Caitlin Golding

Sunday

Coming to Los Alamos was the first time I had ever been on an airplane by myself, and only the second time I had ever been on one. It was strange to walk around by myself and to arrive in the huge Chicago airport, trying to find my way to the next flight and then waiting for the plane to leave. As soon as I got to Albuquerque and met everyone we started having fun. Even though we had just met we were already joking around, almost breaking things in the gift shops, and Gar and Amy got in trouble for going the wrong way on the down escalator. Later that evening we drove Fenton Hill to get a tour of the site. That night we played lots of cards.

Monday

On Monday we got up early to go get our badges and then we went to Bradbury Museum to hear someone talk to us and to look through the museum. The talk was the Los Alamos orientation and it helped us all see what went on at the Laboratory and how the lab had effected different things in history. It was pretty cool. In the museum, we played with some metal plates that showed the electrical current going through our bodies (I wasn't as electrifying as Amy, Sam, and Ryan) and we calculated how much radiation Jonathon was exposed to. After Bradbury we went to the classroom and learned about the CCD Camera and asteroids. After that we went to the grocery store to get food for that night. We ended up with two carts full of food and Bucky the watermelon. After the store, we went back to the classroom to learn how to align the telescopes that we would be using later that night. He went back to the hotel for about an hour and then we went up to Fenton Hill. We set up the four telescopes, played a little Frisbee, and went in to eat dinner.

Gar and I setting up the telescope for the first time.

It was cloudy outside so we waited inside for a long time playing word games and learning Joe's secret written language, which was surprisingly a lot simpler than it seemed. When we did go back outside it was still pretty cloudy so we just laid down beside the telescopes to look at the starts. Even though we could only see certain pockets of stars at one time, it was really cool. I have never seen that many stars at one time. They were everywhere. Lying there for only about two hours we saw two shooting stars, five satellites, the big and little dippers, and a few other little constellations. I was surprised that I could actually see the different things because I usually can't. It got really cloudy at about 11:30 so we put up the telescopes and drove back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel most of us went up to Gar and Amy's room to play cards and talk. I ended up going to bed around 3:00 am.

Tuesday

Today I got up around 11:00 am and got ready. We had a Chinese Buffet for breakfast. That was a first for me. After that we went to the classroom where Frank talked to us about the sky and how to find different things in the sky. We also talked about the moon and its phases and about lunar and solar eclipses. We used a model of a tennis ball, an overhead, and Joe as the Earth to show the different phases. That was a lot clearer than the little diagrams that are in textbooks at school. Later today we are going to our first of a series of lectures at Bradbury and then we are going up to Fenton Hill. Maybe we can use the telescopes tonight.

Tuesday Still

Last night we got to use the telescopes for the first time. At first we didn't look through the telescopes at first though because we were learning where some of the brighter stars and planets were. We found where Arcturus, Antares, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Vega, and Polaris were in sky. We used some of the stars that we learned to align the telescopes. The first time Gar, Joe and I aligned the telescope we did pretty good. To test our alignment, we sent the telescope to Jupiter and it was right on! We could see Jupiter, which was incredibly bright, and four of its moons, which were all perfectly aligned with each other. We were excited that we had actually done it right and we did it faster than we thought we would be able to. Well apparently this was beginner's luck. Later that night, Gar and I were hopefully getting close to the asteroid 532 Herculina, which was our night's mission, when somehow the power cord spontaneously unplugged. We lost our alignment and had to start over. We plugged it back in and started our alignment. We found our first star of the alignment pretty fast and we were feeling good because we thought that we wouldn't have lost too much time by having to start over. TWENTY minutes later we were still trying to find our second star in the finders scope! It took us so long to find the second star. After we finally found it, we tested the accuracy of the alignment by sending the telescope to Jupiter. When it stopped we looked in the telescope and Jupiter and its moons were nowhere to be found. Our alignment had failed. So we started again. We aligned the first star, chose an easier and brighter star for our second star, and moved the telescope around to find it. When we finally got the star into the telescope's field of view, the telescope's motors kicked in and did a 360-degree turn on us and we lost our alignment. Needless to say, we got a little frustrated. Finally we just got John to align it for us. By this time, Amy, Sam, Joe, and Ryan had found what they though was the asteroid. Gar and I just looked through their telescope. Oh well. Later we looked through the same telescope again to see if the asteroid had moved. It did, so we were pretty convinced that they had found it. Once the moon came up, we turned the telescope towards it and looked at it. It was cool because we could see the different features on the moon. So all and all last night we saw the International Space Station fly by (on the way up to Fenton Hill), Mercury, the moon, Mars, Jupiter with its moons and bands, Saturn with its rings, Uranus, Neptune, 532 Herculina, about five shooting stars, a nebula, two colliding galaxies, and some unidentified something that flew close to the moon.

Wednesday

We didn't get back to the hotel until around 5:00am Wednesday morning. Needless to say, I just went to bed. We got up around 1:00-ish and went to a barbecue place. Another unusual breakfast. After that we went to the Canyon School and Frank talked to us about time and geocentric cosmologies. After that we did calculations using our data about the asteroid from the night before. Later that day we went to Don Casperson's church to rollerblade. It was so much fun. We played tag and limbo and some other things. Gar and Jonathon had never rollerbladed before. That was sorta funny. While we were playing tag we were all falling everywhere because we were trying to avoid each other. Amy ended up with two funny looking floor burns on her knee. Sam killed his knee one time when we collided (I felt sort of bad about that). Gar feel on her elbow and Jonathon just hurt the next day. After we took our skates off, we went outside to the playground and Amy taught us how to leg wrestle. It was so much fun. You hook legs and see who can flip the other the fastest. Amy stomped all the boys, then Amy and I leg wrestled and it was a dead lock. That night we drove up to Fenton Hill. Amy, Ryan and I set up one of the telescopes and we found the asteroid pretty fast. We drew our sketches and then went inside for awhile. We came out about an hour later to track the asteroid's progress. After that I looked at a bunch of the Messier Objects. Some of them were pretty cool. That night it got really cold. Good thing that Joe brought a huge blanket from the hotel. Four or five of us fit under that thing.

Thursday

On Thursday we got up and had Mexican food in the park. Isn't that strange? Then we played Frisbee, which is definitely addictive. After that we went to Scott's third grade classroom to feed his gecko. It was cool watching it eat all the crickets. While we were at the school, it started raining. And then it started hailing. That is why I had two big lumps on my head after we sprinted into the coolest store in New Mexico. It is called The Black Hole. It is full of junk. Literally. It is just a bunch of junk that this guy has collected from the lab. I guess that the lab has given him a bunch of old equipment or maybe he picked it out of the trash or something. It was so much fun just poking through all of the stuff. Amy found a "One Way" sign there and they also had like Army clothes and gear, scuba suits, uranium marbles, wind chimes, and anything else you can think of. Sam and Jonathon decided that they were going to buy something to blow up. After that we went to the classroom and did the science thing. In the middle of some of this, Frank called us outside to see a house that was on fire. There was lots of black smoke just pouring from it. He told us that a few minutes earlier you could see flames coming out of it. That evening we went to the Bradbury Museum to hear a lecture on Neutrinos. Parts of it were over my head, but it was still really cool. After that we came to the classroom to make a CCD camera image in color. We also played these little riddles that you had to figure out what it was talking about (like one was 9 P in the SS; that would be 9 planets in the solar system). Some of them were really hard and we didn't get them. A little later Amy, Sam, Ryan, and I went outside to play Frisbee. After that we went back to the hotel and probably played cards of something. Our usual bedtime is about 3:00 these days.

Friday

Friday was our geology day. Carole took us on a tour around the area and told us about different features and about how the fires have effected the area. My favorite part was the Soda Dam. It was soooo cool. It was a natural dam that was formed by mineral rich water coming out of a crack and depositing the minerals to build the dam. There was a cave there that you could go up into and there was a hot spring. Amy and I were feeling adventurous and so we started to climb. First we jumped down onto the circular platform type thing and had to climb back up. After that we didn't feel like going around to get off the top of the dam, so we climbed about thirty feet right down the side of it. Later we decided to go back up the same way. Then we went down the other side of the dam and made our way across the street to a hole in the cliff that was pouring out hot water. We climbed up the rock above that and soon everyone else followed and we took some really cool picture. After that we went back to the Black Hole. Amy, Gar, Jonathon, and I bought some cool patches. Jonathon also bought this motor thing to try to blow stuff up or something related to that. That night at Bradbury Frank did the lecture. It was about supernovas exploding so that was cool. Later we went to Baskin Robin's and got milkshakes and then we went to see "The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift." It was actually pretty good. I liked it. After the movie, Amy, Sam, Ching Man, Ryan, Jonathon, and I went to the park and just sat on the ledge and talked for a really long time. There were a ton of cops driving around and we thought that there was a homeless guy under the porch behind us. That was weird. After we got back to the hotel, Jonathon almost caught the hotel room on fire because he connected two wires on his motor that he shouldn't have. He burned his pants. One spark flew straight at my nose and it scared me. He also sauntered one wire to another. It was pretty funny.

Saturday

Saturday we got up and had a lecture at the Canyon School and then we went to do laundry. While we were waiting for the clothes to wash and dry, we all (including Scott) played HotBox. That is a Frisbee game that Amy taught us. It was so much fun. In the first game, our team scored like 8 goals (about five of them were Gar's). The second game, with new teams, was really even though and I think there may have been like 5 goals in the entire game for both teams. After we dropped our clothes off at the hotel, we went to Don's house. He had a really cool house. He had a really cool sunroom and a patio off of it. We ate out on the patio and then we played charades in his backyard. Charades was so much fun. We were playing girls on guys and we all thought of the most awkward and embarrassing things we could to have the other team act out. After charades we all went inside and watched "Contact" with Jodie Foster out at the Very Large Array in New Mexico. We were still at Don's house when it turned 12:00am and so it was officially Joe's birthday. When we went back to the hotel we went to the pool. We were in the pool until around 2:00am. Then we changed and played cards, Egyptian Rat Screw to be specific. It was probably the longest game of Egyptian Rat Screw that has ever been. Jon and I were going head to head for about twenty or thirty minutes. Didn't go to bed until about 4:00am that night.

Sunday

We got up and went to a lecture. We wrote a birthday card for Joe and we had cake and ice cream too. After that we went to Bandelier. It was really cool. We got to go in little caves and things. It also had a place where you go up 140 feet worth of ladders to more caves and this underground room. Later that night we went observing. It was so cold that night. It had been raining so the ground was wet and the wind was blowing. We went on a Messier Marathon that night to see how many Messier Objects we could find. I'm so glad that we decided to take a few blankets up there that night. They came in handy. We got home around 3:00am and I went was really tired. Oh well. I went down to the lobby to check my SAT score. I didn't like it very much. I went up to Gar and Amy's room so they could come down and see what they got. They both did really well (even though Amy didn't like hers). Even though I was tired, we still stayed up until about 8:00am.

Monday

We got up at like 10:00am. That is two hours of sleep. Not a lot. We went to Chinese for breakfast again. After that we went to the Canyon School for a lecture about galaxies from Patrick's wife. It was cool because she had hands-on things and she let us keep some really cool pictures. After that we went to Santa Fe! We got to go shopping for about an hour and then we went to Scott's house. He had a really cool house too. He had two really big dogs and a lot of hummingbird feeders (with hummingbirds) and a cat. Also, on his porch, there were some of the biggest spiders I had ever seen before. For dinner we had some really good lasagna and we played a lot of pool. It was fun. Later, around 8:30pm, we went to the opera, Carmen. It was an outdoor theater so it was pretty cold. We had lots of sweaters and blankets and such though so we were fine. Joe started snoring during the middle of the opera. He was asleep down below his seat on the ground, but I don't really have that much room to talk. I dozed off a few times too. I think most of us did at some point though. We all went to bed when we got to the hotel.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we went to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescopes near Magdalena. Quite an original name if you ask me. It took a long time to get there, about three hours. Jonathon and I watched a movie from my IPOD in the van on the way. It was really funny and totally worth draining the battery. The VLA was really fun. We got to wear hard hats and actually got to go up onto the disk of the telescope. It was blinding white. While we were there, we posed for a picture where we all had to hold our arms out in the same direction so it looked like we were the radio telescopes. Gar whacked Ching Man in the head. Gar thinks that that was a "bonding experience" for them. Haha. It was hilarious. On the way home, Jon and I tried to listen to my IPOD, but it didn't have any battery left. We tried to listen to his mp3 but his batteries died too. He did some scavenging and he found a battery in his flashlight. For about two hours on the way back, Joe had his leg up on the back of our seat and it fell asleep. When he tried to get out of the van he just fell over. It was so funny. I think he even hit his head on the door. When we got back to the hotel, we decided to go on a walk. We all met in Amy and Gar's room, but we never went. Gar, Jonathon, and Ryan went, but the rest of us stayed in Amy's room and watched COPS. Joe and Sam got tired so they went to bed. Gar, Jon, and Ryan came back a little later and we played Truth or Dare and just talked. At about 2:00am Jonathon and Ryan left to go to bed, but Jon came back a little later because he forgot his shoes. I think we went to bed around 4:00am that night.

Wednesday

We got up around 9:30 or 10:00ish to go to a lecture by Kas about gamma ray bursts. After that we started working on our presentation for Friday. It was sort of stressful because we had left it to the last minute. Oh well. We had to figure out everything that we wanted to put in there and who would do what. For lunch that day we went to a place that turns into a bar at night, so they had pool tables. That was fun. Later that night we went to Bradbury for a lecture about black holes by Rob Coker. After that we went to the Trinity Beverage Company to eat dinner. It was kinda weird because they never brought out Ching Man's food. She ended up just getting it in a box to go. After that we went to Fenton Hill. Our night's mission was to look at binary stars to find the "seeing" of the site. I really liked doing that. It was fun because we got to use different eyepieces and it was hard to figure out how to draw the pictures. The smallest one that I could actually see the space between was 1.9 arc seconds apart. That night when we got back to the hotel we just went to bed.

Thursday

We woke up around 10:30 and went to Nuke City Foodworks. After that we went to the Canyon School to work on our presentations. We ended up going back to the hotel to work on it in a conference room. Amy and I were doing the part of the presentation about the asteroid, so we just laid down on the floor and spread out all of our papers and notes and things. We got a lot done. We figured out what we were going to have on all of our slides and who was going to say what and we got John-o to help us with the math of it all. That night we went to Bradbury to hear a lecture from Joyce Guzik about the sun. That night when we went back to the hotel, we worked on the PowerPoint some more. Amy and I pretty much finished what we needed to so we were happy about that. I ended up falling asleep on Amy's bed for like an hour. I think that a lot of us fell asleep in there waiting on the computer or just because we didn't feel like going to bed. That night we went to bed at about 3:00am.

Friday

We got up and came to Canyon School to work on our presentation. We did a few test runs to make it right. I was getting nervous as our presentation got closer. Oh well. It presentation went well. No one really came to it, but I guess that is okay. We went to a Blues concert that night. We played fooseball. That was fun. We stayed up late that night. We went on a walk to the park and we played Frisbee in the Smith's parking lot. I really like Frisbee. When we got back we went to Amy's room. Jon and I played Egyptian Rat Screw. Jon beat me twice. NOOO.