The Desert is just like Clint Eastwood films...

...Full of cacti, coyotes (read: ky-oats) and gunslingers. Except instead of guns they carry cameras and sunscreen. But this is not the point. Read on.

Want a revolutionary idea? If you want to make a museum of something, why not just build the museum around that something and let people see it how it is? The AZ Desert Museum is just that. They took a really lively chunk of desert, put some open-air walkways around it, and charge $10 a head for admission. Gorgeous views, happy critters (in natural habitats), daily hawk shows, caves, and other awesome things are featured. This is definitely a worthwhile stop...just make sure you save an entire day to hike the 3 miles of trails spanning the museum. A few of us tried on the people-sized tortoise shell for size...

Pictured: Native Irish tortoise.

The museum, and the views around here in general, were constantly breathtaking. I cannot get enough of this place. Check out this random balcony they had simply for the purpose of overlooking the valley below:

We returned to town and for dinner, gorged ourselves at the "healthy" salad/soup buffet Sweet Tomatoes. The manager had to rent a backhoe to scrape our stuffed, flabby butts off the restaurant chairs. It was delicious, but definitely not the highlight of the night...

Later, many of us got our first real taste of astronomy; using the small telescope, we observed the crescent moon REALLY close up, along with Jupiter! I could pick out two moons and its fat red stripe. The attached video shows some footage of the moon we took with the Flea3 camera. Quick astronomy lesson: Notice the swirling effect; this is due to warm air circulating in the atmosphere. This blurs out details during camera exposures, making deep space imaging of distant objects quite a challenge for telescopes on Earth. This is part of the reason (light pollution being the other) for building telescopes on mountains, or, in the case of the hubble, in space. Also notice how the moon drifts across the frame. This is what it looks like in real time, and is simply because the Earth is rotating! Fancy that.

The aforementioned turbulence is also part of our project here - the FLEA3 camera can take 120 frames per second, so we can freeze out the waviness in the exposure by taking a LOT of images in a short time, stacking them up, and get some very nice photos of Saturn and Jupiter from it. Those will be posted once they're imaged. For now, up-close moon:

Desert Museum

Day two of our journey was filled with an extensive amount of walking around a series of exhibits and winding trails. But first, we stopped at a local supermarket for some food and began driving through the winding roads to the museum. I was thoroughly excited to drive the dodge charger!! We stopped at a few scenic hot spots as we wound through the mountainous terrain. At the museum, we quickly proceeded to walk some of the trails and view the exhibits while we waited for one of the wildlife shows to start. The first show we saw consistied of a couple of reptiles and I'm not going to lie, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open throughout the presentation, but I'm not really sure why that was... We then had lunch and ventured to the site of the next show; the raptor free fly. Here we watched a family of Harris hawks stake out their territory and occasionally fly dangerously close to our heads, I believe Arion was even kniked in the head by the female flying over. The show was quite fascinating. Throughout our adventure there on, a few of us received scores updates of the Packer game which we continued to follow until we got back to the hotel and were able to watch the last crucial minutes of the game. Packers won of course and moving on to the next game in playoffs! We then went to dinner and sat around the table and talked for quite anwhike before heading back and figuring out how to post this blog via iPod because of my computer problem and I sat and wrote the blogs for the first two days before hitting the hot tub again where we were kicked out after about 30 minutes or so.

Getting Acclimated

So far these first couple of days have given us a chance to get used to the Southwest environment, since after going from the tundra to the desert, it only makes sense to take in the great outdoors of Tucson. On Saturday, just after we arrived in Arizona, we went on a scenic hike through a small canyon in the northern mountains, which allowed us to see some of the diverse vegetation (mostly cacti) found throughout the desert , not to mention seeing the incredible views from the trail once we made it to the higher elevation up the trail. Then today, we all went to the Arizona Desert Museum and had a chance to learn about both the plant and wildlife found throughout the Southwest. There was so much to see and do there in just a single day! It was great to see birds, snakes, and many other desert animals in their own environment, instead of a fabricated enclosure like you'd see in a regular zoo. But the most amazing thing to see there had to be the "Free Flight", where we had the opportunity to watch a group of raptors (hawks) fly around the museum area as they would in the desert, while their handlers taught us about how they behaved, what they eat, how they live, etc. And so, by now I'd say that we've all pretty much gotten used to the Arizona environment, and are ready to begin exploring the sky of the Southwest!

The Moon is Amazing

Today was a great day. The Packers beat the Eagles, We toured the Arizona Desert Museum, and we took our first look through a telescope. The museum was an intriguing experience. I learned a great deal about the wildlife and native inhabitants of the Tuscon area. in particular I enjoyed leaning about the cacti because I had never seen a real one in its natural habitat before coming to Arizona. By far the best part of the museum was the Raptor hawk show. The hawks flew just inches above our heads as you can see in the video I have attached. I never knew some species lived and hunted together as families. They were magnificent creatures and we even got to see them hunt and catch some sort of field mouse. The teamwork they used was quite unique and apparently isn't found in any other type of birds.
At night we saw Jupiter and its two moons through the telescope, we also looked at the moon. The moon was especially interesting because the detail of the craters was unlike anything I have observed before. We worked on getting the telescope tracking working and aligned the finder sight with the observing lens. This will help us get better video tomorrow night because we have worked out most of the kinks with our set up.
I am starting to fall in love with the Arizona climate and skys. All in all it was a great day two and we are one day closer to getting up to Kuiper!

Day two, First Images...

We went to the Desert Museum first thing today. I believe the idea behind a nature museum completely outdoors is genius. Everything we saw was absolutely beautiful. Notice the palindrone? It was sort of like that. Peices of beauty all over the place... You just had to pay attention. The heart shaped cactus in the picture is an example. It could have been easily overlooked.
I must apologize for any formatting errors... Doing this on a phone isn't easy...
On an astronomical note, we took our forst images of the trip. Essentially a trial and error run with our little telescope.... DA had to show us several corrections, but at least we learned something, and thats what this trip is about. The photos of the moon were clear enough, and the webcam images were gorgeous. Unfortunately, the atmosphere was not a good friend of ours. Jupiter was also fairly decent to view and I saw the Orion Nebula with fair detail with my own eyes for the first time. I am lookimg forward to another amateur run tomorrow now that we know how to track.
Once again, it has been great getting to know all the other students and of course DA. Thank you all for making my first J Term as enjoyable as possible!!

Yesterday we landed in Tuscon; it looked different from Wisconsin instantly after exiting the airport. The plants are a lot different, but maybe more noticeable is the difference in the buildings. The buildings are more eye-popping in that they are not so square, and they have contrasting color schemes, painted with two colors of completely different brightness. The first order of business, eat. To taste Tuscon cuisine we went to El Indio, a mexican restaurant; the food seemed to taste fresher than the typical midwest restaurants serving the same food. After we got settled in our hotel, we went on a short hike. The hike was pretty cool, because we all got to see mountains with cacti in 50-60 degree weather. This is not how I think of January.

Today, we left for the desert museum around 9:00 am. This was great to see, because it is like a desert zoo, but the exhibits are actual habitats actually in the desert. There is a volunteer staff spread around the musem, that was very knowledgeable about the desert and knew seemingly all the facts about all the plants and animals, which was convenient since if someone had a question, there was always someone there who could answer it. The main feature of the museum was the raptor free flight experience, where native desert birds flew around, soaring centimeters from our heads just as they might act in the wild. There was someone acting as a voice guide to the movements of the raptors, so everyone could understand their actions as a purpose, as well as some background info with history and interesting facts about the birds. All in all the museum was just a cool place to see the plants and animals of the desert.
Later at night some of us busted out our telescope. After a short bumbling start, we were able to get it set up and look at the sky. We mainly looked at Jupiter and the moon. Jupiter was a bit faint, but we were able to clearly see a band around it as well as two of its moons. The moon being closer, was much more detailed and we were able to see its craters and spots of different elevation, pretty cool. This was fascinating to me, because it isthe first time I have ever looked through a telescope; just being able to casually go outside and see the moon up close seems like a luxury. We then got a camera hooked up to Ians computer and successfully created a short recording of the moon using the telescope. Overall a cool experience, but the more important thing is maybe just that our equipment works.

Day One & Day Two

Yesterday started out cold and early. I didn't sleep at all the night before because I stayed up so late anyways and wanted to sleep on the plane. At 5am I finished packing and made it down to the Straz lobby by 6am (because I had somehow managed to convince myself that that was the time we were supposed to leave--good thing too, I would've been late). The airport was fine, my bag did get searched, luckily they found nothing. I sat in the fifteenth row in between Prof. Arion and a student from the University of Arizona. I slept for the first half, obviously exhausted from the lack of sleep. For the second half Arion and I looked at pictures from his travels and different places he's lived throughout his life, if you get a chance ask to see them. All were very interesting and beautiful. We arrived and went directly to El Indio, a local Mexican restaurant with excellent food. Thereafter, we arrived at our hotel and decided to work off all those wonderful calories with a nice hike up a mountain. We didn't make it very far because we had to be back before sundown. However, it was an wonderful journey with gorgeous scenery. The video doesn't do it justice. Afterwards, Justin, Eric, Melissa, Ryan, and myself all headed out to find swimming gear and other small necessities. We went to a local mall and they had a Fondue Kiosk there, it was essential that I had one. Strawberries and Marshmallows! Yum! Finally we found a black one piece in my size and could venture on down to the hot tub, where we met some other nice people at the hotel who were in Tuscon to buy a bus they wanted to convert into an RV. Different. But interesting. I crashed around 10pm completely exhausted. All in all a great first day!

On day two (Sunday), we woke up bright and early and began our adventures at 9am. First, we drove to the grocery store and picked up a few sandwich snacks for our later lunch. Thereafter, we promptly drove through the beautiful mountains to reach the Desert museum, only taking one quick pit stop to take in the view. Once there we split up into a few groups and had ourselves a look. I had only been there once before with my family when I was 11 years old, I was still just as fascinated. I struggled a bit during the reptile show, who knew I could be so sleepy around such dangerous animals. Afterwards though, we went to the gift shop and I got some coffee in me we were good to go. The group then went down to the raptor hawk show at 2pm, probably the most amazing bird showing I've ever seen. At one point the hawk flew low enough to brush its tail feathers over my hair, half terrified-half terribly excited. My favorite was, and always is at every zoo, the prairie dogs. These ones were especially fun because they were so fat and laid on the ground looking like they were "swimming" towards me (they were stretching is what the zookeeper said, however I like to think they just wanted a nice big hug). That night we went to the restaurant Sweet Tomato, a salad buffet. It was delicious, I especially enjoyed that the entire group sat there for approx. 3 hours and just has some nice quality conversation.

Second Day: Sonora Desert Museum and Gates Pass

Day two of our trip didn't include much relevant to astronomy, but we spent a great day wandering the Sonora Desert Museum with stops at Gates Pass on the way there and back. I was in Tucson for J-Term 2010 and visited the museum then, so I knew exactly where I wanted to go when I returned, including the aviaries, free flight exhibition, and Mountain Lion exhibit. The free flight raptor exhibition was excellent as always, and I spent at least an hour wandering the two aviaries, mostly the hummingbird exhibit (I love hummingbirds and am a closet photographer, so I can happily spend hours following them around waiting for the perfect shot). I stopped by a couple of the large-animal exhibits to see the ones that weren't out in the open during my last visit and was lucky enough to catch one of the Mountain Lions sunbathing and munching on some grass.

We came back to town too early to see sunset over Gates Pass, but the vista from the top was breathtaking regardless. We had an hour or so to relax at the hotel before heading to dinner and spent the next couple hours discussing everything from cafeteria food to the difficulty of containing superfluids. After we returned to the hotel from dinner I settled in to download, sort and edit the several hundred pictures I took today. A few people brought out the small telescope we brought from Carthage to look at Jupiter, but since I have been observing it with my Galileoscope for months and we will be spending a lot of our time on the mountain this week imaging it I decided my time would be better spent finishing my pictures and writing this blog entry.

Jenny

The following are a few of my favorite pictures from the Sonora Desert Museum including a Broad-Billed Hummingbird, Harris's Hawks, and a Costa's Hummingbird.

Day 2 - Desert Museum

I've gotta say, it sucks being sick on a trip. I've been managing just fine, but being constantly coughing is just irritating. Still, I wasn't sneezing blood like yesterday, so things are getting better. (Just in time to get everyone else sick when we get on the mountain, no doubt.)

The wellness issue aside, today saw us visiting the Desert Museum. We had to cross a small mountain to get there and traveled up the requisite winding mountain road to do so. We stopped at an observation point along the way, and I started to discover how much a different viewpoint I have from the rest of the physics team. Many of them were amazed at the view and commented on how people take such things for granted. I was also appreciative of the view of the landscape, but I have family out in California and I am no stranger to mountain roads. I enjoy the view, but it's just a road. To comment on how its sad that people take such things for granted would be analogus to someone from Arizona coming to WI and commenting on how people take the foliage or lake or autumn colors for granted. Both are impressive in their own ways, but both are also taken for granted by the people who live near them. To assign one a greater value than the other is merely a result of perspective.

Secondly, Arion asked a question at the lookout - he challenged us to estimate the number of cacti we could see down in the valley. The team was largely lost on how to approach it. We started with the idea of treating it as a density problem - we'd determine the density of cacti in a given area and then determine the area we were looking at and extrapolate from there. However, we quickly hit a problem of having no reasonable way to get a cactus density value and no way to determine the amount of land we were looking at. In the end, no one was able to answer. After doing some thinking in the car though, I have a method that I wish I'd thought about sooner. The method would entail extending my arm in front of me and spreading my pointer and index finger in order to make a "v" shape. Then, going from the ground before me to the horizon, I would raise my arm and count all the cacti that fall between my two fingers. It would probably take awhile, but it would be easily doable. From there, I need only estimate the degree of the angle created by traveling from my index finger to my eye and then to my pointer finger. The angle would probably be around 5 degrees or so. I then need only estimate the field of view that we can see from the lookout, as we had mountains on 3 sides of us. Armed with these 3 approximations, an estimate would be easy to make. Unfortunately, the question was not revisited on the return trip. I can also see an underlying parallel with astronomy in his question. Namely, counting stars. Although the number of cacti pales in comparison to the number of stars, within our field of view both are far too numerous to try counting alone. However, if we want to study them, we still need to find some way to define each star.

As for the desert museum, it was very fun. The museum was largely outdoor. There were walking paths criss-crossing the 21 acres of desert the museum occupied, allowing you to travel from exhibit to exhibit. I also found myself a bit out of place from those in my group, as I'm a biology major rather than physics. Where we encountered animals and animal exhibits, I stopped to ask questions and lingered longer than most of my group mates. In the cactus garden exhibit, for instance, I found myself examining the many related cactuses and wondering about phylogeny and the particular characteristics that differentiated each species. I also got into a wonderful discussion with a handler who was showing off a barn owl, moving from basic biology to the amusing question of how many barn owls would it take to lift me off the ground if I made a vest and covered it with lines attached to owls. While I did enjoy the exhibits, it was clear that my enjoyment and perspective were different from my groupmates. I do not intend to imply any positive or negative connotation, merely that the difference existed and was much more notable than I'd expected.

I'd also do a disservice if I did not mention the flying hawk show. At 2pm in the back of the park, we were treated to an open flight of a family unit of Harris Hawks. We started with two adult males who were later joined by a juvenile male and finally be an adult female hawk. The hawks divided their time between soaring, perching on the cacti, and diving (usually just over the heads of the audience to the waiting handlers). The announcer had an interesting style - she had a number of key points she stressed and points of information she wanted to get across, but rather than talk a in scripted pattern it was obvious that she was shaping the presentation based on what the birds were doing. The birds weren't reacting to her, but the other way around. I find it interesting that the Harris Hawks are one of a handful of raptors that hunt using teamwork.

I also found it interesting that she mentioned that Harris Hawks weren't in AZ 150 years ago. They require a reasonable amount of water, which wasn't available in the desert until after humans came and started irrigating. Today, they are a normal and accepted part of the ecosystem of the area. This doesn't seem unreasonable. In todays terminology, however, they be considered an Invasive Species. Most of us have heard the term before and it is almost universally associated with a negative connotation and a desire to remove "invasives". To me, it raises questions about where the line should be drawn in the great debate about invasive species.

Arrival

Today we had an early start in chilly weather. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to check in get to our gate. The flight was very full and the seat I was assigned was the last row window seat. I sat down to find that the shade was pulled down and proceeded to open it. To my dismay, the view was completely obstructed by the engine. I therefore slept for as much of the flight as possible. When we arrived and checked out the cars we would be renting, we drove to El Indio which had amazing Mexican food!! After dinner we proceeded to the hotel, checked in, and piled back into the cars and headed to a hiking trail in the mountains. After battling with the usual breathing issues, I was able to take in the amazing views of the landscape. After walking back, a handful of us took one of the cars to a few shopping centers in search of such necessities as swim suits and sunscreen. Once we came back to the hotel, we changed into our suits and relaxed in the hot tub for a while. Upon my return to the hotel room I attempted to boot up my computer to write this blog and discovered that the motherboard is blown and am thus writing this on my iPod touch!

Day Two - Unfortunately Lacking Haikus

I feel the fool. After typing up the entirety of this blog in word (along with a wonderful spell checker), it has come to my attention that copy-paste does not transfer well between my (horribly outdated) version of windows and this text window. Needless to say, I'm mildly upset by this, but shall now endeavor to copy it verbatim from my notes. At the very least, it gives me a chance to edit before posting.

Today we visited the Desert Museum. The trip there was a fantastic drive through a winding mountain road. Although a bit more perilous than I'm used to, (I was rather white knuckled through some of the turns), I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I was further reassured / mortified when professor Arion commented that he used to bike race along this particular road, only going the opposite (uphill) direction. I was appropriately flabbergasted, although it didn't last; the view was too amazing to allow myself more than a moment of amazement.

The Desert Museum itself is a rather unorthodox museum. The exhibits are blended (mostly) seamlessly into the natural habitat of the creatures. The entrance of the museum was more proper; the birds were contained in aviaries, of which there was one for a variety of birds, and one specifically for hummingbirds. The larger animals, specifically black bears, cougars, and the sort, were contained in large open air exhibits. Likewise for prairie dogs and amphibious / aquatic creatures. But the latter half of the museum was a series of trails, along which fences were placed. The habitats were otherwise (from my observations) unaltered.

It was here, outside of the museum proper, that the harris hawk show took place. The show started with two hawks, a male and a female, who flew through the air (a process which marks territory). After a short amount of time, a third juvenile male hawk joined the hunting team. By the end of the show, a fourth hawk had joined the group (although I did not notice when (s)he joined the hunting party, nor did the MC identify his/her gender). The hawks soared around, either alone or as a pair, using saguaro cacti commonly as a perch. The MC stressed that the harris hawks were the only raptors that hunted as a matriarchal team, a feat which was demonstrated when the birds landed near heavy underbrush. Although the actual hunt was obscured from view, it was clearly successful as one of the males flew to the top of a cactus with his prize: a small animal which was obscured from view by the Male's wing. The MC concluded the show with a quick explanation of why the population of city harris hawks was on the decline. As the creatures are fond of high perches, during their hunts and during shows of dominance they would land atop unsafe utility poles, upon which point they would be electrocuted to death. With a plea to contact your local utility company in the case of sighting a hawk, we were left with a few more hours to spend in the beautiful park.

The latter half of the museum contained (in addition to the show), fenced in areas for a type of warthog, who's name i cannot remember for the life of me, as well as coyotes (no sightings). The trip to the museum culminated to one last venture to the gift shop, where I had to fight the urge to purchase prickly pear cactus marmalade. Although it's brethren had bitten me in the knee during yesterday's hike, devouring a relative seemed a bit vindictive.

While on our ride back, and after again containing my amazement that any human, nonetheless professor Arion dared to bike these roads (successfully), the whole group stopped at an observation post. A short walk up a fairly steep slope lead us to the top of one of the lower peaks, where I snapped numerous pictures. What truly surprised me was the level of visibility we had; Tuscon was easily in view, as was the entirety of the Desert Museum and much beyond (save what was obscured by other peaks). Arion posed an approximation question, namely "How many cacti are in view?", a reasonable question that has thus far thwarted me. As I just finished mentioning, the visibility was amazing (much better than even the clearest day I recall in Illinois / Wisconson), and my gauge of distance is already fairly weak. As such, I shall submit my answer of "A lot."

Arrival

The first day of our trip was primarily consumed by travel, which I can say was largely without incident. The biggest hassle we had with airport security came from the telescope and although the telescope was of great interest to the security guards, they inspected it and then waved us through without seeming like the telescope could be a security violation. The flight and car ride to the hotel both were without incident.

Upon our arrival at the hotel, we did discover that the supermarket a few blocks away was the site at which Congresswoman Giffords was shot the day before. While the event and its ramifications were of great interest to me, in the interest of this blog I'll not comment on it further.

Tomorrow we are heading out to the desert museum, which I am looking forward to.

First Day in Arizona

Our first day in Tucson was fairly uneventful, with our plane actually leaving O'Hare on schedule (my previous two J-Term trips were delayed for 5 and 24 hours respectively, making this a very nice change) and arriving mid-afternoon. It was a little hazy, but we were able to see Mt. Lemmon and Kitt Peak both from the air and from the ground, and I am looking forward to visiting them in person again. We went to a great Mexican restaurant for lunch, checked in to our hotel, and went for a short hike before calling it a day and heading back to the hotel for the night. I don't remember the name of it, but the following pictures are from the canyon we hiked. I will also be uploading these and many more to Flickr in the next day or so; look for them here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/30291127@N02/).

Jenny

Day one - a series of haikus.

An early morning
and an early departure.
T'was uneventful.

Reasonably priced,
excessive amounts of food.
Great Mexican food.

A rocky walkway,
a beautiful mountainside.
A cactus bit me.

Asleep before ten.
Preparing for tomorrow:
Desert Museum.