Our run of good weather has continued – it has been a sunny and dry week, ideal for observing. By now we know how the observing runs work well, so with spare time during the observing run we are working on our e-mail inboxes, which have been steadily filling up. In particular, EuroVenus members have played a central role in organising the International Venus Science Conference in Oxford, U.K., to be held in April 2016. This conference will provide a forum for discussion of results from spacecraft – not only Venus Express but also from the Japanese orbiter Akatsuki, recently arrived at Venus – but also from ground-based observatories like those here at Mauna Kea. I spend my morning sifting through abstracts being submitted for this conference; performing our own telescope observations of Venus, still faintly visible in the blue sky above, while sorting through these abstracts, seems peculiarly apt.
Our observing run soon draws to a close: we shut down the telescope shortly after noon, when the atmospheric turbulence is getting too great to allow good observing, and head down the mountain for a bit of rest before starting the long journey home. We have not yet analysed the data from this week’s observations, so do not know what the wind fields will look like; however, the good weather experienced this week should result in a good dataset.