Dedicated astronomers

On the duPont Telescope at Las Campanas, we have a specialized astrometric camera, designed to measure the positions of stars with great accuracy.  I am using it to find the distances to young stars, Jackie Faherty is using it to find the distances to young brown dwarfs, and Alan Boss spearheaded its construction so as to search for planets around low mass stars.  Here are Jackie and Jessica Donaldson, our newest user, during the afternoon. We were taking a walk around the catwalk while we took calibration frames with the camera. Nice blue sky, isn't it? Once the sun set, it was a nice clear sky for observing.