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In the Groove

April, 25 2003

by Jill Tarter - Director, Center for SETI Research

The quarters for scientists at observatories have heavy shutters, thick doors, and in the case of tropical Puerto Rico, air-conditioners for coolness and white noise all to help us sleep during the day, when the observatory site is bustling with activity. Optical observatories have gotten particularly good at this over the years, and round-the-clock radio astronomy observatories are doing a good job too.

Our SETI observations take place at night here at Arecibo because the telescope can only point about 20 degrees away from overhead. To avoid having the solar wind (a plasma streaming off the surface of the Sun) mess up the intrinsic coherence in any narrowband SETI signals, we have to avoid pointing within 60 degrees of the Sun. With a fully-steerable telescope that means picking stellar targets in the west when the Sun is in the east, and vice versa. At Arecibo it means working at night when the Sun has left the sky over the telescope; to be precise, we work from 5pm to 8am each day/night.

We split up the 15 hours of observing among all of us here, and I choose to observe from midnight to 8am. Since we are using our New Search System (NSS), and I havent yet passed my solo driving test, Jane Jordan the leader of our NSS software team observes with me and helps me to learn the command strings needed to make the NSS sing and dance and detect signals. In a while, we will have software GUIs (graphical user interfaces) that will allow us to do this all by pointing and clicking and choosing from menus. In these early days, however, it requires typing in command lines, and that requires that you remember all the possible command line possibilities hence Jane as my co-pilot. I know she is looking forward to having me solo so that she can sleep, and need to wake up only occasionally to answer the call of hel-l-l-l-l-l-l-lp over the phone.

In my room in Family Unit I, on top of the hill here at the observatory, which is bathed in birdsong during the day and coqui calls at night, as I close the shutters and turn out the lights, I realize that a former occupant of my room has left behind markers of her or his presence. Without the lights I am treated to the spectacle of fluorescent stars on the walls of my room! The constellation of Orion leads me to the door (and helps me find the bathroom when I wake in mid-sleep), while the Big Dipper oversees my antiquated air-conditioning unit and the bed I sleep in. Clearly these constellations were installed by an astronomer, since the size of the individual stars is proportional to the stellar brightness. I dont know who did this, none of the other rooms Ive occupied at the observatory have been so adorned, but I thank them for making this room at once homier and more majestic.

Orion is high in the sky at night when I head out to observe, and I usually salute him silently and feel somehow that the cosmos may really be a bio-friendly place. Its totally unscientific I know, but what a gloriously nice way to start a working day.