Clear skies

Last night was our first long night. Us tutors got to the observatory at 3ish (a bit early to be honest) to run through some things before the students arrived. I did a short tutorial on the software they'll be using this week, then Alan did another really excellent tour of the nights sky in the planetarium, explaining how to navigate it.

Then for more unique spanish food. Saturday night had been a mix of pasta bolognese, octopus, potato croquettes, squid rings and a bunch of salad stuff. Last night was egg fried rice, pork and potatoes in gravy, potato croquettes, squid rings and salad. Promisingly there was something that looked like Caesar salad, but when I started to eat it there was fish roe. Nice. I have borrowed a knife from the observatory as I want to buy some lovely spanish oranges from the shop near the hotel.

The students are in groups already, and each tutor took one group and divided them into 2 - one lot went to the domes, and the other to the computer lab. The computer lab is in the main observatory building (below), which on a night is just as cold as outside!!!

They swapped locations after midnight snack (slightly more recognisable cheese and ham sandwich). They had to learn to open the dome, start up the telescope, take calibration frames and then navigate to a bright star to align. I had a group already quite experienced in astronomy, so this was pretty straightforward, although the second group got a bit stuck when the software gave very strange results, so we might have a problem with that dome this week.

The skies were pretty clear, although at midnight-ish a haze rose which hampered viewing anything low in the sky.

We finished at 4.15am, by which point the sky was totally clear, and they headed back to the hotel on the bus. We got back at around 6am and I went to bed/asleep straight away. I set my alarm for 12.30, but thanks to all the noise I woke up at 11. Currently there is a cleaner in the room above who is banging and crashing furniture around. Earplugs tonight I think.

There's just one small glitch with today - last night the water ran out at the observatory, so there are no toilet facilities. We are hoping a water tank will be delivered today, but they have been saying that since Friday when the water levels were already quite low.