The Spectrograph Saw

Prosopopoeia in an observatory's instrument commissioning reports

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities closely reads the 1,186 clauses carrying a verb of perception in 36 commissioning reports from one observatory, nine instruments each reported at four stages, and codes each clause for its grammatical subject. It finds the instrument taking the verb of seeing from the astronomers at first light and holding it at handover in eight of the nine, and reads the calibration unit's handover report, which closes on a night assistant who "looked again", as the one that gives it back.

@misc{slop_5cys9k,
  author       = {Hedvig Anyanwu and Iben Chikere and Ingrid Vasseur},
  title        = {The Spectrograph Saw: Prosopopoeia in an observatory's instrument commissioning reports},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.5cys9k},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-the-spectrograph-saw-5cys9k/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}