Monday, June 7, 2010

...it's the mirrors....


...of the three telescopes at the McDonald Observatory, the Hobby Eberly consists of 91 mirror segments, making it the third largest telescope designed to specialize in spectroscopy ...unbelievable... our tour guide was so excited about adding to this telescope to study the dark energy which is something the scientists can't figure out....



we took the two and half hour tour...starting with an amazing video of the sun and a lecture and a live shot of the sun...solar flares, sun spots and gas bubbles...where was I during science class...Rachel our tour guide was so informative and interesting, I was thinking maybe she might need an assistant this summer...he he...






the view from the top of the mountain was amazing...they told us the reason for the location was because of it being the darkest place in the US...they were having a star watching party that night at 10 o'clock, which had to be totally awesome but we were an hour away from camp and opted out...looking back up the mountain, I couldn't believe how far it was...a trip well worth it....



on our drive back we stopped at the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens...just a tip...don't try this at 2 o'clock in the afternoon...only 109...we managed the mile walk around and saw some unusual cactus but we were ready for the air condition ride back to the RV....little did we know that our RV air conditioner would have tripped the circut breaker and it was 107 inside the RV and 111 outside...we stayed in the pool until sundown and the RV was a little cooler...Bill was at the point of almost heading home...after the pool cooldown, he was just fine and on to Rockhound State Park New Mexico the next day.....



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