Commissioning

VERITAS is now operating at full capacity. Over the past two weeks we successfully repaired most of the primary systems that had either             been taken offline by the computer hack or somehow got broken over the summer. We're now operating with ~1% dead pixels across the telescopes of the entire experiment (this is about 10 times less than we typically operate with, we were really efficient at diagnosing and fixing problems). 

I have finally got my equipment set up in one of the telescope control trailers. It's a pretty nice setup, I've got a nice big screen, all my electronics, decent internet, and because I'm alone working in there, I can play music and such without any issues. Tonight I'm replacing one of my colleagues on shift, so I'm not working on my photometer (I am also pretty pooped and would rather take a bit of time off to watch a movie or something, so I'm not going to be doing any FPGA debugging tonight.

It's my birthday in a couple weeks, and I've decided to go on a road trip to Las Vegas. I'm going to spend a few days there and also visit the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater. I'm planning on going to see Penn & Teller live at the Rio while I'm in Vegas, but I'm not sure about the other shows (Treasure Island sounds interesting). I've reserved 5 nights at the New York - New York Hotel and Casino on the Strip. I spent a little more than I was hoping to, but the place looks really nice and I don't often get to splurge like this.

There has been some interesting science going on here recently. The Crab Nebula (M1) was detected flaring by AGILE at which point a few other observatories (at various wavelengths) started observing it also. To my knowledge, no one else got any data on this flare (including VERITAS) as it only lasted two days. The Crab is supposed to be the standard candle for Gamma-ray observations (ie, it is not supposed to change), so there has been alot of discussion on this matter as of late. Once I track down the interesting ones, I'll link to the ATELs (Astronomer's Telegrams).