The democratic national convention has now officially nominated Obama as the democratic nominee for POTUS. Earlier in the week Willie Nelson performed. Tonight Vanity Fair and Google throw a shindig. As it happens, I could have finagled to hang out with Willie Nelson backstage. And it is not inconceivable that I could have swung an invite to the VF/Google party. (A long complicated story involving poker, kiteboarding, and an indolent brother). So, you may be asking yourself, am I now in Denver hanging out with all the politicos? Actually, no. I'm sitting in Waimea, Hawai'i. For years I have been wanting to go observing, but for some reason observers are hesitant to allow theorists to play with their $300M toys. But why should Julianne have all the fun?
Alison Coil and Ben Weiner have been kind enough to let me tag along on one of their observing runs. We're looking at outflows from post-starburst galaxies at high redshift. We'd like to understand whether winds from starbursts or AGNs might have inhibited subsequent star formation. (More details in a future post.) We'll be using the Keck observatory on Mauna Kea, arguably the world's premier (Earthbound) telescopes. Our nights were allocated months ago. Apparently this is not the sort of thing you can switch at the last minute because you want to go to a party. Even a Google party. So a difficult choice had to be made. After much soul-searching, science won out. Instead of socializing with movie stars and shaking Obama's hand (again), I'll be standing on a 4200 meter summit in the middle of the Pacific.
