The telescopes available are:

• Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), 1040 cm. (Webb)
• Telescopio infrarrojo “Carlos Sánchez” (TCS), 155 cm.(Web)
• “William Herschel” Telescope (WHT), 420 cm. (Web)
• “Isaac Newton” Telescope (INT), 250 cm.(Web)
• Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), 256 cm. (Web)
• Telescopio Nacional “Galileo” (TNG), 350 cm. (Web)
• Mercator Telescope 120 cm. (Web)
• Liverpool Telescope, 200 cm.(Web)

More details can be found here.

The Dyson Hot is a commercial air heater that became available during autumn 2011. Dyson claims that it is a very efficient heater which excels beyond the more conventional heater by quickly and evenly heating a room. Being many times more expensive than most of the other heaters on the market it was of interest to scientifically quantify the claims by Dyson. The aim of this experiment has been to assess the performance of the Dyson Hot by comparing it to a standard heating oven. Although this has not done in a professional test lab, great care has been given to make sure the measurements were as accurate as possible.

Instrumental Setup

The two heaters, the Dyson hot and the conventional heater, were placed at a distance of 3.04 meters (10 ft) away from a temperature module based on the DS18B20 (info). The temperature module was suspended in the air so that it was not affected by the material it would have otherwise been lying on. The power consumption was measured using a energy meter. The relative humidity in the room was controlled by a Duracraft Dehumidifier. The uncertainty of the power consumption is only an estimate from watching the readings change with time.

Data Acquisition

The data was sampled at a frequency of once per minute. Prior to recording the data the room temperature was measured to be stable within 0.5 °C. The error of the temperature module is given to be ± 0.5 °C by the manufacturer. The measurements were both started at 15.0 ± 0.5 °C and stopped after 90 minutes.

Results

Temperature curves between the conventional heater and the Dyson Hot, both rotating and non-rotating. The Dyson Hot, regardless of mode, is more efficient at heating a room.

The conventional heater

The conventional heater started heating the room at 15.0 ± 0.5 °C with a relative humidity of 73 ± 5 % as measured by the TFA humidty meter. 90 minutes later the room had reached 19.63 ± 0.5 °C with a relative humidity of 66 ± 5 %.

The Dyson Hot (without rotation)

The Dyson Hot started heating the room at 14.75 ± 0.5 °C with a relative humidity of 73 ± 5 % as measured by the WH2080 Weather Station. 90 minutes later the room had reached 21.50 ± 0.5 °C with a relative humidity similar to the conventional heater.

The Dyson Hot (with rotation)

The Dyson Hot started heating the room at 14.88 ± 0.5 °C with a relative humidity of 72 ± 5 % as measured by the WH2080 Weather Station. 90 minutes later the room had reached 20.56 ± 0.5 °C with a relative humidity similar to the conventional heater.

Discussion

It is clear from the results that the Dyson Hot is indeed more efficient at heating a room. Not only was the room warmer after 90 minutes, but the Dyson Hot had also used less electricity. After 90 minutes the conventional heater had used 3.188 kWh whilst the Dyson Hot used in the same time 2.927 kWh, a difference of 0.262 kWh. Initial tests showed that a similar relative humidity was required for an accurate comparison. The Dyson Hot also seemed to push the hot air around more efficiently as shown in the figure below. We are not able to quantify just how much more efficient the Dyson Hot is at distributing heat as the heaters were placed at a fixed distance during all the measurements. Neither the Dyson Hot or the conventional heater gave off a burnt dust smell. The major downside of the Dyson Hot is the price. Assuming a conventional heater costs about £ 12 the Dyson Hot currently priced at £ 269.99 is then 22.5 times more expensive. One might thus argue that it is more convenient to use two or more conventional heaters to warm several rooms instead of having to move the Dyson Hot around from room to room.

A figure from the Dyson website showing the distribution of heat between a conventional heater and the Dyson Hot.

Conclusion

The Dyson Hot is without doubt more energy efficient and thus more cost effective. It is also better at heating a room, both in terms of speed and heat distribution. The major setback is the price. If you decide to get the Dyson Hot and you liked this scientific review please buy from the link below:

Don’t let the size fool you.

Despite being only 58cm tall, this device still manages to warm my entire living room relatively quickly. It’s controls are very intuitive and the controller is easy to use. The Dyson Hot itself hardly heats up making it easy to just grab and move to another room should you need to.

So is there a down side?

Not major downsides at all. The price is quite steep and I was really worried I was paying to much for a heater. After seeing it’s results I am no longer of that opinion. At the highest air speed level it is not exactly quiet, but this can be counteracted by turning down the air speed.

I do not work for Dyson or anything like that. Normally I don’t write reviews either. However, since I now own a Dyson hot and I was at the time not able to find any reviews on it, I thought it best I wrote this one.

If you have questions about the Dyson Hot, feel free to use the comment section below.

The dwelling of the HARPS intrument

One of today’s highlights was seeing the room where the HARPS instrument is being kept. For it be able to achieve accurate radial velocity measurements the instrument has be kept at a constant temperature and pressure. I was fortunate to be shown the room where the instrument is kept locked inside a carefully monitored subroom. Due to us humans emitting heat, the visit had to be rather quick and we had to remember to close the door after us to make sure this nights observers did not loose any measurement accuracy.

Here the HARPS instrument lies locked inside. The HARPS room is kept at a very precise temperature and pressure. If it were to be opened it would take days for the temperature to return to the stable conditions required for measuring radial velocities at the 1 m/s level.

"First Light" - A little bit of history written on the whiteboard inside the old abandoned control room.

The escaping atmosphere of HD 209458 b (Credit: Alfred Vidal-Madjar)

HD 209458 b has been the subject of intense study since the first planetary transits were detected (Charbonneau et al. 2000, Henry et al. 2000, Mazeh et al. 2000). It was the first planet to have it’s atmosphere detected using transmission spectroscopy (Charbonneau et al. 2002). What Charbonneau et al. (2002) detected was absorption from sodium which caused a 0.02% deeper light curve relative to simultaneous observations of the transit in adjacent bands. The presence of sodium was later confirmed by Snellen et al. (2008) who used a ground based telescope (Subaru Telescope). Despite this sodium detection, it was not as deep as predicted by a model which assumed a cloudless planetary atmosphere with a solar abundance of sodium. This lead to number of theories such as there being a low primordial abundance of sodium and/or clouds present in the upper atmosphere, to mention a few. Later Rowe et al. (2008) showed that HD 209458 b had a significantly lower albedo than Jupiter using the MOST (Microvariablity and Oscillations of Stars) satellite. This ruled out the presence of bright reflective clouds in the atmosphere. It is now thought that a low sodium abundance is due to condensation (where sodium condenses into sodium sulfide) or ionisation. This is supported by the observation of a sudden abundance change of sodium from the lower atmosphere (where the abundance is about 2 times the solar abundance) to the upper atmosphere (where it is about 0.2 times that of the solar abundance) (Sing et al. 2008). Recent discoveries include the the presence of water in the atmosphere (Beaulieu et al. 2010) and as well as atomic hydrogen, oxygen, and ionized carbon in the upper atmosphere (Koskinen et al. 2010).

Me with my astronomer face on.

Me pretending to do something useful in the NTT control room

A few of the telescopes at the La Silla observatory

La Silla sadly shows signs of economic cut backs with many smaller telescopes decommissioned. I was surprised at the sheer amounts of telescopes here.

The main hotel and restaurant

The site itself is very beautiful and has spectacular views.

View from La Silla observatory

The sun setting and giving way to the spectacular night sky

The astronomer himself enjoying the sunset

The ESO Guest House

The ESO guest house in Santiago is lovely colonial looking place.. It is a quiet haven perfect for astronomer who has had a long travel. It has nice grounds, a fountain, a swimming pool and a coffee machine. For more info on the guest house see ESO’s website.

General view of the La Silla observatory, as seen from the road that leads to the Las Campanas Observatory.

This week I will be travelling to Chile to observe with the New Technology  Telescope (NTT). I plan to share my experiences here.