We arrived and got a boxed dinner. Turkey croisant sandwich, which was good enough. Then we watched a movie, they gave an orientation training, they handed us binoculars and then we went out and watched sunset. We used the binoculars throughout the evening to look at objects in the sky. Not as good as a telescope, but it gave you something to do when waiting for your turn. We also were shown one of the research telescopes up there. After that, we got to go up to the larger telescope we were using for the evening. We looked at a couple of the brighter objects in the sky and then learned how to use star charts. By this time, it had gotten quite dark so we got to look at a number of different objects in the sky, galaxies, star clusters, planets, all in all it was very cool.
Anyway, it's worth it if you are into astronomy or even just science. Towards the end of the evening, after we'd been outside for a couple hours and our eyes had completely adjusted, it was amazing how many stars you could see just with your eyes. And then when you used the binoculars, it was pretty incredible. Anyway, here are a few of the pictures from the evening. If you happened to go with us, I'm finalizing some more of the pictures and I'll be posting them to my photo webpage. I'll send the link via email.
Sabrina testing her binoculars
One of the telescopes, as seen from our sunset overlook
More telescopes, including a radio one
Our group. We didn't know many of them, but it was still fun.
Inside the visitor's center after it was over. The big circle is the size of their biggest telescope up there, 4 meters.
1 comment:
What a fun date for your anniversary. Congratulations!
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