Astronomy Notes 3/14/2000

We had a day trip to the National Solar Observatory yesterday and a private tour of the Apache Point telescope...Apache Point is currently dedicated to the Sloan Sky Survey, a huge $80 million project to get digital images of the entire sky. Our guide was John Briggs, an astronomer from Yerkes.

Last night it was overcast so we just looked at Saturn and Jupiter and its moons; the moon Europa was just starting to transit or pass in front of Jupiter.

Today we're headed to White Sands Missile Range and the Space Museum and plan to take more images of galaxies tonight.

Thursday we plan to drive to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro NM to see the VLA, a large array of 27 antennas arranged in a huge Y pattern 22 miles across. You saw it if you saw the movie "Contact." Our personal guide will be an astronomer studying gamma ray bursts.

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