Wednesday, January 19, 2011
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.
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.
Escape to Mount Hopkins
1/18: Tuesday morning, after breakfast, we all headed out of town to visit the famous MMT & the Smithsonian-operated Fred Whipple Observatory near Mt. Hopkins just south of Tucson. On the way there, we noticed something very unique about the highway we were driving on (I-19), which was the fact that the highway's distance markers & signs showed the distances in metric increments (meters,kilometers) , instead of US customary measurements (miles), due to the fact that the highway eventually goes through the US/Mexico border, and so to prevent a sudden chance in increments, the entire highway was set to the metric system.
After traveling many kilometers down I-19, we finally arrived at the Observatory's visitors center at the base of Mount Hopkins. Immediately after arriving, we noticed two large mirror arrays that turned out to be special telescopes that are used for detecting gamma rays throughout space. Shortly after exploring the visitors center, we all went up the long winding mountain road to the other observatories on the mountain. During the drive, we saw a deer passing near the side of the road, which we all managed to get a picture of before it ran off. Moments later, we finally arrived at the MMT, apparently, the telescope was originally known as the Multiple Mirror Telescope from 1979-1999, during which it featured 6 1.8m mirrors that would create a single clear image. However, in 2000, the telescope was changed to feature a single 6.5 meter mirror (and renaming it the Magnum Mirror Telescope) , while the six 1.8 mirrors lie in storage, unused for the past 11 years. During our tour of the MMT, we learned about how the entire building can rotate up to 270 degrees to the left or right, how the doors were extended & widened to accommodate the space needed for the MMT, and all of the work and effort that went into the telescope's conversion to an incredibly powerful astronomical tool.
We toured the smaller observatories just below the MMT, which seemed to be similar to the 61" telescope that we used on Mt. Bigelow, so we were pretty familiar with the telescopes there. When the tours were over, we all headed back to the visitor's center, where we watched a few videos about the research that has been done at Mt. Hopkins, especially the efforts to map the visible universe, and another video that showed how the 6.5m mirror was made @ the U of AZ mirror lab and carefully shipped and installed to the observatory.
The last couple days have been a bit slower paced. I spent the better part of Monday gathering the converted video data for Jupiter as well as some from Saturn; some people went out to a couple various small activities, but I stayed behind to work more with RegiStax and stack better images of Jupiter. Later that night we all ate from an assortment of wings from a local wing place, and proceeded to watch a film for 1.5 hours about the modern history of astronomy. This gave us background knowledge for the next couple days when we would be touring different observing sites.
Yesterday we left at 07:30 to tour the observatories at Mt Hopkins. The road up the mountain was very small, long, and curvy. However, the view was awesome, and there was a lot of different vegetation growing in that area; unfortunately most people were sleepy and did not get to enjoy it as much as they might have. Speaking of good views, the one at the top of the mountain was my favorite of the trip (this is impressive because the others were hard to top). The telescopes looked similar to the one we used, but they had different mounts, sizes, ways of focusing light; basically, there were actually lots of differences. Afterword, we watched a video of the history of Mt. Hopkins, and I am amazed that they were able to get such large objects up such a unmanuverable road.
Later we went out to eat in downtown Tucson for yet another pleasing meal. A few of us walked around for a bit, but it was late enough that most of the stores had closed down. We saw a place where they were looking at the moon as well as Jupiter, which is weird to see (to me). That was fine, but our images from the Steward telescope are much better.
Yesterday we left at 07:30 to tour the observatories at Mt Hopkins. The road up the mountain was very small, long, and curvy. However, the view was awesome, and there was a lot of different vegetation growing in that area; unfortunately most people were sleepy and did not get to enjoy it as much as they might have. Speaking of good views, the one at the top of the mountain was my favorite of the trip (this is impressive because the others were hard to top). The telescopes looked similar to the one we used, but they had different mounts, sizes, ways of focusing light; basically, there were actually lots of differences. Afterword, we watched a video of the history of Mt. Hopkins, and I am amazed that they were able to get such large objects up such a unmanuverable road.
Later we went out to eat in downtown Tucson for yet another pleasing meal. A few of us walked around for a bit, but it was late enough that most of the stores had closed down. We saw a place where they were looking at the moon as well as Jupiter, which is weird to see (to me). That was fine, but our images from the Steward telescope are much better.
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