. The tour was capped off be watching the sunset from one of the primier observing sites in the world. Too bad it was full moon. I would have loved to see the southern hemisphere sky.

Group under Magellan I

Wednesday, 03 October:

This morning dawned with its typical fog in La Serena. I had a couple of hours unscheduled, so I took a walk along the breach. I was somewhat looking for a gift shop where I could buy a canvas bag to carry my laptop and other necessary items onto the Chilean airlines. (No luck there.) The fog made it look much like the San Francisco Bay area where I grew up. Chile kept surprising me with how much it reminded me of California. Mid-morning, the bus arrived to take us all to the La Serena airport. The group was headed to Antofagasta in the Atacama desert for more meetings and to tour the ESO – Very Large Telescope (VLT) array.

Lan Chile airlines again impressed me with how good a job they do taking care of their customers. They fed me the vegetarian meal that I’d requested through the travel agency back home in Tucson. It was an excellent veggie shish kabob on a bed of curried rice and raisins, salad and fruit for dessert. I was impressed! I over heard someone jokingly ask the question, “What would be the consequences for astronomy if this airline went down?” The immediate answer (think from Bruce Gillespie of APO) was: “nothing if we’ve done our jobs right!”

We arrived at the Panamericana Hotel Antofagasta at 3:45 pm. My room, 405, literally overhung the beach! There was little time to appreciate the view since the meeting resumed again at 4:15. We were treated like royalty in Chile. The Chileans see astronomy as representing international prestige and a big influx of money into their country and they tend to go all out to promote it. I expected Antofagasta to be a dirty, backward old mining town. What I found was (if I heard correctly) the 4th largest city in Chile that is

doing all it can to recreate itself as a resort city. To picture this city surrounded by the Atacoma, think of Las Vegas but trade its glitz for a coastline. Beyond the city’s edge it’s a lunar landscape. The VLT on Cerro Paranal is about 100 km south and 12 km inland from the city.

Most of the evening meetings were more focused on the running of much higher budget observatories than I need to worry about. It ended with a somewhat philosophical discussion about what these meetings are developing into. Bruce Gillespie started these as a very informal get together of a half dozen site managers sitting around a table chatting about the problems that they found common to all of them. Six years later, it’s grown to a group of close to 40. He’s finding it difficult to maintain the casual atmosphere. Do we want to turn this into yet another professional organization with dues and formal meetings where papers are presented? Should we somehow try to keep it small? How could that be done without being exclusionary?

Thursday, 04 October:

The bus departed from Panamericana Hotel Antofagasta for the VLT at 8am the next morning, Thursday. The Atacama Desert between Antofagasta and the VLT is the most desolation I’d ever seen. There is nothing, absolutely nothing but rolling hills of dirty sand and rock. No vegetation at all. That, if anywhere, is the middle of nowhere. Blue sky above, gravely hills on either side, dirt road ahead – nothing else. The only way I can compare the Atacama to California is to start with the central California coastal hills, then remove every building, road, all man-made equipment and every last tree and blade of grass. That’s the Atacama. Change the tint of the sky and it is Mars.

Atacama Desert

The VLT is truly a remarkable facility. The VLT tops anything we’ve attempted in the states short of HST. Even though each of the four telescopes in the array have an aperture 8.2-meters, the “domes” each appear significantly smaller than Gemini. The overall complex is surprisingly compact considering what it contains. (Another comment from Bruce Gillespie was that the dome size of the world’s largest telescope has remained relatively constant over the past century. Yerkes followed by Palomar and now Keck all have domes of around 100 – 120 feet in diameter.) The strut design of the VLT 8.2-m telescopes has a cleaner appearance than Gemini. However, I still believe that the Magellan telescopes on Las Campanas have to be the nicest looking ‘scopes that I’ve seen.

3 VLT “Domes”

I’m told that ESO has sunk a billion dollars into the VLT. They have every reason to be proud. The facility is being referred to as the “science factory”. All 4 telescopes are now functional. Only a couple of weeks before our tour they successfully coupled two of the ‘scopes together as an interferometer and got fringes for the 1st time! The VLT is a truly exciting and dynamic facility. I’ve now seen the future of the cutting edge of ground-based astronomy.

VLT Mirror

I had to leave Paranal at 3pm, an hour before the end of the last meeting, on the employee’s shuttle to return to Antofagasta in time to catch my flight to Santiago. Coincidentally, Frank Perez, the site manager at Las Campanas was traveling to Tucson for a meeting at Steward Observatory and has the same itinerary as I. (Carnegie doesn’t operate Las Campanas alone and Steward is a 5% member in the consortium.) Frank helped me through the intricacies of customs. Frank & I had plenty of time chat on the long trip back to Tucson. I truly enjoyed his company and hope that I can now call this very impressive individual a friend.

The trip was quite an adventure for me. I saw some remarkable sights (and sites) and met several extremely impressive individuals. It was truly an honor to feel accepted by this group, which I hold in awe. Chile is a beautiful country to which I hope to return to with the time to explore it properly. My disappointment was that we didn’t have more time for the actual meetings. I can’t say how much I’ve gotten from their experience. Then again, there’s always next year that is planned for Lick Observatory!