1/15 Mirror Lab and Elixir of Love

The Steward Mirror Lab was impressive. We got to see the rooms where they create large spin-cast mirrors. They were in the process of polishing a mirror for the Magellan telescope and were preparing one of the LSST mirrors for polishing. I was glad they didn’t kick me out for not having close toed shoes.

We got all dressed up and went to dinner with Art and Linda. They took us to a fabulous restaurant serving central Mexican cuisine (I think?). The restaurant changes dishes every evening, so we had a little over ten meals to choose from. I had the pollo morita y queso. It was fantastic. All of the food was fantastic… fresh… flavorful. We all shared chocolate mousse and flourless chocolate volcano cake with berries. This was the best meal I have had since I ate in Cape Town last year.

Art and Linda took us to an opera by Donizetti called Elixir of Love. The production was cheery. I thought the music had beautiful harmony and melodies. It made me feel like singing and smiling. Anything that makes me feel like that is good in my book.

Thank you again Art and Linda! :)

Adventurous

Well I have two days to cover in this posting. On tuesday we met up with our archaeological friend from the University of Arizona, Indiana Patrick we like to call him, to go out to a couple of Native American sites in the San Pedro Valley to a get an idea of where some of the pottery we saw the previous day have been retrieved. We had to drive 1.5 hours east of Tucson past the mountains to get to these places. It was rough drive once we got off the main roads and we put the 4-wd SUV's to good use on the off-road terrain. On SUV actually ended up blowing a tire on our way back. We had to get special permission to gain access to the land these sites are located on because of private ownership. On all the sites we anxiously searched for pieces of pottery and indeed we found many small fragments to our delight. It was the most peaceful place I have ever been. The scenery was astonishing and it was truly a blessing to have such an experience in it.

Wednesday we made a trek up over 8,000 feet to Mt. Hopkins to have a tour of Whipple Observatory. This observatory included the 4 VERITAS gamma-ray telescopes and MMT. All of which are impressive pieces of scientific equipment in both size and engineering. The telescopes in VERITAS are 12 meters in diameter and MMT is 6.5 metes in diameter. MMT which is located at the peak of Mt. Hopkins provided an incredible view of the valley below. We were even high enough to see across the border into Mexico. The drive to the top consists of cut out road in the mountain side about 3-4 meters wide. That in itself is excitement enough. I am just amazed at the tools we have been given that allows us to see such incredible things that these telescopes capture that we could otherwise not see. I am truly thankful for that.