Saturday, May 20, 2017, Lowell Observatory

The small town of Williams, AZ, had a surprising amount of charm. As the "Gateway to the Grand Canyon," it included the Grand Canyon Hotel and train station. The 300,000-pound beauty below was no longer in service or I might have opted for a train ride. 

Oops, I guess I need to tell David about the Steam Locomotives being pulled out a few times a year for special runs (on the first Saturday-March through October and at Christmas).

As it happened, our timing was just right for the 2nd annual Route 66 Car Show.

Route 66 was the main highway between Chicago and Los Angeles until the completion of the last segment of I-40 on October 13th, 1984. (Good thing it was a Saturday or there might have been a lot of superstitious folks in town.) Williams, Arizona, was the last town (and the last stoplight) on Route 66 to be bypassed by Interstate 40 due to a lawsuit trying to prevent the town from becoming irrelevant. The suits were dropped when they reached an agreement to give tiny Williams three exits on 1-40. The last (and only) stoplight was removed after the bypass was completed and is housed in the Williams Visitor Center.

Look at me wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt near the end of May! It actually was pretty comfortable after the sun broke the overnight chill.

As I was walking by Elvis, I overheard a young mother explaining to her 10-ish daughter "he was a famous singer in your grandpa's day."  Ouch!

The 1936, V-8 Ford convertible with a rumble seat was my favorite. It was absolutely immaculate as if it had just come off of the showroom floor.

I remember my grandparents had a classic Rambler Nash Metropolitan like the one below. It might have even been the same color.

Williams is loaded with good restaurants and shopping for every price point.  Wild west shootouts happen throughout the day when the car show isn't in town. (Sam hates those!)  The town is as busy in the evening hours as it is midday.

After a nap, we headed into Flagstaff for a long-awaited visit to the Lowell Observatory.  The Lowell family was credited with starting the Industrial Revolution in the United States. That wealth allowed Percival Lowell to pursue his interest in astronomy. He commissioned the 24 inch Clark refractor in the 1890's and housed it in the unusual looking dome below.  

Lowell is part of the ASTC Travel Passport Program making it a free stop for us.

Our docent, Kevin, filled us in on the history of the facility as well as the life and accomplishments of Percival Lowell. Most notable, of course, was his belief that there were intelligent aliens on Mars who built extensive canals to channel water from the polar regions for irrigation. 

I liked the observing chair for viewing objects low in the night sky. The entire dome was a woodworking piece of art. It was built by two bicycle builders who said they could build anything. Percival said "build me a dome" and they did.

Percival Lowell's remains were kept in a mausoleum on the grounds near the 24-inch telescope. He obviously really loved astronomy to make this his final resting place.

As I recall, the Boller and Chivens 16 inch below was identical to the North Georgia College and State University telescope in Dahlonega, GA, where the North Georgia Astronomers would meet.

A large part of their charter at the Lowell Observatory was public outreach. They certainly offered a variety of activities. In addition to tours of the grounds, there was a talk on the planets in our solar system, a talk about stars and galaxies, a hydrogen alpha solar telescope in the afternoon, and a variety of telescopes set up for observing after dark.

We stayed late with the expectation of taking a look through the 24 inch Clark refractor, but we listened to an interesting lecture on Science and Religion and when it was over there was a long, long, ridiculously long line waiting at the telescope. It was an estimated 45-minute wait, so maybe next time!

I did enjoy meeting an actual career astronomer, Joe, whose field was exo-planets.  He explained what he did and talked about the newly discovered Trappist 1 system that included 7 Earth-sized planets orbiting a star about 40 light years away. Three of the planets are believed to be in the "habitable zone" where temperatures would allow the existence of liquid water. Too bad they are 234,600,000,000,000 miles away.

We headed home around 9:30 to a dog who was very happy to see us. It was a long day, but it was certainly a lot of fun!

Sunday, March 8, 2015

While we were in Pecos, TX, there were a couple of other things fairly close by we needed to visit.  McDonald Observatory and Fort Davis National Historic Site, a little more than an hour south (86 miles), were both on the agenda.  It was overcast, so Sam was happy to accompany us on the ride.

William McDonald left some money to the University of Texas to "build an observatory and promote the study of astronomy."  The university did not even have an astronomy program, but they didn't want to let the opportunity pass by, so they collaborated with the University of Chicago to build an observatory.

The Observatory Tour and the Solar Viewing Tour were free due to our ASTC membership.

The first major instrument on the site was the 82" reflector.  We only saw this model of that installation.

The fairly new Franklin Bash Visitor's Center was pretty nice and surprisingly crowded.  It was spring break and a lot of folks brought their kids in for something a little different.

This was the first observatory that we have visited that clearly catered to little ones.  The small museum in the welcome center was geared toward kids and made the science come to life.

I did not notice anyone stop to appreciate the display just outside the front doors.  There were full-scale representations of the first telescope mirror - 82 inches in diameter, the 107-inch telescope built in the 1960's and finally the 432-inch diameter, segmented Hobby Eberly telescope.  Most people walked across the displays without realizing what they signified.

Our tour group was led by Shannon who had worked at the facility for the last 17 years.  He said he was an amateur astronomer and his job was to put the science in terms we could understand.  I believe he did an excellent job.

Shannon drove us up the "highest road in Texas," (elevation: 6,971 ft.) to the observatory.  What a fantastic view!

Shannon grabbed the control paddle and raised up the platform to start his talk.  I was surprised when he actually started slewing the telescope on its axes and rotated the dome. It's pretty impressive when you see really big machinery moving.  The yellow box mounted to the telescope was a spectrometer set up for the current user's research.

Back in the Visitor's Center, we sat in on a solar viewing lecture.  It was too cloudy for any real-time viewing, but Tom, one of the resident astronomers at the observatory, had plenty of information and a lot of previously recorded video of the sun.  He showed us some pretty spectacular filaments and flares and sunspot activity we would not likely have seen otherwise.

We were left on our own to explore the Hobby Eberly telescope.  The dome did not seem too impressive considering it housed a 432-inch telescope.  Inside, looking at the telescope design and the displays, it was clear this was unlike any other telescope we had visited.  It was also the first time I have ever directly seen the mirror on a major telescope.

It's not easy to see the segmented mirror.  Look for the edge just above the blue mirror support.

I would be proud and happy to one day have a telescope the size of a single segment in this telescope!

It takes 91 of these hexagonal segments to make up the mirror.

Back outside, it was clear there would be no astronomical science conducted at the facility that evening.  The clouds had thickened and we saw rain in the distance.

Moving on, we next headed back down the hill to Fort Davis.  It was an interesting place that I wish we had more time to fully explore.  The ranger said the fort had so many troops it was never attacked.  They never bothered to build a wall around the facility.  At the time, Indian tribes rarely had more than about 60 members and only a fraction of those were warriors.  The fort housed nearly 400 troops! 

We only had 30 minutes to explore the compound, but the Rangers were very kind and accommodating.

One of eight enlisted Men's Barracks 1869-1891

The officers quarters were relatively plush.

The skies on the drive home created some fantastic picture opportunities (good thing there was a wide shoulder and not a lot of traffic).  Below was my favorite shot along the road.  

Spring is here!  The cottonwoods are starting to bud out.

Wild Rose Pass had a breathtaking view, even though it was too early in the season for the wild roses to be in bloom.

We managed to outrun the storm (mostly).

It hit us both how dramatically the landscape changed in just 50 miles. From our site in Pecos, the tallest thing in sight was ubiquitous rocking oil pumps.