[batema (Mark)]

Hi,
Adam and I are on our astronomy tour of the South Western areas of USA, with the wives permission, and we thought we would post some of our adventures. It is a great opportunity that we are relishing with every moment.

• Start of our tour
• Our first two stars in Las Vegas J
• Bellagio fountain show
• Hoover dam
• Chopper flight over Grand Canyon
• Adam checking out potential dome sites
• Magnificent place
• Clark telescope Percival Lowell used to study Mars and Buzz Aldrin used to prepare for the Moon landing
• Huge refractor
• Viewing night M15
• Which was the focus knob?
• Astrograph used by Claude Tombaugh to discover Pluto
• Astronomy B&B in Flagstaff 90mm Coronado – unbelievable
• Meteor Crater
• Hummingbird – Did not realise how small these things are
• Titan Missile Museum – Tucson, Arizona
• Kitt Peak - Solar telescope
• Inside Solar telescope
• 3.2m Wynn Telescope
• Actuators on Wynn scope
• Kitt Peak
• Inside the hollow pier of 4.2m scope – echoes like you would not believe
• 4.2m with Adam and flat field (top left – I did not know they had to do flats
• RCOS 16 with 140mm for viewing evening Kitt Peak
• Pima air and space museum – B29
• Blackbird SR – 71
• Mark caving
• Preparing 2nd 8.4m mirror for Large Magellan Scope at Uni of Arizona Mirror Lab
• Polishing first 8.4m mirror
• Turning 6.4m mirror

More to come, if we are not banned, as tomorrow night we are imaging with Adam Block using his 32 inch ion milled RCOS JJJJJJJJJJJJ

Mark and Adam