Astronomy Travels

[glenc]

Astronomy Travels
My wife and I spent the last 12 weeks travelling around Fiji, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru and the USA.

Some of the astronomical highlights were:
1. Las Campanas, Magellan telescopes, Chile, two 6.5m mirrors
We drove up to the Magellan scopes and looked at the outside only.
The 21m Giant Magellan telescope will be located here.
2. ESO La Silla Observatory, Chile
We saw this in the distance on the way to Las Campanas.
3. ESO ALMA radio telescopes, Chile
We saw the turn off to this just south of San Pedro de Atacama.
They are building an array of 66 radio telescopes 5,000m above sea level.
4. ESO Paranal Observatory Very Large Telescope, Chile, four 8.2m mirrors
We toured inside the Melipal (southern cross) telescope and the control room.
The 42m European Extremely Large Telescope will be built on the next mountain east of here.
5. Intihuatana stone, Machu Picchu, Peru
This was used to mark the equinoxes.
6. Harvard Observatory, Arequipa, Peru, 1889 – 1927
I located this site using a GPS. The southern IC objects were found here using photography.
7. Kennedy Space Center, Florida, The Apollo/Saturn V Center
The 110m long Saturn V rocket and the Hubble 3D IMAX film were the highlights.
8. American Museum of Natural History, New York.
They had displays on what happened 1, 2, 3 up to 14 billion years ago and a similar displays for size from very large to very small.
9. David Rossetter’s 25” scope, 1h 30m by road north of New York.
I spent two nights looking at far northern M and NGC objects.
M51 overhead was the highlight; the spiral arms were very obvious. We missed seeing the SN in M51.
The fireflies added to the experience. Sometimes they get inside the scope!

Here is some more information from the www.
http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/Magellan/
http://astro.nineplanets.org/bigeyes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Silla_Observatory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Large_Millimeter_Array
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Telescope
http://www.rediscovermachupicchu.com/mp-attractions.htm
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/expeditions/boyden.html
http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/persons/stewart.htm
http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/attractions.aspx
http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal114/spacerace/sec300/sec384.htm
http://www.amnh.org/visitors/special_exhibitions.php

[leon]

Nice Glen, ;) now what did your wife do, :shrug: Na just joking, :lol: sounds like a wonderful experience.:thumbsup:

Leon :thumbsup:

[GrahamL]

Hi Glen

you had a great time by the looks,lots of pics ?

[Liz]

All sounds fabulous Glen, good on you.:thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

What a wonderful journey to make Glen!
Will we be seeing you at Astrofest this year? I'd love to see photos!

[oosh]

Sounds like a great adventure, would be great to tour around some of those observatories.. despite receiving near lethal doses of aperture fever :rofl:

[glenc]

Yes pics will be available and I will be at Astrofest.

[renormalised]

Point 9 there, Glen. The supernova actually was a firefly:):P

Sounds like a great time was had by all there:)

[mozzie]

sounds fantastic glen!!!!!!! i'd wondered where you were.look forward to the pics at astrofest..

[glenc]

Last night on SBS there was an interesting program about the ALMA telescope.
http://player.sbs.com.au/programs#/programs_08/fullepisodes/latestepisodes/playlist/Monster-Moves-Full-Ep-25/

[shelltree]

Sounds like a wonderful trip mate, glad you had a great time :thumbsup:

[bartman]

Thanks for that link!,
Just watched it and very interesting! I'm amazed at the engineering ingenuity of the transporter et al........and of course the scope(s) itself.
66 scopes takes a lot of time, especially if there are break downs.
Thanks again
Bartman
Oops and sorry, forgot to mention.....well wicked travels you have had there! Good on you both!

[gary]

Hi Glen,

Sounds like the astronomical trip of a lifetime.

[glenc]

Thanks all. Gary we used an AN on David's 25" at New Paltz. He loves it.

[glenc]

This is Julie's description of our visit to Paranal.
" About 60 kms from Antofagasta we turned right towards Taltal and Paranal. This road was the same as we took before [when we were going north], and it is a really good road so we made good time. This is where the valley has no vegetation at all, is very gravelly with bigger rocks scattered over it, and the hills on either side are likewise bare. The road was pretty straight with the occasional gentle curve.
The turn-off to Paranal is about 65 kms from highway #5 and we arrived there about 12:30pm. We turned right and headed up the road to Paranal (bitumen) which climbed quite steeply, winding back and forth up the mountain. When we arrived at the gate, we were still very early, although there were a couple of other cars there waiting for the tour.
The tour started just after 2pm. There were 11 car-loads of people, and we all had to drive through the gate and park just on the other side, all facing the same way. The visitor’s centre is there (we could have walked from the first car park) and we watched a video about the ESO generally, and Paranal specifically. It was in Spanish with English subtitles, so I didn’t get to see the photography much. From there the Spanish speakers were taken out while the 4 English speakers (us included) had the rules explained to us before we were issued with hard hats to be worn in the telescope buildings.
Back in our cars, we snaked our way up the last hill to the levelled area where the four 8.2m telescopes are. There are also four small 1.8m telescopes. The hill they are built on used to be 2628m above sea level, but they took the top 28m off to level the site. Again we all parked facing the same way before we were divided into 3 groups each with our own guide. Our group was the English speaking group, and 3 others joined us (from Belguim – the others were from England {American and Norwegian originally}). Our guide’s name was Hernan Julio and he spoke good English. He is an amateur astronomer (lives in La Serena and comes up by bus 2 weekends a month to do tours). He also takes VIP tours for people who want to look at the sky at night.
The first place we went was inside one of the 8.2 telescope buildings [Melipal], where we saw the mechanism and mirrors, the camera and infra-red extras. We also saw the secondary mirror and a third 45o mirror, how the telescope opens and the floor turns. It was quite cold in the building (Hernan said maybe 5 deg C) as they keep the telescope at the same temperature as the air was the night before. From there we went outside and saw the site of the new 39m telescope the ESO is building which will be lots bigger than Paranal and this is one is the biggest optical telescope in the world at present. The site is on the other side of the valley, on a mountain [Cerro Armazones] that is about 400m higher than Paranal, close to a test telescope that is already there. This will be called the E-ELT telescope (European Extra Large Telescope, while Paranal is called the VLT –Very Large Telescope). Next we visited the control building where a few people were working at computers getting the telescopes ready for the night. We were allowed to sit at the desks for photos!
Our guide then took us back to the cars and just our 3 cars drove down the hill back to look inside the accommodation building, which looks to be underground, but actually follows the level of the ground and is 3 storeys high on the south western side. It was designed so that no light would shine out at night. It has a huge central round area full of plants, with a dining area overlooking a large swimming pool. The building has 108 rooms for staff and visiting astronomers. Everyone wants to stay there, but Hernan said that he doesn’t get to sleep there, but in a “container” type building which was left there after they finished filming for the James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace.
From there we went back to the visitor’s centre where we had time to look at and read the displays. We were just finishing when the first of the Spanish groups arrived, and the place was full of people again, so it was good to have had it to ourselves for a while.
The four big telescopes at Paranal can be used either individually or together to form a 16m telescope (equivalent). The four small telescopes can also be used in conjunction with the 4 big ones, to form a 200m telescope (equivalent resolution). Apparently though, the machine to complete this is still being built in Europe, so the most they can join at present is three big telescopes (don’t know about the small ones). The light from the telescopes is sent through a series of underground tunnels, to one central interferometer place where the light is all joined together before going to the control building. The four big ones collect the light for the images and the four small ones give the resolution to the images.
Once a year the mirrors have to be resurfaced with aluminium and there was a crane near one building which was getting ready to take the mirror out. The amount of aluminium used for the 8.2m telescopes is less than they use in a can of coke – it is thinner than a human hair – pretty impressive.
The astronomers who come to Paranal generally only come from one of the 15 countries that are part of the ESO group, although Chilean astronomers have 10% of the time allocated to them. Astronomers have to apply for time to use the telescopes, and they get 5 times as many requests as they can approve so only the “best” projects get to use the telescopes. Astronomers are only allocated between 3 and 5 nights. We were told they get 350 clear nights per year, so I guess they are pretty much guaranteed not to lose out because of bad weather. It hasn’t rained at Paranal for several years although last year in July they had snow (about 20 cms) and they get some snow most years.
The site at Paranal was levelled in 1990 and the last of the 4 small telescopes arrived in 2006. One of the main areas of study at Paranal has been exoplanets, planets which orbit other stars, also very distant galaxies.
It was just after 5pm when we finished in the visitor’s centre and we still had over 100 kms to go to Taltal. Once we got back on the main road, there was about 20 kms still along the high valley before we started to go down to the coast at Paposo. It was much quicker going down the hill [we drove up on the way north] and the 30 odd kms went by quickly! From the bottom of the hill we had about 55 kms to drive south along the coast. The fog was still there even at this time of the day, but it wasn’t as thick, and we didn’t get into it until lower down. It was interesting to note that at the level where the fog started, there were also the beginnings of a few straggly grasses growing on the hills."
http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt.html

[glenc]

We drove past the turnoff to ALMA in April but were not allowed to go there. It is just south of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-04/chile-telescope/3208408
"A powerful telescope affording a view of the universe unmatched by most ground-based observatories gazed onto distant galaxies for the first time from deep in Chile's Atacama desert.
The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetere Array (ALMA), a joint project between Canada, Chile, the European Union, Japan, Taiwan and the United States, officially opened for astronomers after a decade of planning and construction.
The world's biggest astronomy project, ALMA is described as the most powerful millimetre/submillimetre-wavelength telescope ever and the most complex ground-based observatory.
The first images arrived at the mega-site in northern Chile from 12 of the 66 radio telescopes."

[glenc]

A billion-dollar observatory will reveal the half of the universe we can't see, writes Alok Jha.
The Chajnantor plateau, 5000 metres above sea level in the Chilean Andes, is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. The thin air makes breathing difficult, there is no water in sight and fierce winds often force the temperature down to 20C below freezing.
But it's on this desolate, Mars-like terrain that the world's most expensive and sophisticated observatory has just stirred into life.
The Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) will open astronomers' eyes to the half of the universe that has, until now, been hidden to modern telescopes. It can already peer through the distant clouds of dust and debris in which the earliest stars, galaxies and planets were made and, when fully operational in 2013, it will find a previously unseen galaxy every three minutes.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/science/giant-eye-to-glimpse-a-new-galaxy-every-three-minutes-20111007-1ldgw.html#ixzz1a8NDa8X9

[glenc]

"Crews have begun to remove 3 million cubic feet of rock from a mountaintop in the Chilean Andes to make room for what will be the world’s largest telescope.

This story begins on March 23rd, when astronomers and dignitaries trekked into the towering Andes northeast of La Serena, Chile, to a vantage overlooking the summit of Cerro Las Campanas. Topping out at 8,400 feet (2,550 m), this remote peak offers very dark skies, little or no risk of future light pollution, excellent atmospheric stability, and a high fraction of clear nights...

The GMT's design calls for seven enormous primary mirrors, each 27½ feet (8.4 m) across, arrayed in a tight cluster that will span more than 83 feet (25 m) edge to edge. When finished, the telescope's 1,000 tons of glass and steel, combined with adaptive-optics technology, will resolve target details down to 0.01 arcsecond, besting the Hubble Space Telescope's resolution tenfold..."
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/Giant-Magellan-Telescope-Starts-with-a-Bang-145704195.html

My wife and I visited Las Campanas last year.

[Ric]

Now that's a holiday and a half.

It must have fantastic Glen.

[glenc]

There were many non astronomical highlights too.
Some of them were Quito, Easter Is, Moreno Glacier, Beagle Channel, Iguacu Falls, Rio, Osorno Volcano, driving along the coast in Chile and Peru and driving at 4500m, Lake Titicaca and the Galapagos Is.

[koputai]

My wife and I flew down along the Andes on Thursday (from Panama to Santiago) and I spotted both the Magellan and La Silla observatories.

Along that section was probably the most visually amazing 45 minutes I've ever had. It was clear skies, afternoon sun, and we were flying at around 7000m down the Western side of the Andes. The light was amazing and the landscape perfectly lit. Aconcagua loomed in to view and seemed to take forever to pass, that is one BIG hill !

If you're ever flying around South America, there's no need for in-flight entertainment, just look out the window. Sadly just about everyone else on the plane was absorbed watching the tv or their ipad, oblivious to the amazing world just outside their window.....

Cheers,
Jason.