Stacked Saturn Images

The previous post really was my final one, but I realized that I never uploaded any of my stacked Saturn images and didn't want to end the blog without posting some of the results of all of our hard work. Between the power outage and poor seeing they aren't as good as I had hoped for, but here are my best Saturn images. Thanks for reading our blog, and I hope you enjoyed the pictures!
Jenny

Day 11

Today started with a long drive up the road and mountain to Kitt Peak.  The peak has 27 telescopes on it including the solar telescope.  The day at Kitt Peak included touring multiple telescopes and learning a lot about each one.  My favorite would have to be the Solar Telescope.  The reason for this was because of the shear size of the telescope building.  After touring this telescope we went to look at the 90 inch telescope.  We were given a private tour of the facility.  This telescope dome was designed to deflect the wind and seemed to work, considering the fact that wind speeds can reach up to 100 mph up on the peak.  We were talking to the engineer and he told us about how he fell from 30 feet and landed on concrete and obviously survived.  This was really amazing, however the height of the dome was more amazing. I then bought a coffee mug in the gift shop and we headed down the mountain.  On the way down when we left the Indian reservation we got stopped by boarder patrol, wanting the dogs to sniff the car and van.   This was fun but scary at the same time. 

Day 10

Our day here starts with a trip to Mt. Hopkins to see the 6.5 meter telescope.  This telescope was absolutely amazing.  The trip to the telescope started with a curvy trip up the mountain and then a short walk from the cars to the door.  Once inside the dome, my mind was blown at how big the telescope was compared to the dome.  The engineers were moving the telescope and it lacked inches from hitting the wall.  Also, the effort to move the telescope was minimal.  This amazed me as well that this huge telescope was so balanced and moved so well.  We then headed down the elevator and to the floor again.  The engineer moved the cover off the mirror and this revealed the mirror in all its glory.  I was again amazed at the massive size of the mirror. 

Thirteenth Day: The Trip Home

I wasn't planning on writing a blog for today, but DA hinted on the way home that we might want to. Other than Don having his cactus jellies confiscated by the TSA in Tucson (which I'm rather surprised he hasn't already fumed about here), the trip home was uneventful. He did get them put in the mail, though, and should be receiving them in the next few days. We played luggage tetris to get all of us, our souvenirs, and our suitcases in the two vehicles for the ride to the airport, but managed to get everything to fit. Our flight left Tucson on time and it even stopped snowing in Chicago so we could safely land at O'Hare. As soon as we stepped off the plane and I saw my breath I was ready to go back (it had been pushing 80 degrees the last few days in Tucson), but I am re-adjusting to the freezing cold, 10 degree weather that greeted us.

The ride home from the airport (thanks again Erin and Amber for picking us up!) involved a not-so-short detour (we missed a turn while distracted by a limo) and a lot of hilariously stupid, crazy conversations. I was surprised to discover that in the first ten minutes we outdid the conversations held at 4am on the mountain in terms of pure pointlessness, and I'm pretty sure that after that ride DA thinks we're all babbling morons if he didn't already. We eventually made it back to campus, and the new security system actually didn't lock me out of Tarble this time so I got back to my room without freezing to death. I got dinner, unpacked the important stuff and crashed early, and that was the end of my day. Sorry I don't have any pictures from today, but here are two more from Kitt Peak yesterday. These and all 250 or so of my best shots are also now on my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/30291127@N02/sets/72157625810941730/.

Jenny

Twelfth Day: Kitt Peak

I almost forgot to post this today, but thankfully it crossed my mind sometime between finishing packing and getting ready for bed. We toured Kitt Peak today, my second visit, and got to see all the regular visitor-accessible telescopes as well as a couple that are normally closed to the public. Our morning started with the McMath-Pierce solar telescope, and one of the people who work there was nice enough to delay his lunch break to show us around the control room that most people only get to glimpse through the window. From there we walked up to the .9 meter WIYN telescope that Melissa and I worked on in October. We weren't able to go inside, but everyone enjoyed the view from the shorter peak of the mountain. After that we visited one more telescope and went back to the vehicles to have lunch.

Shortly after lunch we were pleasantly surprised to learn that Dr. Arion had called someone at Steward and arranged for us to see their 90-inch telescope. The guy showing us around let us in the dome and their control room, and also let us go outside on the deck. The birds-eye view of basically the whole mountain was awesome, and I included a picture of it below. It was extremely windy today and there was a strong updraft coming up one side of the building that seemed strong enough to blow us away, and we had fun playing in it (see picture below). We also had an interesting conversation about whether a metal water bottle dropped from the deck 90 feet up would survive the fall, but it was left undecided. From the 90-inch we walked to the top of the mountain and the Mayall 4-meter telescope (picture below). It is a huge telescope, but we weren't able to see anything but the normal visitor areas which I saw in October and it pales in comparison to the MMT we saw yesterday.

The Mayall was our last stop at Kitt Peak, and we got back to the hotel sometime after 5. A few of us went to Sweet Tomato for dinner again, and the rest of my evening was spent packing and briefly looking through my pictures from today. Even though I had all my stuff organized already, I bought a few fragile souvenirs and it took me several tries before I reached what I hope will be the safest arrangement. We are heading home tomorrow, so this will probably be my last blog post. As usual, I included a few pictures from today below, this time with captions.

Jenny

The Mayall 4-meter telescope dome, situated on the highest point of Kitt Peak.

This cement slab was used as a counterweight when the 4-meter mirror was installed, and Justin and Ryan decided it would be fun to climb.

This was the side of the 90-inch dome that had a very strong updraft.

The view from the deck of the 90-inch dome was incredible.

As soon as we arrived we took the traditional Carthage group photo in front of the Kitt Peak sign.

We toured the Kitt of this Peak!

Today's festivities consisted of a (re)tour of Kitt Peak. It was really awesome to revisit the dome we worked in in October as well as tackle the climb AFTER having taken my inhaler and not suffering an attack on the way up! I didn't think I would be taking pictures of any of the telescopes because I had already taken several in October, but I did anyway. The telescopes looked the same as I remembered and the sky was just as blue as I remembered. Something new this trip, however, was the visit into one of the telescopes run by the Steward Observatory that was closed off to the public. We are so cool that we got a special tour of the facility! After our return to the hotel, Don, Justin, Jen, and I made one last trip to sweet tomatoes for dinner where Eric joined us not too long after our arrival. Don and I went for a short walk afterwards before heading back to the hotel. I hung out by the hot tub with a few people for a while until about 10 and headed back to my room to pack for tomorrow's venture home. I had every intention of rejoining everyone once I finished packing... But that didn't really happen, the bed was just so comfy that I decided to lay down, write this blog and snuggle in for bed. It's been a wonderful trip for which I thank everyone as it is back to the tundra in the evening.

Day 11 - A somewhat stunning conclusion, with a hint of lackluster.

Today should have started at 6 am. Today should have greeted me with a chilly sunrise and some chocolate chip muffins, before the whole class sheepily shuffled into the cars for a lovely trip to the mirror lab. Today should have been a full itinerary, complete to the point where I just wanted to pass out at the end of the day. But, due to an unforseen event, the Mirror lab was closed. I didn't hear the specifics from DA, but it sounds like they are either calibrating or testing equipment, and the mirror lab is closed to the public - even the elite public, like us.

Instead, the day started at 8, with banana nut muffin, and a still kinda chilly morning. We shuffled into the cars all the same, and took a fairly long ride (I spent most of it in varying degrees of unconciousness, and as such do not have a good gague of how long it took) up to kitt peak. The instruments atop that mountain are remarkable. There was a huge range of telescopes, spectroscopes, and miscellanious doodads. But, with the exception of one telescope, everything was separated from us, and the whole event had a very strong feel of "Tourist trap", which I shall go into more detail shortly.

Our first visit was the sun building. An oddity; half of the building was at a wonderful tilt, aligned with true north. The other half of the building (Rounded, more like 3/4ths) was driven into the ground. Inside was a fantastic feat of engineering; at the top, 3 lenses followed the sun and focused down the excessivly long tunnel to a primary mirror (for each). This mirror in turn reflected to secondaries and tertiaries, which directed the beams down to the control room. We left the gawkerbox, as I shall refer to the enclosed, windowed rooms we spent most of our trip in, and hunted down the control room. Through sheer luck, we caught one of the operators just as he was leaving for lunch. He invited us in, and we got to see the inner workings. I shan't bore you with the specifics, but suffice to say that there were 2 experiments set up (one running), and the final beam was directed to a flat table, where with the assistance of heavy sunglasses, we were able to identify a sun spot on the sun. We thanked the hungry operator for his time, and set out for a tour of the rest of the facility.

We visited the dome that the students who visited in October got to use, although we did not explore inside it. Nearby, there was a much much larger telescope (nearly double the size) that used the same size dome, really cementing in my mind just how far we have come, both in terms of engeneering and technology. From there, we visisted a few more telescopes that held the "You are a tourest and are a danger to the equipment; stay away", and thus did little to hold my interest beyond the initial scan of the equipment / mounting system.

We broke up the telescope splunking to grab lunch and investigate the visitor center. Of the various objects there, three caught my eye; An excessivly large coffee mug (purchased), Monopoly IN SPACE (35$, thus not purchased), and a pair of boxers with the milky way on them, and an arrow that pointed to the back and wrote "Uranus is here". While the last warrented a chuckle, I sadly do not have the audacity to wear such a thing, and thus they remained unpurchased. Lunch was a simple affair, chips and pb&j's. With food and souvineers, we were greeted by one of the mechanics (maybe engeneers) of Kitt peak, who escourted us out of the visiter center to a telescope that was closed to the public.

We were ushered in past the "no admittance" point, and piled onto an elevator that had a max load of 2500 lbs. Considering there were 13 of us, and each of us (on average) is about 200 lbs (some way less, but most weigh more), it is no doubt in my mind we were over capacity. The engeneer thought the same, and expressed his concern: "If the light goes out, then that means we're over capacity. Shortly after that, the elevator will drop back to the bottom. Hopefully it won't kill all of us." So, of course, just as we were about to reach the top, the light went out, and most of us jumped / paniced. I, of course, with my incredibly mental capacity, had logic'd out that the light would turn off regardless (we were going up to the dome, and flooding it with light every time someone uses the elevator would ruin too many exposures), and as such didn't jump. He got a good laugh out of our reactions, and then we noticed that the elevator stopped a good 3 inches short of the top floor, and we realized very quickly that we were REALLY over capacity.

The telescope itself was pretty neat. I've become slightly disillusioned with them as of late, as we have been recieving a concentrated dose of telescope pretty much every day. Still, being next to them is awe-inspiring, and there were a few technical and logistical points that I asked for clarification. After we had our share of the telescope, we explored the control room, and the overhang. I gagued our height at ~3 stories, justin at 4, when in reality, we were 90 feet off the ground, proving once again that I'm terrible at gaguing distance - expecially in thin, clear air.

Our tour of kitt peak was rounded off with a trip to the last telescope / gallery. Once again, we were funneled into a gawkerbox, although this one streched the circumfrence of the building. Again, the instruments were cool, and again I was awed by the sheer magnitude of them (expecially when I realized the motor rotating this beast of a telescope could fit in my hand), but the cold, seperated feeling that the glass panes created kind of killed the mood. On an amusing note though, there was a fire hose with the label "Firehose, for Fire use only. HANDS OFF."

We wrapped up the trip and returned to the hotel, although this time I spent it in deep conversation. Half of this deep conversation was a consistent pop-culture back and fourth with other students in the car, while the other half was an interesting question DA posed to me. Through a thereputic chain of events, the car somehow got onto the topic of transitions in musical nature. Each decade had a genre of music that "defined" it, either due to an extremely influential band (i.e. greatful dead or beatles) or through the creation of a genre (hip-hop, rap). Dane posed "What was the transition between 1830 and 1840 then?". I responded, resonably so, that I had no experience with the subtle nuances of musical transitions of the 1800's. When asked "why not?" I responded (reasonably so) with "Because knowing this isn't at all even remotely helpful to me."

Arion took offence to this, and asked me flat out "why did you go to a liberal arts college." It took me a moment, but I responded with something to the effect of "Becuase having a basic knowledge of English, Philosophy, and Religion amoung other things will make me a more rounded person. Not quite a jack of all/master of none, but more than a one trick pony." The banter went back and forth betwixt us, ultimately culminating into professor Arion stating that "I'm disappointed in students with that kind of attitude," continuing on to say (paraphrased) that students shouldn't actively avoid knowledge just because they don't think it will be useful. I took offense at this point, but unfortunately, the conversation had changed topics, and I was unable to dredge back up this particular thought path.

The reason I took offense is this; Professor Arion painted two distinct pictures of the students - one where the student actively avoids knowledge, and one where the student actively seeks knowledge. The former, clearly, is a problem. A person is only as smart as they can convince other people they are. A genious who can't share his genious is just a lunatic. Likewise, a person who is only of middling intellegence, but can convey all of their ideas completely could easily come off as being incredibly intellegent. But I've gotten off topic. The latter student is a model that all students should strive for, but has some logistical issues. Speaking from knowledge as a double-major-triple-minor, I can say that it is incredibly easy to spread oneself out too thin. A person who seeks every knowledge is one who is bound to be - at best - mediocre at everything. The reality is, of course, between the two. And while Arion took my statement as to place me smack dab in the former (the actively avoiding category), it was more of a neutral statement. My statement was not to convey my disdane of the 1830's transition from classical to romantic music, but rather that I've not been exposed to it, nor had I actively searched it out. If the class had been available, assuming adequite pitching and time allotment, I would have taken it. But, obviously, the class doesn't exist, and I've no experience with the 1830's musical purview.

The conversation wrapped up with Nick asking me "what about dances of the 1830's?", to which I responded "Not useful at all for physics, but it would be interesting to learn about." Ultimately, I decided that the dichotomy isn't "Those who scorn knowledge versus Those who sponge knowledge", but that the dichotomy is "Those who learn for the sake of learning, versus those who avoid learning for the sake of learning." The two new categories relate nicely to the original two we created, counter-respectivly, in that at a glance they appear to be the same. The student who learns for the sake of learning will go out of their way to learn miscellanious information, while the student who avoids it will shun anything they find trivial. And this distinction made itself clear when Melissa offered me some of the Romantic composers of the time, and I responded with "That would be nice, thank you". This places me, at least somewhat, in the learning for the sake of learning, although my interest in the music is purely asthetic. I don't wish to study how the violin's somber cry transitions from the rigid classical to the more free-form romantic eras. I just want to enjoy some music from the 1840's, and if I notice a difference, excellent. If not, I'll still enjoy the music. Still, someone who avoids learning would have turned down the chance to expand their horizions. But I realize now that I've divoted more than half of this post to a hypothetical ending to our short discussion on our ride home. My apologies.

We returned to La Quinta, and I repacked all of my stuff (forgot to pack my shoes). We grabbed dinner at sweet tomatos, and I took a wonderful shower to wash away what little grime I accumulated during our short walk around Kitt Peak. This time tomorrow, I will be lying back in my own* bed, cursing the sub-zero temperatures. Still, it is with no amount of regret that I say I am glad that this trip is winding down. As I have alluded to previously, I've a weakness to home-sickness, and the thought of returning to Wisconson has my heart aflutter.

*Own read as dorm-rooms. My actual bed is still a few days away, assuming I can sneak away during the weekend to head home; doubtful, as we have a paper and a poster to design in 6 days.