It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a week now since we left New Mexico. Surprisingly, the transition back to life at Calvin was not seamless (the dining hall seemed like such chaos! where did all the good food and family dinners go?), and I was grateful for the time during Interim break to reflect and refocus before beginning the new semester. This trip has been a fantastic experience for me. It was a chance for me to explore and reclaim my love of science (I often wondered if maybe I didn't want to pursue an astronomy minor after all) and think about how that fits into my life as a whole. One surprising - and encouraging - thing I learned during the trip was that amateur astronomers historically have played an important role in the development of the science. These things are certain: I am no longer going to malnourish the scientific part of my brain, nor am I going to continue thinking that you have to take science classes to be a scientist. A scientist explores, questions, tests, troubleshoots... and while that may not be primarily who I am, it is nevertheless an important part.

Also part of me, now, are the mountains and the flatlands, the hoodoos and the cacti... The desert is beautiful desolation, and amazingly full of life. I will miss being able to see thousands of stars every night, and the mountains through the bedroom window in the morning. God has taught me so much in that place. That said, it is good to be back at Calvin, with familiar faces and where so many exciting things are happening. :)

Most important to me, however, is the amazing community that I was blessed to be a part of during the trip. Thank you so much, everyone, for being patient with my many questions and adopting me in. I have learned so much from you. One of the best things about being with all of you is that we speak a common language and we all get really excited about the same things! :D I have loved sharing in all the excitement and adventure, even the grocery shopping and sleep deprivation. I know that it doesn't end here, and I'm looking forward to seeing all of you this semester! 

And thank you to all of our devoted readers, for your support and interest!

~Alyssa

So I've been putting off my final post for a while now, partly due to business, and partly because I haven't been quite sure what I would actually say.  It has been an interesting few days since our return.  I've had an adventure or two, but adventures aren't nearly as fun by yourself as they are when you're with friends.  I just put my dinner in the oven: it is way too much for me to eat myself tonight, but it looks to me to be not nearly enough.  Feeding one is very different from feeding 10, and that's how much food I'm used to seeing.  I'll be frank; I miss the Southwest.  But still, it is good to be back.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone (everyone I haven't run into over the past couple days, anyways) come Monday.

 So I guess I didn't really have much to say after all--just a few thoughts straight from brain to fingers to keyboard.  But there you have it.  And now, its time for the new adventures to begin!

I'm sure you've all heard by now that we arrived safely in Grand Rapids, even if not according to original plans! We would like to thank all of you for the prayers you gave throughout this trip and on our trip home, even though we were mostly out of contact and thus often couldn't give you specific requests: God always knew what we needed!

It was an amazing interim, but perhaps the most profound thing that I have walked away with is an imense sense of responsibility as I further my way in the world of science and academia. This was perhaps most strongly felt as we visited the Trinity site and later the Atomic Museum: one of the immense struggles I have in considering such things is that, even though something may be designed because of true necessity and have specific applications in mind, once you have made it, its actual use is often entirely out of your hands. The scientists who worked on the atomic bomb were distributing to request a demonstration of the bomb in an unpopulated area of Japan before using it on a city, and the government stifled this petition and proceeded to bomb tens of thousands of civilians, against the wishes of over 80% of the people who helped to create the very bomb that they used. As an engineer, this ultimate lack of control over the use of my designs is discouraging to think about, but very important to consider as I choose life directions.

All in all, I really enjoyed the interim. The community was extraordinary, both within our group and with the people of Rehoboth and various members of the astronomy community who would all be very welcoming to the group wherever we went. Going back to regular life will take a little bit of getting used to now, and I am very grateful for the last few weeks of my life.

~Rebecca

We made it home to Grand Rapids. This was of course a lot harder than what we thought it to be because both of our flights, from Albuquerque to Dallas and from Dallas to Grand Rapids, were canceled. We ended up catching an earlier flight to Dallas followed by a flight to Chicago on the 27th (when we expected to go home), and we then slept in a Days Inn and flew home the 28th in the morning. Despite all of the confusion, we all made it home safely. Thank-you for everyone's prayers while we were on this trip.

My final reflection of this trip can be described by two words: amazement and community. I was amazed by all the many things we were able to experience! I know that I will probably never again see a sunrise over the Grand Canyon or see the Trinity Site. I am so thankful that I was able to see the Andromeda galaxy from a parking lot and that I was able to run a 42" telescope! The community on this trip was also amazing. The devotions every morning as a group really helped me grow, and spending time with all the others also allowed me to make some great friends. Thank-you to everyone who made this trip such a wonderful experience!

Melissa here, one last time. We were asked to write a final reflection on the interim, so here’s mine.

Several times in the days and months (and years) before this trip happened, I found myself super-excited for what I termed “the best interim ever!” I knew everyone on the trip, and I was excited to know them better; I had caught glimpses of astronomy in the Southwest before, and I was excited to look deeper; I had fallen in love with Rehoboth, and I was excited to live there for 1.5 weeks.

The trip surpassed my expectations in all of the above (as I probably should have expected). These nine friends who accompanied me (yes, we had nine students, and yes, we did assign ourselves names from the Fellowship) have shared laughs and scares and breathtaking views and full moon desert frolics with me. I saw huge telescopes, even got to work with some of them. And I watched several sunrises over the empty Hogback ridges south of Rehoboth. 

But the trip also surprised me… because it was just like life. Of course it had its ups—I was expecting those—but it also had its downs. Saturday, Jan. 24, was one of the hardest days I’ve had in a long time. Throughout the trip, I learned all sorts of new things about myself, and some of those things weren’t so great.

Throughout the trip, I had the exciting opportunity to participate in what Calvin students have introduced to me as “Dutch Bingo.” (Even though I’m over half German… go figure. But I have Dutch connections.) This is an amusing game where one tries to find out how many various and sundry connections one can discover between oneself and one’s Dutch comrades. A very popular game at Calvin, whose student body is, I’ve heard, is 52% Dutch.

I think heaven will be one long bingo game. I’ve had a taste of heaven on this trip, sharing joys and loves and hilarity with friends who have all known different angles of the dear God that I have come to love. I’m so excited to share stories in heaven, with a whole host from every tribe and language and people and nation.

So finally, when I come back, I will have stories for you. My God has been teaching me so much on this trip, and I’m eager to share with you, and hear what he’s taught you while I’ve been gone. If you ask me “So, how was your trip?” you will hear me say “Great! Amazing! It was so much fun…” of course, but if you wait a little longer, and dig a little deeper, and ask a few more questions, you will hear a story of life, in all its beauty and sorrow and joy and struggle. And if we have time on this earth, I will start, just start, to share the working of God in my life, and together we can dabble in the great bingo game that won’t ever stop… Soli Deo Gloria.

 Today is our last full day in Rehoboth, and we set out to make the most of it. In the morning, we all headed into the school to make our visual aids to help teach a class in the afternoon.  A while later, we had 12 stunning constellations, one sun, one earth, and one asteroid.  After lunch, we put them right to use.  We actually had two different classes come through.  The first group we did all at once.  We used the students to help demonstrate how we percieve prograde and retrograde motion of planets from the earth.

 The second class we split up into two groups, and they did each of two activities for half the class period.  For one part, we repeated the planetary motion demonstration.  In the other part they worked on doing asteroid discovery and recovery.  The class discovered 3 unknown objects, and recovered 2 more, so it was a very successful search!

After that was done, the remainder of the day was much more low key.  We had dinner, started packing, and had some fun playing games.  We didn't just relax--we also managed to do some light curve analysis and work on the telescope.

 Overall it was a fun day. It's hard to believe it was our last one here.  Tomorrow we board a plane and a few hours later we'll be back in Grand Rapids.  Until then, we'll continue enjoying the time we have here.

-Zach 

Tomorrow's Activity:  Flying back to GR 

Long, long ago (it seems), when we first left Rehoboth and headed west to Flagstaff, the idea was raised that we might be involved somehow in a worship service at Rehoboth CRC when we returned. Over time, this idea grew. We have some songs that we'd been singing together during our morning devotions, and we began thinking about performing one of them as the offertory. We settled on "The Magnificat": the classic words of Mary praising God ("My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."), set to music by Charles Christmas. Later, however, we were also asked if we wanted to participate in more of the service. Some high school students were scheduled to lead worship on the Sunday we would be back for, and would we like to join them? In the end, we sang The Magnificat, sang with the Rehoboth high schoolers during the normal praise songs, and led the church in a rendition of "I Will Sing a Song Unto the Lord" with verses in Wolof, the tribal languages of the Gambia, West Africa. Melissa was a missionary kid there for ten years, and she supplied the words and translation. It was a fairly amazing experience to lead the church in worship when I only had learned some of the songs a half-hour before the service started. I was grateful to have many excellent singers - from our group and from the Rehoboth kids - there to drown out my voice.

After church we were treated to a home-cooked spaghetti dinner, before I headed off for a Sunday afternoon nap. I was anticipating getting up early Monday morning (5:30 am) to play basketball with some of the Rehoboth teachers. Sunday evening we went once again to the home of Mike and Gail De Young for dinner. Besides the ten of us, there was Mike and Gail, three student teachers from Trinity Christian College, and Mr. Aleke Morris. We had a wonderful dinner, and I reflected on the differences between eating on the road and good home-cooked food. After dinner, Aleke, a Navajo and a teacher at Rehoboth, told us stories of the Navajo people. We heard about how Coyote put the stars in the sky, how Coyote learned not to make fun of others, and how the Lizard Brothers learned to accept Turtle as a friend when he saved their life. Driving home in the dark, we could see just what a mess Coyote made when he haphazardly threw the Milky Way into the sky.

Before bed, we began to think about the next day's activites, when we would be teaching astronomy to Rehoboth students.

I think humans like completeness. There is something to be said for coming full circle, and today we did just that. Roughly 2000 miles after departing Rehoboth, we returned to Rehoboth, a little more tired, a little less organized, yet a lot more full.

The day started before the sun was up. In perhaps my favorite animated movie of all time, The Emperor’s New Groove, one of the main characters, Kronk, is, among other things, an avid bird watcher, and at one point in the movie he comments “Ooh, that’s another one for exotic bird bingo – I’m loving this.” I couldn’t seem to get his voice out of my head this (Saturday) morning as we piled into the van at 6:30am to go to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

While we didn’t go very far into the park, we stopped to watch the sunrise with a huge flock of snow geese. The cool crisp morning air backdropped by a beautiful sunrise made it a pleasant time for quite reflection. I especially liked watching the birds interact and giving them human mannerisms. There were obviously some late sleepers, and some others that wanted to get things going, and also some temperamental ones and some easy going ones.

We followed up our early morning with an excellent breakfast at Denny’s and then a good devotions time at the motel.

I find that the more this trip goes along the more I enjoy the time in the van with the group. I think it has something to do with being more comfortable with each other and knowing each other better. On the drive from Socorro to Albuquerque we had a good time dancing to Weird Al and completed our fifth collective crossword of the trip. While this much travel can be wearing, it also is rather fun.

Then on the trip from Albuquerque to Rehoboth we listened to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” stopped to watch the sunset from a cliff over the El Mapies lava flows, stopped again to get some aa and pahoehoe lava from by the road by a Subway and Shell station, and had some quality conversations as the miles fell away behind us.

While we spent a fair amount of time in the car, we also paced the day with plenty of activity. In Albuquerque we went to the Atomic Museum, a very thought provoking experience. We started our visit with a video about the making of the atomic bomb, which put very well the paradox of the bomb as both a bringer of peace, and a bringer of mass destruction.

Fascinating to me was both the science that went into designing these bombs, and the grand scale of the effort to produce them. Whole cities developed just to make the necessary Uranium and Plutonium for the bombs. The effort accounted for 1/10 of the total electrical power used in the United States.

The visit was especially enjoyable and informative because a retired army engineer who worked on designing the bombs, D. M. Evett, showed us around the museum and told us stories, making the model planes come alive and pointing out things that we might otherwise have missed.

Yet, while the visit was informative and enjoyable, it was difficult for me to digest the pain caused by the bombs. I usually consider myself man enough to watch most movie scenes, but I half covered my eyes when they showed images of a little boy with his red, open back gasping his last. I think that surviving one of the drops might be the worst possible life experience.  

Afterwards, at the “House of Bread” run by Professor Molnar’s friend, we had a long discussion on the logic behind dropping the bomb, and the many different facets playing into the decision. Should they have given the Japanese more warning with a demonstration? Should they have dropped the second bomb? Would we have been able to end the war just with more flexible negotiation? How did the Russians factor in? What role did that even have for today?

We finished the travel day with an excellent meal at Earl’s, a restaurant known for their steak and their Mexican food in Gallop.

After Earl’s we dropped off out stuff at the dorm and then headed over to Rehoboth CRC to practice for church the following morning. The dancing and singing together was a wonderful way to wrap up our day, made even better by the fact that someone managed to scrounge up a violin so that Anna and I could play again!

 Up next tomorrow, wonderful worship at Church, magnificent meals, and spectacular star gazing!

 Today we woke up bright and early and were off to breakfast at McDonalds at 7:30 on our way to White Sands Missile Range to see the LINEAR telescopes. LINEAR stands for Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research and is located inside the military base.

We arrived at the gate and met our government escort into the base.  We had a car in front of us and a car behind which made us feel pretty special.  Once inside the base it was strictly prohibited to take pictures. After a short drive we arrived at LINEAR. LINEAR not only uses their telescope for asteroids but also works with the government in tracking satellites as well. Many of their telescopes were first designed to track satellites and then were found to be very effective in finding potentially hazardous space rocks such as asteroids. We got a tour of a couple of their telescopes and one of the guys there told us about the amazing technology of the chips in the cameras and how fast they were at taking data. He also showed us how fast the telescope and dome can move if they need to track something moving very fast. The domes had hundreds of bar code stickers along the circumference of the inside to let the dome know where it is so it never gets out of sync with the telescope which I thought was a very ingenious way to do it. An astrophysicist there then showed us the control room with all of the hard drives and computers and fancy screens. It blew my mind how much data they could store and process. While we were in the parking lot I heard a boom off in the distance which I thought was pretty awesome because I knew it wasn’t thunder.

We then were told that the mission for that afternoon had been canceled and it would indeed be possible to go see the Trinity site where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. We followed our escort through another set of locked gates further into the base past numerous “authorized personnel only,” “do not enter,” “danger radioactive materials,” “warning explosive test site” signs and numerous kinds of others. When we finally arrived and went inside yet another locked gate we were all in awe that we were actually standing in the same spot that the first atomic bomb was detonated and that great mushroom cloud that had graced the skies almost 50 years ago.

Our escort showed us pieces of Trinitite that were scattered on the ground. They are pieces of sand and debris that had been blown up in the air by the bomb and melted from the extremely high temperatures and solidified into greenish colored glass crystals on the way back down to the ground.

The McDonald Ranch house was another site we could see so we decided to skip lunch and continue our once in a lifetime exclusive tour. The McDonald ranch house was where the plutonium core of the atomic bomb was assembled. It was so cool to be in the same area as so many famous scientists had been.

After being escorted out of the base we rushed to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Operations Center at New Mexico Tech for our tour. On the lower level they showed us where they make many of the receivers and components for the radio telescopes. They we also working on some of the electronic components for a new radio telescope array in Chile at 16,000ft. The cool thing about radio telescopes is that you don’t need a dark or clear sky to observe with them and can use them during the day even with clouds.  We then went upstairs and saw the room where they store the data. The amount of computers and racks of hard drives was unbelievable.

 After our tour of the Operations Center our guide rode with us and we drove out to the Very Large Array (VLA) site. As we got closer we could see the enormous size of it with 27 telescopes spread out for miles in the shape of a Y. After a short stop in the visitor’s center to view a short film we walked out to get a closer view.

The dishes were huge! 25 meters in diameter weighing 235 tons a piece. Since we again had connections we could walk out across part of the array which you normally couldn’t do. As we were all standing in awe of the giant radio telescope, they all began to move in sync with one another. It was quite an awesome sight. We then were taken into the control center where all of the signals from the 27 are combined. We couldn’t actually go in the room because some of the signal could be altered if it came in contact with one of us and some data could be lost. Next up was the control room where each dish is controlled and monitored. The array operator for the night was Larry Brothers whom my family knows through a family friend, so it was really cool having a connection with one of the operators of the VLA! The last stop on our tour of the VLA was a building to house a dish to during maintenance operations or modifications made to the instruments. Also near the building was the Jack of Diamonds which is the machine on the railroad tracks used to move each of the massive dishes.

After dropping off our very nice tour guide back at New Mexico tech it was off to dinner at the Owl Bar and Café which had been recommended my Mike De Young . All of us were starving as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I had a spicy green chili cheeseburger which was delicious! All of our food went down in no time. After dinner we went shopping at a grocery stop for lunch items for the next day and also each got a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and ate it when we got back to the hotel.

Tomorrow it’s back to Rehoboth to set up camp with a stop at the Atomic Museum in Albuquerque!

-Nick  

[This blog is for January 22, but hey, better late than never! Also, pictures are to come, so stay tuned!]

Hello all! Alyssa here. Today was another driving day, but, as is expected to be with a group of astronomy students, not without loads of adventure and excitement! Who would have thought that the road from Tuscon, AZ to Socorro, NM would pass by the cultural site of Ice Age hunters, a once-lawless town named Tombstone, and a small town named after a game show?

But let's start from the beginning (a very good place to start). It was a good day for driving, because it was rainy and not good for much else. However, that didn't stop us from taking a wet hike at the Clovis site, where archaeologists have discovered artifacts from the Ice Age and geologists have discovered nanodiamonds - tiny little diamonds that could possibly be indicators of an impact that could possibly be related to the beginning of the Ice Age (and the extinction of the mammoths!). We didn't find any nanodiamonds, but we got to experience the smells and muds of the wet desert!

The adventure did not stop, however, when we were in the van. We had one of the more impressive lunches of the trip, prepared and eaten entirely in the van (lovingly dubbed Moby, now coated in many layers of sediment) en route to Socorro. I ended up cutting cheese for Wonderbread sandwiches on my leg with a butter knife... good times. With our combined brainpower, we smashed through a crossword puzzle before taking a pit stop in Tombstone, AZ.

That's right, Tombstone. As in Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. We were there. ;)

We also stopped in Truth or Consequences, a tiny little town named after a game show forever ago, where we ordered good food and nine chocolate malts (Josh is a nonconformist and got a shake instead), taking the workers by surprise... and not long after that, we arrived at the lovely Motel Six, where we got some much-needed shut-eye. :)

Next up: A double-packed day of missile ranges and very large radio telescopes... don't miss it!

So I'm writing this a little late, but it turns out we don't have internet at the moment anyways.  That seems to be a common motif on this trip; one which I wouldn't mind breaking.  Regardless, I'll post this as soon as I am able, and hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

Our day was a rather busy one.  Morning started with waffles at the hostel, but picked up pretty quickly from there.  We soon headed out to the Sabina Canyon Recreation Area (http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/coronado/forest/recreation/camping/sites/sabino.shtml), where we met Dr. Shoemaker of the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences, who also happens to be a Calvin alumni.  We enjoyed a nice hike up aways, but were distracted when we came to a stream.  We spent the remainder of our time enjoying that area, but soon it was time to head out to continue our day.

We headed over to the U of A, and had a group lunch together on campus at one of their food court areas.

Our next target was the mirror lab (http://mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/) that lives under their football stadium.  We had a long awaited tour that included a feature I had been looking forward to for quite some time: GIANT SPINNING OVENS.  Unfortunately, the mirror had already been cast, and the oven was vacant, but we did get to see it in its various pieces.  They were in the process of prepping the mirror for grinding and polishing.

The picture don't really give a proper sense of scale; remember that the mirror taken out of it was roughly 8 meters (26-ish feet) in diameter!

Our tour quickly came to a close, but our host Dr. Shoemaker was able to take us on a more extended tour of his department. This tour included seeing their "small optics" shop, which included the Discovery Channel Mirror (4.2 meter diameter).  We were also able to visit some graduate student labs, where we saw a couple different MagnetoOptical traps (MOTs) in action.  At one we were possibly witness to a new experimental confirmation of theory!

Even after a full day of exploring both the park and U of A, we weren't done yet.  We were headed out to the Haferkamp's who very kindly invited us out for dinner.  We were treated to a barbecue, complete with some peppers (I can't quite remember what they were called).  Let me tell you, a cheeseburger with barbecue sauces and pepper on it is quite good!  If our hosts are reading this, let me just thank them again for the wonderful food and hospitality.  We stayed and talked for a time, but before we knew it it was time to head back to the hostel to get ready for the next day.

-Zach

Upcoming Activities:
Travelling to Socorro, with some stops along the way.

Dear Readers,

This is Jess Vriesema again, writing about Tuesday, 20 January 2009. Today, we visited Kitt Peak National Observatory. For those of you who are familiar with astronomy, that may be enough said. For the rest of you, Kitt Peak is a mountaintop covered with dozens of telescopes and enough astronomers to require dormitories, a full cafeteria, and other support staff. Kitt Peak National Observatory is a Mecca for astronomy. We ate breakfast with Bob Denny, an outstanding programmer who wrote the Astronomy Control Platform (ACP) and PinPoint Engine software packages we use daily with our telescope.

We began our journey by driving out to Kitt Peak. The drive itself from our hostel in Tuscon to the mountain was over an hour. Just before ascending the mountain road, we stopped to take some pictures with lovely cacti.

The road itself was noteworthy--a full twenty minutes of beauty. We all were glued to the windows, gazing out at the garden landscape outside...except once or twice when we realized how steep the cliff two feet off the road really was.

At the top, we made an obligatory stop at the visitor's center, where they featured a special infrared camera, which takes pictures of light produced by heat. Most telescopes offer the ability to take pictures in the infrared part of the light spectrum. In the following pictures, Iam holding my jacket in front of me. In the second image, I am pressing my warm hand against the jacket. In the third image, my hand was removed, but its warmth remained in the shape of my hand, leaving behind an infrared hand print! Cool, huh? You can see dark spots around my eyes, which indicate that my glasses are cooler than the rest of my face.

After the visitor's center, we visited the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, which continuously points at the sun while it is up. This telescope had a larger-than-usual focal length, so it was longer than any of the other telescopes--so long, in fact, that it tunneled into the ground.

    [ IMAGE (diagram?) OF SOLAR TELESCOPE ]

We then passed by some dormitories (Shh!--day sleepers!) on our way to another telescope. This telescope implements a new technology called "adaptive optics," which help it produce the sharpest images on Kitt Peak.

We ate lunch in the parking lot.

Our contact, Jim Scotti, showed us two 'scopes that he works with. One, called the SpaceWatch telescope, was particularly interesting because it is an "altitude-azimuth" mount instead of the usual "equitorial" mount -- the difference is in which axes the telescope uses to move itself. This telescope also was the first of its kind: custom-built to search for asteroids on a large scale, seeing up to 4000 asteroids per night. Whereas Calvin College has nearly 200 asteroids to its name, SpaceWatch has roughly 20,000. The other telescope he showed us was the oldest telescope on Kitt Peak, and it is now used in conjunction with the SpaceWatch telescope for broad surveys of asteroids. We climbed a ladder in the dome and sat on a perch on top of the dome, on top of a mountain. We could see nearly a hundred miles away.

    [ PICTURE OF PERCH ON DOME ]

We hurried to the 4 meter telescope -- the largest on Kitt Peak -- just before it closed at 4:00 pm. Wow. This is the largest telescope many of us will ever see. The dome dwarfed all other domes, and the telescope was gargantuan. Hopefully these pictures will give you a sense of scale:

    [ Picture outside of dome -- Nick or Alyssa? ]
    [ Picture inside of dome ]

After checking out the 4 meter telescope, we ate supper at the Kitt Peak cafeteria with Jim and some other astronomers. By the time we finished, the sun was getting dark, and Jim brought us back to the two instruments he had shown us earlier. He showed us how he started them up, but since the sky was too cloudy for the kind of sensitive measurements he makes, he didn't start taking actual data. Instead, we talked for quite a while. He even posed with me to form the constellation "Jim 'n' I."  (A pun on the constellation "Gemini," or the Twins)  :-)

When we'd finished talking, we headed back to our van, descended the mountain slowly with only the parking lights on (to reduce light pollution), and went to bed back at the hostel.

I still have trouble believing that we really went to KITT PEAK!!   WOW!

Sincerely,
-Jess

PS--Stay tuned! Zach will tell us about the Steward Mirror Fabrication Laboratory at the University of Arizona!

Josh here. The 19th was somewhat of a transition day. We caught a few winks as the sun was rising to prepare us for a long drive, then saw Sunset Crater Volcano, then drove to Tucson.

After returning to the hostel from our respective observing stations (I was at the U.S. Naval Observatory, others were at the Lowell Observatory), we all tried to sleep for three or four hours. We packed up and headed off for Sunset Crater. At approximately 1000 years old, this cinder cone is the newest volcano in the volcanic field just east of the San Francisco Mountains that hover around Flagstaff, Arizona. Driving through this mass of ash and hardened A'a lava on our way through Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument was quite an experience. Trees and other plants have moved back into the area in the intervening years since the most recent lava flows covered the land, but much of the terrain remains as rugged, bare black rock. In some cases, the flows were several feet higher than the surrounding terrain. Black, gravelly cinder cones were all around. Sunset Crater itself is not the tallest, but is the youngest, and is therefore the best preserved. The sides are black, but the rim is colored in red, brown and orange. They say that the final stages of the eruptions that made Sunset Crater contained iron-rich rocks which subsequently rusted.

 We then set out for Tucson. As we left Flagstaff, we noted our elevation: just over 7000 feet above sea level. Flagstaff sits near the southwestern corner of the Colorado Plateau, a high, relatively unbroken landform covering a vast area in the Four Corners region, and the location of all our escapades since leaving Albuquerque. Leaving Flagstaff would finally take us off of the plateau. As we drove south, the land grew more mountainous. Moby (our trusty van) drove up and down, but consistently more down than up. Sometime before we reached Phoenix, we began to see Saguaro cactus covering the hillsides.By the time we reached Phoenix, we had dropped over 5000 feet in elevation, and the temperature had risen 20 degrees Fahrenheit. We stopped for dinner at Los Compadres, a Mexian restauraunt recommended by Professor Harper; it did not disappoint.

We stopped at a McDonalds with WiFi so that Professor Molnar could try to start up the Rehoboth telescope, but without success. Then we set out on the last leg of our journey to Tucson. We drove for two more hours and arrived at our hostel, tired and relieved.

Tomorrow: we visit Kitt Peak National Observatory!

January 18^th Blog

By Anna DeKievit

I am suppose to write about the 18^th, but instead I am going to write about all the events between the 17^th and 18^th. From Melissa’s blog you can see that our group split up into two locations in order to do overnight observing at two locations, the Lowell Observatory where Nick, Luke, Jess, Professor Haarsma and I were at, and USNO where Melissa and the rest of the crew were located.

After touring USNO on the morning of the 17^th followed by dinner, the Lowell team headed off to start up our telescope at 5:15. We started up our 42” telescope. I was able to step out and look at the night sky was absolutely amazing. I was able to learn many new constellations because I was able to such faint stars because there is very little light pollution on the mountain.

We mostly worked this first evening observing galaxy clusters for Prof. Haarsma and Luke’s research and asteroids for Prof. Molnar and Melissa’s research. We got a lot of help from the astronomer running the 72" telescope, Brian Skiff. His presence was very helpful and insightful because he is a well published astronomer. When not working we spent time on the internet catching up because we have had such spotty internet so far. We all got really, really tired since we had been up for almost 25 hours. After closing up we went back and collapsed at the hostel after greeting the other half of our group. This was the beginning of the 18^th.

We woke up again at 3:00pm on the 18^th and then headed back to the telescope hoping to get an early start just in case we had more glitches. We started up just fine, but we had cloudy weather. We took that opportunity to go out into the catwalk around the top of the telescope and have some devotions. It was glorious singing hymn into the dark night spotted with stars between the clouds. We soon felt that the clouds were clearing a bit so we went back in so that we could start taking data. We found out that the sky was still just cloudy enough to not allow us to take the pictures of asteroids and galaxies needed because we could not get detailed enough. We instead took pictures of bianary stars for another research project because that research does not require the same kind of detail.

This evening we were able to have more free time because we were more comfortable with the telescope. We all took turns sleeping and we spent a lot of time eating snacks and playing cards. I again looked at the stars and I was able to see the Andromeda Galaxy with my eyes and with some binoculars. I was also able to see the Beehive cluster. Both of these objects are too faint to see with the naked eye from Grand Rapids because of all the light pollution from the city and suburbs.

When the night ended we were excited because it meant that we could sleep. My favorite part of the shutting down process is this large red “Emergency Stop” button.  This button cuts power to the telescope, the computer which runs it, and the microphones that allow those in the control room to talk to those who are in the dome. It must be pushed at the end of every evening or in case of an emergency in which something goes terribly wrong. When I pressed it I was reminded of all the cartoons and movies which there was the big red button which the hero runs for when some crazy disaster starts to happen.

All in all, these two nights were absolutely fantastic. Luke kept saying how powerful he felt sitting in the chairs commanding a huge telescope to move and take pictures. It was truly rewarding for me as well because I am one of the few people who have not worked for Calvin as an observer running our own telescopes so this was my first experience actually running a telescope.

The 19^th: Sleep day, Sunset Crater, and driving to Tucson.