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...llimeter_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/n...ns/stewart.htm
http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/attractions.aspx
http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/g...300/sec384.htm
http://www.amnh.org/visitors/special_exhibitions.php