Photo of Part of Tonights Commissioning Team...

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the hottest astronomer of all?  Pictured here is part of the DECam commissioning team, reflected in the gold-coated hemispherical mirror of RASICAM – the Radiometric All Sky Infrared Camera.

RASICAM will spend nights mapping  the trajectories of high cirrus clouds and contrails, invisible to the naked eye, and telling the Victor M. Blanco Telescope where best to find clear sky so that the DECam, mounted on the front of the telescope, can take good images.  RASICAM's state-of-the-art camera can determine the absolute temperature measured in each of its 76,800 pixels, and thus can create a detailed digital picture of where it's cloudy and where it's not.  Of course, humans, like clouds, also emit heat.  And therefore RASICAM can let us know for once and all--who is the hottest astronomer on Tololo...

Clockwise from west, Klaus H (OSU), Andrea K (CTIO), Alberto A (CTIO), Marcelle S (Fermi Lab), Steve K (Fermi Lab), A very blurry Tom D (Fermi Lab), David J (CTIO), Kevin R (SLAC).