PURPLE the Drs. jacket was purple :P
1-13 Breakfast... same place, same goodness. Meet Patrick for tour around dig-sites. Very interesting, but very exhausting. The purpose behind the trips was not clear, but the tour around the area was nice. To the cool car: "We are beautiful..." That night, saw the movie for IYA and found it interesting but not simple enough for the average PBS viewer. Horray for chinese food.
1-14 Toured MMT. Honestly surprised by size of mirror and enjoyed watching the guy clean with CO2. Learned silver paint is better than white for keeping out heat on metal. Tour guide liked to talk about trees while on the drive and showed a couple of old mines (including "2 Mines").
1-15 Went to UA for Mirror Lab. Tour was cooll, but speaker was hard to listen to. Saw big mirrors in process for GMT and LSST. Watched neat vid on LBT and was started to find no stablizers on secondary mirror. That night we met with the sponsors of our group (sp. Stoubitz?) and had a remarkable dinner. I got the chef's surprise for dinner including portions of the tamale, chicken with mustard sauce, and spicy beef. Flan for dessert filled a need that I haven't gotten for a while. The opera that night was better than I thought, but the caption people needed to get their act together.
1-16 Walked in National Park and fought to get to the top. Failed :'( but was impressed with how well I did. But now in need of major rest.
1-17 Drive to Kuiper and not really finding an issue with the thin air... yet. Telescope took a while to cooperate with DA. Night one going really well and learning the protocol quickly and hoping the result exceeds expectations. "lots of hurry up and wait"
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Patrick was extremely generous for giving his time to secure permission to visit the sites and guide us through them. Unfortunately the sites were not preserved well and most were nothing more than pits of sand, rock, and cactii; a bit of a disappointment. The cooler car blew a tire on the rock road and while waiting for the tire to be replaced the people from the cool car took turns hugging a cactus. I laughed.
ReplyDeleteThe MMT telescope was incredible. The scenery was terrific too, but the drive up and down was hard on the stomach after a while.
The size of the mirrors at the Mirror Lab had to be seen to be believed. There are going to be 7 of these things working in tandem to make one huge mirror! I would love to see them grind the mirrors to the specifications needed. That night was the fancy dinner and opera with the Staubitz's. That dinner was very...leafy. The entire dish was covered in big leafy vegetables with the main course at the bottom. All of it was very good. The opera that night was the first time i had seen an opera. It was definitely better than i had anticipated.