Ahh! it's bee a *very* long day - about 24 hours of almost no sleep!
Sooo - we got up this morning and drove a little way to get our tour of the Tsankawi ruins. We got our tour from someone at LANL, actually. It seems sh studies astrogeology on the side:o) Anyway, she showed us a lot of the little caves and the dance platform the indians used. We were shown a lot of the carvings(whose name currently escapes me...petroglyphs or something?*shrug*). We also got to explore their trash area;) We found a lot of small pieces of pottery that I normally might hav just thought was rocks. We also got visited by a horny-toad-lizard-thingie:o) It was very friendly:o) It liked to crawl up into people's shoes and up their arms and on their shoulders and such:o)

We then visited LANL so that Donna and Cathy could fill out some forms so they could get paid or something. The rest of us have been hanging out in the van and we - mostly Owen, with som Holly and JW thrown inbetween - have been telling stories. Owen spent some time searching for a latex glove so he could stick it on his head and blown it up. Instead, he took Christine's bandana and is wearing it and looking silly;) Yeah for van bonding time;)

Afterwards, we got a nice long lecture from Galen - who informs us that he used to be a theortist before getting into the more hands on stuff. He explained all sorts of stuff - colors in space, the shape and center and size of our galaxy, information on other galaxies, and such. Then, there was discussion about the nature of our universe. He explained Olber's Paradox which I found pretty interesting. If there are so many stars out at night - so many billions of stars - shouldn't they fill the whole sky and illuminate all of it? but they don't - for the sky is dark at night... He explained it as the fact that the universe is evolving and expanding, causing the darkness. He also tried explaining to us the Big Bang theory. He explained it in great detail, which I enjoyed:o) Previously, all I had known was that there was anti-matter and matter and stuff floating around, there was a big bang and then all this matter showed up and our universe started to expand.... It was interesting to see that there were a few more steps inbetween - stuff annihilating stuff and large bursts of expansion, and then some milling around for a while, some more annihilation and so on. Of course, there are also some problems with the theory, which Galen also spoke about which I also liked:o) I always like seeing both sides of an issue:o)

That evening, we got a lecture from Jim Wren and Rick Balsano about ROTSE - Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment. They're these big telescopes that are scanning the sky for transient stuff and are used to try and spot gamma rays. Of course, we had to hear about their Jan 23, 1999 accomplishment;) Ed Fenimore had ranted about this excitedly and so did Jim and Rick:o) We got some stats about the brightness and the distance of the GRB, etc. Then, we drove out to ROTSE and once it got dark, we entered the control centers of the telescopes to try and look at stuff. It required learning a little bit about how to run Linux... for a window to be up, the mouse has to be over it, which I find a bit strang to get used to. Otherwise, the programs looked pretty normal like, with windows and colors and buttons and such... We took some pictures of stuff and fiddled around with exactly where we wanted the telescope to point and for how long. When we weren't in there and other pairs were trying it out, we hung out outside and talked with everyone. Jim was busy playing chess and attempting to teach Kristen;) He claims he's "not that good"...yeah right;) Nobody has been able to beat him the whole trip;) We gave Kristen's roomate(Shulpa[I hop that was spelled right:o)]) a constellation lesson:o) Ellie, Daryl and I had a conversation about Pigtails versus Ponytails. Daryl didn't hav too much to say on the topic, but...;) Then, for some time, the rest of this year's earthwatchers spent some time laying down on our backs staring at the sky and chatting randomly.[Joking about sitting on the radioactive green blocks across the way, talking about life and random issues, etc;)]

After we finished looking at the stuff at ROTSE, we went up to FHO. We got up to FHO at about midnight. Corinne and I attacked one satilite and after 4 attempts and about 1 1/2 hours, we finally got it aligned correctly so we could use the catalog. We looked about Mssier objects 2-15 and sketched them:o) I had fun trying to decipher shapes for them to be - kinda like how you describ cloud shapes only with star clusters:o) JW seemed to have fun with the other telescope, whil Owen lookd through the Messier objects book and Holly and Christine stayed warm in the sleeping bags they had brought up and chatted with the guys. Ellie had come up, too and after a few hours, she was fast asleep;)
At about 3 am after looing at all those Messier objects, I headed into the dome(where it's much warmer:o)). Those inside the dome were searching for the comet. We searched for an hour or so and were unsuccessful. We closed down the dome then. Ellie had woken up and we chatted with her. Jupiter and Saturn were up and we got to look at them through the telescope. They looked SOO cool!!!! You could see Saturn's rings - and it *did* look like it had little ears:o) Jupiter's four Galilean moons were visible, too and it looked really neat!!!

We then drove back down to the hotel. Owen told a lot of stories and there were LOTS of elk out grazing and such. When we got back to the hotel at about 6, we tossed our previously washed clothes into the dryer for some drying. Corinne went to sleep, but I stayed up to get our clothes. After that was done, I headed down for breakfast since it was already that early/late and aftr that, I finally got some sleep:o)

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This page last updated November 10, 2000.