Oct 3, 2013
Venus and setting up telescopes at South Baldy
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Venus and setting up telescopes at South Baldy
Day 5: Enchanted Skies Star Party Day 1
Holy crap yesterday was cool. After registering at the campus observatory at New Mexico Tech, we took a convoy of 20 cars up to South Baldy Peak at 10,000 ft by Socorro, NM.
First we toured Magdalena Ridge Observatory’s (MRO) telescope with a 2.4m mirror from Hubble. They use the scope for observing satellites and near earth objects for the US Air Force. They also use it to identify asteroids for NASA that might be candidates for astronauts to land on in 2025 in preparation for landing on Mars. I don’t need to explain how awesome this was.
Next we toured their interferometer, a crazy set up of long tubes directing mirrors, light, and lasers to take pictures of space. So much math, guys. This type of work calls for so much precision that room temperature must be kept within a half degree, floors and buildings suspended in foam to increase stability, and millimeters of warp in metal accounted for.
Then, everyone set up their telescopes for observing. It took a while for our eyes to adjust to basically pitch darkness, but afterwards we could see more stars than I’ve seen in my entire life. We could barely make out constellations because of how many stars there are. We could see Pleiades with our naked eye. We saw the hazy band of the Milky Way rise and set. People were kind enough to share their high-powered telescopes with us, so we saw globular clusters, multiple galaxies, ring nebulas, and more.
Hard to describe how amazing it all was. Afterwards we drove down the mountain and ate Frito and blueberry pie at the 24-hour diner by our motel.
Enchanted Skies swag including VLA laser pen and folder, star party etiquette sheet, and Military Space Programs info. 😬
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