That's the title of what I just managed to submit to ESO, 1.5 hours left till the actual deadline. I was probably lucky that nothing horrible (well, that I couldn't handle in the end) happened. After 18 hours of constant work, after having realised yesterday that my perception on the time of the deadline was quite wrong (noon in europe is 4 o'clock in the morning here. Only during this week btw, since there's one week lag in the change to summertime. That wasn't my mistake though, somehow I managed to turn the time around totally). My sweet advisor made sure I'd take a taxi home instead of sleeping in the office, and I guess it's a good plan. YAWN!
Just a few hours ago, I thought it wouldn't work. See, there's a limited amount of large enough Galactic planetary nebulae around. Especially on the southern hemisphere. I found none, after many hours of search. I almost gave up, and tried to figure out a plan B. Then, trying again, after having had to TA for two hours in the planetarium (which, for the record, is leaking water - I was working on the abstract for the proposal instead of answering my students questions, and water dropped down on the red screen. Yeeah) just to make sure, I generated a new list of possible targets, choose those that were designated NGC, and looked at the first one. And that was the one. That was my miracle of the day. Or the month even. It was so perfect in every sense, that I still cannot believe it (NGC1360 - and my cool galaxy that I want to observe is NGC 4945).
Here's the question for anyone who might know/want to elaborate: W H Y can one never be a bit early in finishing something? Why do I always end up being out in the very last minute? It's 2:45 right now, so I guess it's not really terrible. Still...
I need yet another miracle though - for the proposal to get accepted. I hope I didn't use up my miracle quota for a while now...
3 comments:
Hmm, if I were you, I would have postponed any internetting and blogg-writing until the proposal was completed and sent.
Hum, what's a "galactic planetary nebulae"? :S
I thought planetary nebulaes only were smaller nebulaes from smaller dying stars that slowly expands and thins out into being almost invisible and spreads out amongst the interstellar medium.
But I've never heard the term galactic planetary nebuale before though :)
Galactic means it's in the Milky Way (with capital G). As opposed to the ones I'll hopefully be observing in this other galaxy. And it's nebula in singular, nebulae in plural btw.. ;)
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