Journal Day 1:

Sunday June 26

On day one, surprisingly enough, we arrived at the Albuquerque airport. I was one of the lucky few to arrive last, which meant that I had a relatively short thirty minutes at the airport compared to the two strenuous hours of the others. Since most of us had not eaten since crack of dawn and it was nearly 3 o'clock, we decided to stop and have a late lunch before left to Los Alamos. I haven't had any trouble acclimating to the high altitude but that first day but I did have trouble getting acclimated to the spicy green and red peppers of the Mexican restaurant we ate at. The group was loud and talkative during lunch, however, it was a different story on the van ride up to Los Alamos. I'm sure if one listened in the van he or she could have heard pebbles falling down the massive cliffs in the distance. The only noise to be heard in the van was that of Mike lightly singing to whatever he was singing to.

We made a few cool geological stops along the way and went up to see the Fenton Hill site during the day. We arrived later in the hilltop city of Los Alamos, which to my surprise, was quite large. Our hotel was a nice surprise too; I was especially pleased that I got my own bed, which is a far from the soccer trip idea of four guys to one room. The other memorable experience was going the super market that night and watching all the girls buy there vegetarian/healthy food for dinner while the males of the group, on the other hand, gravitated the finer foods in life, such as TV dinners and Easy Mac. The best part was that it was all paid for so we could all just "put it on the tab."

After the stenches of TV dinners and Cups O' Noodles settled in our rooms we finally made it to bed eagerly awaiting the days to come.

Quote of the Day: "He (Scott) will be with you seven twenty-four."

~Frank Timmes

Wake up call: 5:00 A.M.

Bed time: 10:20 P.M.

Journal Day 2:

Monday June 27

The second day started bright at early with breakfast at the hotel. The exciting part of breakfast what when Mike put orange juice on his cereal. Now Mike is a nice guy and everything but orange juice on cereal… yeah that’s what I thought.

We then departed to get our badges, which I was disappointed to find out that we could not keep. We also went off to class that same day to become familiar with some of our equipment, such as the telescopes and the cameras. Another fun part of the day was sharing our fortune cookie fortunes at the local Chinese buffet.

Day two was our first trip to Fenton hill to see the stars. After nearly running over a few elk along the way the gates to the observatory opened and I was standing in the middle of the universe… Well not really, but I like to think that. This was the first time I had ever seen the Milky Way and it was short-lived when the clouds rolled in. We were able to set up the telescopes and view many cool and interesting things but only in during periods of clear sky. Although the seeing wasn't perfect it was still one of the most amazing sites I have ever see.

Quote of the Day: "A tantalizing new prospect will come your way"

~My fortune cookie

Wake up call: 8:00 A.M.

Bed time: 4:10 A.M.

Journal Day 3:

Tuesday June 28

The third day got an obvious late start since we had been observing that night; we woke up around 11. Instead of the usual breakfast we had lunch at the local subway, which was packed with hungry lunch goers. We then proceeded to the bookstore where some of us bought books and others just stared at the "Humor" books.

Next we went to our "class room" where we continued to play with the cameras and set up our Journals. We did this for about 4 fours and we were tired for dinner. So where do you go when you are tired? The Opera…go figure. Most of us were still tired from the night before and I figured that I could use the opera to catch up on some sleep. The opera house was a beautiful place as pictured to the right and the thunderstorms in the background provided the perfect scenery for the occasion. The first half of the opera provided the perfect opportunity for this because the opera was in Italian and was not subtitled. However, when we were able to see what they were saying, the opera immediately became for interesting. Who couldn’t love the playful arrogance of Figaro or the scandalous character of the maid. The opera was around three hours long and we were ready to leave long before that. We drove home while I sang out to Smashmouth and went pretty much straight to bed.

Quote of the Day: "Figaro………Figaro……Figaro…Figaro

…Figaro!"

~The Santa Fe Opera "The Barber of Seville"

Wake up call: 11:00 A.M.

Bed time: 1:20 A.M.

Journal Day 4:

Tuesday June 29

Since we got to bed relatively early the night before after the opera, we had an early start to day four around 8 o'clock. After our hotel breakfast we went on an adventure hike in Bandelier National Park, which was the site of an ancient native culture. When you hike through the gravel paths massive cliffs surround you on either side of you. It is easy to see why the natives chose this land. Along with the lush scenery of the valley the mesa walls provided cool natural caves in which you can still see today. The natives built homes and ceremonial areas in these caves and we were lucky enough to go up and climb in them. At the popular "ceremonial cave" you have to clime four ladders and nearly 140 ft. to get to an open cave that was once used for rituals. While we were on our three-hour hike I was also able to work on my tan and get a little work out too.

After a couple of hours in the classroom once again it was time again for another guest speaker. The presentation was titled "Impacts of Comets and Asteroids with Earth." The climax of the presentation came when a small fly got stuck underneath the overhead slide. I think everyone in the room saw it struggling there except the man giving the presentation. So… me being the good person I am, I decided to try and free the fly from under the overhead. The man's reaction was pretty funny I hear and everyone sort of chuckled. But this gives you an idea of how long this speech was when the fly was the climax. Another funny part in the speech was when an old man in the audience tried to convince the speaker that when an asteroid or comet comes the elephants run away. It was a valid argument but, coming from him, it sounded quite humorous.

The best part of day four, however, was our night session at Fenton Hill. After about 2 hours of messing around getting the telescopes calibrated, we were able to get a whole view of the heavens. Before the sun went down earlier in the day we were able to see Mercury and Venus near the setting sun. After dark we were able to see Jupiter and Mars through the telescope as well. Jupiter was one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen. When you look through the telescope it is very easy to distinguish the four moons of Jupiter very easily with the large planet in the middle. Above is a picture very similar to the one we saw that night. Along with seeing four of the planets we started making our sketches of the sky to find an asteroid. It was very obvious that, when I first made my sketch and then looked at it several hours later, I could see that the asteroid had moved. After plenty of data taking and star looking we were all tired and ready to go. We departed Fenton Hill and arrived back at 5 A.M. to our hotel.

Quote of the Day: "Let's play some zipper music." "Well that might be a little dangerous."

~Nabina and Dan respectively

Wake up call: 8:00 A.M.

Bed time: 5:10 A.M.

Journal Day 5:

Tuesday June 30

Again we had another late start on day five since we had been up late the night before. We arrived to lunch at about 2 o'clock at a local bar and grill. The whole crew joined us including John and Corrie and we then proceeded to the classroom where we worked on our journals and did some calculations base on the star maps that we drew.

Our job was to determine the radii of a certain asteroid and to do this we needed to know the exact positions of the asteroid over a two-day period. To calculate the position we chose two stars that were near the asteroid and created a linear line between the three. Since the exact coordinates are known of the two stars the coordinates of the asteroid can be calculated by drawing a straight line between the three on our star chart and measuring the distances to scale. We then knew, after day 5, the exact position of the asteroid at an initial time. The goal of night five observations then was to draw another star map that could be used to find out how far the asteroid had traveled. After looking around at more planets and aligning the stars with the telescopes we were able to again chart the stars and compare them to the known stars to find out where the asteroid is.

Quote of the Day: "That’s a really nice rack!"

~Dan referring to a giant elk that crossed the road on our way home from Fenton Hill

Wake up call: 1:00 P.M.

Bed time: 3:30 A.M.

Journal Day 6:

Tuesday July 1

You can refer to my picture depiction of day 6 in the calendar portion of this site.

Wake up call: 11:15 A.M.

Bed time: 1:30 A.M.

Journal Day 7:

Tuesday July 2

Day seven was our wonderful adventure to Santa Fe. After a so so breakfast we departed for Santa Fe and it's main plaza. We encountered an enthusiastic bum along the way who was eager to tell us how bad Los Alamos really was. We laughed pretty much the whole time but it was really interesting to see what some people think about the lab and the misconceptions they hold. While we were in Santa Fe we also toured the art galleries and saw some beautiful pieces of work.

After about 4 hours of boringness and burrito buying we finally departed back to our hotel to meet and have dinner with Galen, a very prominent scientist. We also made our way up to Fenton Hill again where we were looking at the separation of double stars.

For this activity we chose a bunch of double stars, stars that are gravitationally bound to each other, and looked at how far apart they were. We then began to look at pairs of star that gradually got closer together so we could determine the smallest distance between the stars that we could distinguish on that night. This allows us to measure how good the "seeing" is at that particular time and place. The smaller distance you can distinguish the better the seeing is.

When we were done with that project we went into the building at Fenton Hill and Scott was listening to his friend on the radio who is a DJ for a station in Colorado. We called in the DJ and talked to him and asked if he would rap for us, however, he never did. He did give us a shout out and we were excited, which pretty much brought an end to the night.

Wake up call: 9:00 A.M.

Bed time: 4:00 A.M.