Home cooked meals at Bryan and Linda’s….we’ve been eating hot dogs and
lunch meat sandwiches at camp. This is
such a treat!! Good food, good company,
good times!!!
----------
Playing with telescopes have long been a dream of Kim’s and Bryan rekindled that dream. Kim met Bryan when he volunteered at the men’s overnight shelter and Bryan is an astrophotographer, among other things. He and Kim talked and before long Kim was looking for a telescope and from there expanded into taking pictures of the heavens. Bryan has been a mentor to Kim in the area of astrophotography AND he rides a Yamaha scooter and a compatible helmet communicator. So before we got on our bikes and Bryan got on his scooter, we figured out how to set up 3-way communication and then set out for a ride out to Kitt Peak National Observatory. It’s about 50 miles from Tucson and when arriving at the base of the mountain, we had a 12 mile winding ride to the top. The sky becomes so much clearer as the elevation increases…I didn’t realize that until Bryan pointed it out. Kim and I took a tour of the 2.1 meter telescope. There was a lot of technical talk that I didn’t really understand, but I did pick up some information from the site noao.edu:
A Brief History of Kitt
Peak
 |
| Some of the domes out on Kitt Peak |
Kitt
Peak was selected in 1958 as the site for a national observatory after a 3-year
survey that included more than 150 mountain ranges across the U.S. The
Observatories on Kitt Peak are supported by the National Science Foundation. In
1957, the NSF entered into contract with the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy, Inc., for the operation of Kitt Peak as a national
center for optical astronomy. In 1982 the National Optical Astronomy
Observatories was formed, consolidating management of the three national
ground-based optical observatories which are Kitt Peak National Observatory,
the National Solar Observatory with facilities at Kitt Peak and Sacramento
Peak, New Mexico, and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
Headquarters for NOAO are in Tucson, Arizona.
Kitt Peak, located in the
Quinlan Mountains of the Sonoran Desert, comprises 200 acres of the nearly 3
million acre Tohono O'odham Nation. This land is leased by NOAO from the Tohono
O'odham under a perpetual agreement that is valid for as long as scientific
research facilities are maintained at the site.
----------
Wikipedia
has this to add:
Kitt Peak (O'odham: Ioligam)
is a mountain in the U.S. state of Arizona, and at 6,883 feet (2,098 m) is
the highest point in the Quinlan Mountains. The name Ioligam means "red stick" in
reference to the abundance of manzanita bushes on and around the mountain.
Up on Kitt Peak, I not only heard technical talk
of telescopes, but also of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ which made my head
spin. I have a hard time wrapping my
head around a ‘light year’. J Still, it
was a very enjoyable day.
----------
The wildflowers are really starting to pop…purple,
pink, orange, red and yellow flowers all adding a little bit of color to the otherwise
muted tones of the roadsides.
----------
On the tour today, as we stopped to catch our
breath, our guide Kate drew our attention to the vista that lay to the right
and then mentioned that we could see Mexico.
I get that but it would have been nice to know where...something like a
gigantic sign, flag or dotted line would have been nice. J
----------
It reached a high of 95o on the way
back to the house today. That plus the
engine heat from the bike made city driving beastly…but it beats a snowstorm. J
----------
Rode 125 miles today
No comments:
Post a Comment