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   This is where I am at...

So, another thing that was missed by my readers was the fact that I'm now kinda a real astronomer. Which is to say that at the start of September I was dragged away from my computer (kicking and screaming and begging to be allowed back near my model, I tell you) and taken up to the radio telescope at Parkes (seen in the picture, which links to my flickr set about the trip). We spent 43 hours (continuous) observing a collection of supernova remnants that are known to be interacting with clouds, in the hopes of spotting some maser (microwave laser) light from them. Which was an awful lot of fun, let me tell you, even if we didn't necessarily find any. I ended up sleeping something like 8 hours out of 50 while we were away, but I ended up seeing a lunar eclipse, which was awesome.

Anyway, the moral of the story was that I had so much fun that they've dragged me away again, this time up to the Australia Telescope Compact Array at Narrabri. In fact, as of this moment I am sitting right about here, or maybe a little bit off the track. More like in the Lodge (not the one in Canberra), which is maybe 100m from the arrow. Close enough really.

I had a big long blog post planned, but my head is full of fuzz from the really long car trip to get up here, so I think I'll end this now and maybe post tomorrow once I've had a chance to look at the photos I've taken and figure out why I took them.

Suffice to say I need my sleep, because I'm not sure how much I'll be getting after tonight. (Yes, James, I know I told you that we were only doing daytime observing this time, but it turns out I lied, because Quentin bullied Ivan into agreeing to do the observations for the people scheduled at night, and we don't have enough people here to really do things comfortably like we did last time.)

Oh, and the knowledge that they keep the red-bellied black snakes (deadly) around because they eat the brown snakes (agressive and deadly) is not necessarily reassuring to a good snake-fearing girl like me.

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