Pauma Valley

> So this was an interesting star party. Very very cloudy, but interesting. In a way. Not really interesting in an observing kind of way, but interesting because it wasn't a school or a church or something putting the shindig on. See, it was just this lady, who was a very nice lady, but she wore a rabbit-skin coat that she called her "observatory coat." That, and she lived about 12 miles away from any known point in civilization. So, needless to say, on this slightly rainy night, things were a bit ... peculiar.

Posted by Administrator at 2002.03.23 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

Palomar Mountain Field Trip

> On 16 March, we spent a day up at Palomar Mountain, at the Hale 200-inch Telescope. And, I must say, we had the best tour we've had so far. We got up there, and it had snowed overnight, and left about four inches of powder on the ground. So, we felt it necessary to pick up all the snow we could, and summarily hurl it at each other. After we wore ourselves out doing that, we had our observatory tour. We got the whole package: the ride around on the dome, AND the tour guide rotated the telescope inside on two axes and opened and closed the mirror cover. It was good stuff. We also got to see the telescope's new adaptive optics equipment (that corrects for the blurriness caused by the atmosphere). Then we went back down the mountain, had lunch at a greasy spoon, and got back around 4.

Posted by Administrator at 2002.03.16 10:27 AM | Comments (0)