Our last day on the mountain was jam-packed with activities, including a short but extremely strenuous hike, tourist-y shopping, really good pizza (and HUGE cookies!), and a good night of observing. The day started with a trip to the town of Summerhaven to do some hiking and stop at a couple gift shops. The hike from the town up the mountain to the water tower was VERY steep, and Dane and I admitted defeat to the altitude and stopped about 2/3 of the way up to wait for the others to finish. The walk back down was easier, only slightly complicated by the ice and snow drifts and the loose gravel of the road. I had suggested that we get pizza from the Cookie Cabin while we were on the mountain, and we decided to get some to take back to the dorm for lunch/dinner. The Cookie Cabin is famous for awesome, plate-size cookies but has delicious pizza too, and I ate there last J-Term so I knew everyone would love it. We were also told that it's a tradition for astronomy students to go to one Summerhaven gift shop that sells homemade fudge and we definitely continued it, with the 11 of us purchasing somewhere around 8 pounds in total.
After dinner, thoroughly worn out and well-fed, we were ready to get back to work. Between the Jupiter and nebula groups' work times we set aside an hour or so for us to take images of an object of our choosing, and although most people chose planetary nebulae or galaxies, I chose the star Epsilon Aurigae because I am analyzing changes in it's spectrum for my senior thesis. The images turned out well, and then I settled in to wait for the Saturn group's turn at the telescope. A couple videos of Saturn look promising, but my computer is still not running correctly and I may have to wait until after we get back and I can get it checked out before I can do any stacking myself. We called it quits early and headed back to the dorm to get packed and get some sleep before moving back to Tucson early Friday afternoon, and that was the end of our last day on Mt. Bigelow.
Jenny
The picture above is the view from where Dane and I stopped on the hike in Summerhaven, and the one below is looking up from that point to the water tower everyone else hiked to.
The picture above is the view from where Dane and I stopped on the hike in Summerhaven, and the one below is looking up from that point to the water tower everyone else hiked to.
Your pictures are, once again, fantastic. It really is a shame you and Dane decided not to trek to the top. I'm sure you would have done wonderful things with the view up there.
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