Note

The climb to get here was arduous; the descent was a lot more fun

This is the shredded tire that caused me to take a premature break in my tour. Not normal.

Gwen calls this the reverse hippy neck.

The one interesting thing I saw today.

Here in Sanderson.

I’m pretty sure they mean something other than what I think of when I think of movies at the Alamo Village

I don’t know much about geology, but I do know that the way blasting has exposed these strata pushed perpendicular is pretty cool

The blonde woman toward the back, Phyllis, organizes this twice a year. I just happened to be here on the right day. One of the musicians was local celebrity Bake Turner, who played on the Super Bowl III winning Jets with Joe Namath back in the day.

This was made by Observatory staff fairly recently in a retro style. It’s great. Totally belongs in Rotwang’s lab.

This one is much older—construction was begun in 1939—and to my eyes, more interesting. Also interesting is the fact that despite having less light-gathering ability, this produces better images than the bigger one

Light is directed here from the telescope via a complicated optical path called a Coudé focus. The room is painted all black, and has various diffraction gratings, mirrors, and a very expensive CCD cooled by liquid nitrogen