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.