Apache Point and National Solar Observatories

Today I went to Apache Point Observatory and spent most of the day filming and interviewing the astronomers. Below an operator places optic fibers in place for spectroscopy tonight.

Just one of the many telescopes.

Then I spent the rest of the day back at the national solar observatory. I'm becoming a regular at lunch in their cafeteria.

Now off to Las Cruces for the night and then on to Arizona and observatory number 10.

Cheers :P

Ski Apache

Had a wonderful day skiing at Ski Apache. The snow wasn't the best as they have not had a fall of snow for a while but it was like the snow i've seen in Australia in a bad season. It was still fun and my skiing is getting much better although my legs couldn't keep up with me for the whole day. I need to do more exercise!

Back to Alamagordo

Today I headed back to Alamagordo and saw a lava flow in the Valley of Fires.

Saw the rockets at White Sands Missile Range and visited the Space Museum in Alamagordo for a history of space and rocketry lesson.

Tomorrow I'm off for a day of skiing at Ski Apache.

Back soon :)

Magdalena Ridge Observatory and the VLA

My wonderful host Lisa from NRAO organised us a great day touring observatories. First we stopped on the highest mountain I have ever been on (over 10000 feet) to visit the Magdalena Ridge Observatory.

The telescope has one of the mirrors originally made for the Hubble Space Telescope and moves fast enough to track missiles launched at the nearby White Sands Missile range by the military.

We then headed to the Very Large Array (VLA) and first saw the dishes for the ALMA array in Chile.

The view from the control room was amazing with all the dishes observing one object.

Here is one of the 27 dishes.

Then we got t climb through a dish and dissect it.

Followed by a great steak (yum). Thanks Lisa.

National Solar Observatory

Next I drove to El Paso, stayed the night and drove on into New Mexico. Then I visited the national solar observatory at where else but Sunspot New Mexico.

There is more of this telescope below the ground than above.

I checked out their instruments like this adaptive optics system.

There were more things on this mountain looking at the Sun than I could have imagined.

Austin, Fort Davis and McDonald Observatory, Texas

Over the last few days:

I spent two days in Austin at the start of the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. I attended some educator sessions, met many people I had emailed in the past so I put faces to names. I also got lots of free books, DVD's, etc which I can't get in Australia.

I drove to fort Davis today in a Mazda 6 I have hired, I went to the evening star viewing at the McDonald visitors center and camped that night in Fort Davis.

I toured the telescopes the next day up on the mountain including the old ...

... one of the largest in the world and,

the people behind the scenes.

Cheers,
Jeff

Palomar Observatory

Today visited Palomar mountain.

I filmed with the Schmidt telescope and posed as Edwin Hubble did long ago.

I then checked out the size of the mirror for the 5.1m Hale telescope.

and checked out the telescope with Scott.

Well now I've seen the telescopes that have discovered the size of the universe, the expansion of the universe, dwarf planets, extra-solar planets, quasars, magnetic fields in sunspots and many more. It's basically most of the history of modern astronomy. Just right for a geek like me :P

Cheers,
Jeff