Thursday, 3/17/05
We did astronomy work literally from the start of the day. We had access to two telescopes in domes as well as the internet telescope, and we imaged from yesterday until around 3 a.m.

The dome telescopes have different capacities, including the ability to take either very long or very short (.001 sec.) images. They can image a greater range of objects including very bright ones such as the moon.

Unfortunately, around 3:00, clouds appeared in the west. We were able to image for a little longer, but eventually the clouds spread and Ms. Gehret and Mr. Coberly closed the telescope domes. We then ambled back to our lodge and fell asleep.

At about 11:10, I awoke. I had told Nick and Hans that whichever one of us woke would wake the others, as we were about to leave for the White Sands around noon. This was not very effective as all three of us had overslept. So I woke them and we hastily took showers and prepared just in time, and after Ms. Gehret and Ella arrived, we left.

White Sands is near a large basin surrounded by mountains. It has white sand dunes of gypsum, created by deposits left by the Permian Sea hundreds of millions of years ago. Now it hosts a military base and a national park.

We hiked around and sledded down the dunes. Watch the videos of us sledding. After unloading our sand collected in the process, we went back to the lodge to relax and have dinner. The dinner, a pasta and chicken meal made by Ella, was very good. Then we went to image, where we are to this minute.

More astronomy images are now posted on the web, as well as many non-astronomy images. From the intranet, look in the Images folder and then the Our Astronomy Images subfolder. Expect more soon.

-- Kenny