Up on the Mountain

Day 1 (1/11) : After a frantic effort to quickly pack up and leave the hotel, we all arrived at Safeway to get all of the groceries that we needed for our time at the observatory. Once we had everything that we needed, it was off to the 90 minute trip up the mountain road. On the way, we stopped at a few points of interest, most notably being the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site, which was formerly a work-camp during WWII. The story behind it is that Hirabayashi was one of the prisoners there as a result of the Japanese internment during the war. While there, he, and the other prisoners there, had to build the mountain roads by hand, without any vehicles or machinery. Years after the war ended, Hirabayashi helped the successful effort to make the government apologize and correct the injustice of the internment of Japanese Americans, and as a result of this, the work-camp that he was imprisoned in was converted into a public park and named in his honor.

As we continued to make our way up the mountain, we stopped at a couple of scenic vistas, where I was able to get some fantastic pictures. Just a few minutes later, we finally made it to the observatory, and got orientated to the dorms, the telescope, and its operation. After everyone finally had their dorms taken care of, we set up our equipment in the observatory and began our first observations of Jupiter and planetary nebulae. throughout most of the night, things were going really well (except for fighting off the urge to fall asleep, for most of us) Jupiter was looking incredible through the 61" telescope, and the nebula images were consistently excellent in clarity.

Unfortunately our luck ran out shortly after midnight, when for reasons unknown to us, a power outage that blacked out a nearby town caused us to cease operations for the night, and we all headed into the dorms where we tried to pass the time until around 4:00 AM when we decided to call it a night and hope things go better the next day.

Day 2 (1/12): After a (somewhat) good sleep on the box-spring of my dorm bed, I woke up around 11:45 AM (the longest I had ever slept 'till at that point) and I got ready for the day. First, I went on a scenic hike with D.A. to the top of Mt. Bigelow. Walking up the snow-covered trail surrounded by tall evergreen forest made me feel like I was back in Wisconsin, I found it hard to believe that I was still in southern Arizona while walking up a snow-covered mountain! Along the way up, I managed to take some great pictures of the northern mountains and valleys. When we returned to the observatory, we got the telescope ready for Jupiter & nebula observations like we did yesterday (just without the power going out) all going off without a hitch.

Then around 3:00 AM, we finally got our first look at Saturn and it was spectacular! The planet itself, and its magnificent rings showed up with great clarity on our camera setup as we began our series of recordings before retiring to the dorms around 6:00 AM. Thus bringing a very productive day 2 to a close.