Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

A few days ago I made a call to reserve a special evening event here in Tucson. If you are an astronomy buff, you probably know that there is a rather well known observatory not too far out of town at the summit of Kitt Peak. When I checked their web site I found that it was possible, if you booked ahead of time, to participate in an evening program where you actually get to look at the heavens through one of the large telescopes they have up there. That just sounded too cool to pass up. (I think I can hear my brother salivating!) So today we were off to the mountains once again, Kitt Peak to be specific. We actually went up in the early afternoon so that we could catch one of the observatory's regular day tours where they introduce you to some of the equipment they have there. Hey also introduce you to some of the history of the Kitt Peak observatory along with some of the basic concepts behind what they do and how it works. It ended up being a bit of a drive out there. Obviously you don’t want to set up an observatory near a town full of lights so I guess it makes sense but it was still quite a drive. Especially the 12 miles up the mountain. Thank goodness we were only bringing the Matrix not the MoHo. We got there just in time for the tour and we were fortunate to have an excellent docent. He was a retired chemical engineer but he sure knew his stuff when it came to Kitt Peak observatory and anything pertaining to astronomy in general. We learned all kinds of interesting facts about the amazing telescopes they have up there. For instance, let me tell you about two of the larger telescopes that they have there. The larger one is a 4 metre telescope and was built in 1974, the smaller one is a 3.5 metre telescope built in 1994 but still manages to have a similar viewing capability as its 4 metre counterpart. The sizes mentioned above refer to the diameter of the mirror in the telescope. The mirror on the 4-metre scope from ‘74 was created from many blocks of glass which were all melted together at high temperature and then cut into the proper shape. At this point they then spent between 4 and 5 YEARS polishing it to prepare it properly. The result is a 15-ton mirror that is able to look out into the heavens with incredible clarity. With the ’94 telescope they used a completely different method to create the mirror. They started with molten glass on a huge turntable. Then they slowly started spinning the turntable which caused the liquid-like glass to form into a parabolic shape due to the centrifugal force of the spinning action. They were also cleaver enough to embed a layer of ceramic disc in the middle (when looking at the cross-section of this disc). Additionally, the ceramic disc was created with a number of holes in it so that the layer of glass above and below the ceramic layer were attached via these tubes, or mini-poles, of glass. Once the glass was formed, they let the whole thing cool down and harden. Then they used another process to dissolve the ceramic out of the center. The result was a mirror that weights much less than a solid glass mirror. And the final polishing process only took a few months, rather than years, to get the mirror finalized. And yet another bonus was the fact that they can actually make minor adjustments to the surface of the mirror via the mini glass poles which connect the two layers of glass. So, to perorate, the result with this newer mirror was a similar viewing capability but it was created in a vastly smaller amount of time and came in considerably lighter, weighing only 2 tons! Oh, those cleaver astronomer engineers. It is amazing what 20 years of technology and experience can do, eh? There were so many cool little tid-bits of information like this but, in the interests of trying to avoid losing any of my faithful blog readers, I won't bore you any more than I already have.
Our tour was great and the retired person who lead it was a real character. On the way back down from viewing the largest telescope, we got talking about baseball and I found out he is a Dodger fan (his poor Dodgers were just eliminated from the playoffs). But he has been a fan since they were in Brooklyn! Now that is a real Dodger fan. He told me that the 1940’s were terrible because the Yankees would eliminate them every year. Ok, enough about the Dodgers and back to us. As I mentioned we were signed up for the evening program at Kitt Peak. What I have not mentioned as of yet is the weather. We are in Arizona in the desert so it should be sunny and warm, right? Well, we just happen to be visiting the day a moist cold front was cruising in from the Gulf of Mexico. One nice thing about being at the summit of a high mountain is that you can see any approaching weather pretty clearly and we could see massive cloud cover, and some very dark clouds to boot, heading our way. This, unfortunately, meant that the evening program was going to have to be cancelled. Bummer! Somehow we managed to choose the perfectly wrong time to do it. And I don’t just mean this because of the cloudy weather. Even if the sky was perfectly clear, it would not have been so ideal for us because, once again, we found ourselves in one of the best viewing area for stars in the US and there was a full moon! All I can say is that the stars certainly were not aligning for us, that’s for sure. On the positive side, we did enjoy a great afternoon on Kitt Peak. We returned home driving toward the clouds in question and then we spent the evening watching a lightening show shortly followed by an entire night of thunderstorms. First the Grand Canyon and now this … are we really in the desert of Arizona?

Today’s word:

perorate \PUR-uh-rayt\, intransitive verb:1. To conclude or sum up a long discourse.2. To speak or expound at length; to declaim.