Sunday,
March 10, 2002
On Sunday, March 10, we flew out of Chicago and into El Paso, Texas. We
arrived at our hotel and went out to see the movie The Time Machine.
During dinner, the group avidly discussed the concepts introduced in the
movie, as well as plans for the week. We went back to the hotel and got
a good night's sleep, in preparation for our long day coming up.
The
next day we started the long drive from El Paso, Texas to Cloudcroft,
New Mexico, stopping once for lunch and grocery shopping. After the long
drive up the mountain, we had a little time to rest before the night's
observing.
At
night, we learned many new things about astronomy. The first thing we
learned was how to use the optical telescope and how to find objects in
the sky with it. After mastering that, we moved on to digitally imaging
objects with a more complicated telescope.
We
took pictures of many famous nebulae and galaxies, such as the crab nebula,
the flame nebula, and Whirlpool galaxy (also called M31 to astronomers,
short for Messier object #31).
What an exciting night so far!
Ellen '04
Ellen's M101 galaxy, the Pinwheel Galaxy