I suppose I should do a journal entry about this Beth Brown person. Beth is a giant purple gelatinous blob that must be kept in a jar unless the temp. is below 45 degrees. Just kidding. Beth is really just your average girl from the outskirts of a small town far, far away called Cleveland. (and how about them Indians?) She loves adventure and any chance to have some fun. I'll admit she may be a bit sarcastic at times, but we all have our faults. She enjoys music and the theater. Beth feels most comfortable with a box of crayons in her hand in a glass of root beer near by.
Beth demonstrated her crayon powers at dinner one night during her Earthwatch trip:
(bbgilbert.jpg & BBtbl1.jpg)
O.K.. That's enough boring biography type stuff.....on to the trip!
Tuesday, June 16, 1998
Earthwatch. Trip to the unknown. My mother is convinced it's really a government ploy to get unexpecting children to come to parts unknown to be put through tests not unlike those you would see on the X-Files. And you thought kids had big imaginations. Anyway, I left my house at the unheard of hour of 4:30 to catch a plane to Atlanta. Atlanta airport is huge! It wasn't bad though....I got to ride on one fast rapid transit thing. I met up with David and Jon at the gate. Well, there wasn't any question who the earthwatch people were when we arrived in N.M. There was Galen (looking like Robin Williams) and five other people holding up signs. We took our luggage to the car and played badminton under the whale for awhile (until we started hitting artifacts we probably shouldn't have). Finally Corrie and Elyne showed up. I was introduced to the Southwestern treat of Soapapilla at a Mexican restaurant in Old Town Albuquerque. Continuing on, we all piled back into the van. We stopped at Soda Dam on the way through the Jemez Mountains. Cool place! I crawled up into a little cave and saw a natural hot spring. We finally get to the hotel just in enough time to sleep. Well, that's what I thought anyway. Little did I know Galen already had other plans. We went to Canyon School (where all classes and most lectures were to take place) and started to get comfy in the room we were to call home. To think it all started with the question "so what exactly is a microlensing event?" Thanks Jon. It really was an interesting conversation. Galen also told about dark matter and took us outside for a quick sky tour. I have already learned a few new constellations: Cassiopeia, the Northern Crown, Scorpio, and the Summer Triangle. Perhaps I will understand more of all this astrophysics stuff when I'm fully awake.
Wednesday, June 17
Today was our first full day. We've started to settle into the schedule of sleeping during the day and staying up till hours I didn't even know existed. Discussions continued from the previous night on black matter and why our solar system is flat. At 15:00 we walked up town to the Bradbury Science Museum (no relation to Ray). I think Garry, our Harley riding tour guide, knew every inch of the museum. Garry's claim to fame, in my mind, will always be when he asked us if we wanted to meet Tom. Tom, as it turned out, was a real honest-to- goodness human brain. We learned what every part of the brain is used for. Garry even offered to let us pet Tom. I was shocked by the guest book in the back of the museum. While one-third of the signers raved about how nice the museum was, the remaining entries were heated arguments against the use of nuclear war heads. I guess I was just shocked so many people felt so strongly about this. I would have liked to read more, but we had to go. Back to Canyon School for the evening. Don explained how to use the CCD cameras; it sounds like a real complicated process. You have to take a million black and white pictures just to get one good image. And just forget about having color pictures. To get a decent color picture you have to take three pictures through filters. Then you have to put them together. It's a pain to get all the color frequencies right. Oh well, perhaps I will understand better once I actually get to use it.
Thursday, June 18
Everything I ever learned about the scientific method was blown out of the water today by Ed Fennimore. He ripped apart each step my teachers have been drilling into my head for the last twelve years. And the most ironic thing was he was right about it all! Ed also enlightened us all about one of the main things we're to find the elusive GAMMA RAY BURST. Just as I felt like I was beginning to understand how this astrophysics stuff works, we all attended a lecture at the P/T Colloquium on the Hubble Deep Field. Discouragement at being slow to grasp all this technical talk increased tenfold. Much to my relief, we were soon on our way to Fenton Hill for our first night of observations. The domes of Fenton are somewhat smaller than I expected, but everything on the pad is still under construction. While it was still light we took a quick tour of MILAGRO. It's huge! I can only imagine how much information on cosmic air showers caused by gamma ray bursts it will be able to gather. It's so big it will probably take three weeks to fill completely. Later this week we'll get to go back for a more in-depth tour. Our first job on Fenton Hill was to get the computers hooked up to the telescopes. The C14 is in the automated dome . Then we waited till dark to begin. I started with the polar alignment of the C14. Polar alignments set up the telescope so it will point to any star in the sky simply by punching in the coordinates. Just as we had the dome turning we had a shocking experience. All of a sudden sparks came shooting out of the wall right onto Corrie's head! Some of the wires had become tangled and started to melt the rubber coating. The motors were turned off and the dome had to be turned manually for the remainder of the evening. After about twenty minutes in the dome I began to feel the close quarters. Although I enjoyed the warmth, claustrophobia finally got to me. I made my escape and joined David and Elyne in the Astrohaven, or convertible dome. Together, for close to three hours, we searched the sky for double stars and messier objects. The double star observations will help establish the "seeing" of Fenton Hill. We had to look at how many star diameters were visible between the double stars. Some were very difficult to distinguish as doubles at all, while others were clearly separated. Double stars are funny in that respect. They may look like they are right next to each other when in reality they seldom are. Thousands of light-years are in between. Oh well, the human perception fails yet again. Messier objects were next on our list of things to observe. These were loads more fun to see. Some were galaxies, others nebulas, star globules, and planets. I could actually see some of the spiraling arms of the galaxies! This is stuff I only ever saw in school books! Jupiter rose around 2 am. The details that could be seen were astounding...layers of stripes spanned the planet, each with a distinct redish-orangish color. Four of Jupiter's moons, Io, Callisto, Europa, and Gannemeade, were close enough to be seen in the same telescope field.
(Bethmessy.jpg & bethmessy2.jpg)
The Meade was relatively easy to use. It had one of those newfangled glow-in-the-dark remote controls. The telescope automatically moves to the desired star or object once its coordinates are punched in. Being typical men, Elyne and David kept control of the remote almost for the entire evening. Galen drifted in and out of our fab dome. It appeared the bigger dome was having yet more technical difficulties. Jon, Corrie, Dana, Megan, and Matt, the group inside that dome, soon became known as the "bubble kids". The chilly temps up on the hill created many problems. The biggest of these problems will hence forth be called the "sleeping bag wars". The object of contention once the sun went down was not, as you may have thought, a telescope. Rather, it was an oversized sleeping bag lined with flannel about two miles thick. It happened that I got control of the sleeping bag early in the night, before everyone else wanted it. But soon, all the other evil ones, for all are the competition in matters of sleeping bags, realized what I had. It was then that I sleeping bags are not meant to be shared. Jon pleaded for hours. When he wearied of that, he started planning recon missions to get his grubby hands on it. After hours of tight surveillance of my sleeping bag, I wearied and went inside. That was when the Devil Jon struck. I am proud to say, he only had the bag for three minutes. Then I got it back for good. That was the end of our first night on the Hill.
Friday, June 19
Finally I feel normal for the first time since arriving in New Mexico. I realized, upon eating my first of many 'Chaco Tacos' that I had been going through ice-cream withdrawal. I think part of the internal confusion is the mountains I see absolutely everywhere. I'm used to seeing the rolling mountains of the Blue Ridge when we go on vacation. The Jemez, and others in the area, are nothing like those. Instead, they're rather jagged; full of quick brakes and drops. We met Jim today. He came to talk to us a bit during the day. That was all good enough, but it was Friday night that was the icing on the day's cake. Just before sunset we made our way to the tech area where ROTSE 1 is being kept. This telescope comes equipped with four rotating heads. Each head is actually a telescopic camera that takes CCD images. While I didn't have a clue what Don was talking about that first night with the CCD's, I now understand how they work. ROTSE 1 switches on when the sun reaches "astronomical sunset", or when it's 18 degrees below the horizon. Jim decided to distract the lenses from their regular job in order to let us look at some Messier objects. Together, Megan and I took two pictures of M36. We then fooled around with subtracting the bias and canceling deformed pixels to get one super picture of the group of galaxies. Even though it looks like a porta potty with a growth on top, I think ROTSE 1 may become the most important part of the Fenton site.
Saturday, June 20
Today was pretty much play day. We got up nice and early this morning to enrich our knowledge of the Indian culture. Diane, also an astrophysicist at the lab, took us on a tour of some Indian ruins. We started off early in the morning before the sun got too high. The scenery here is spectacular. The view from the top of the ruin's mesa looked like something you would see at the Grand Canyon. It was a fun hike. It was easy to tell many people had been here before us. The trail was only about a foot wide and about two feet deep in some places from all the traction. OK. So I'm definitely not an archeologist. The "ruins" were not quite the remnant of adobe walls I was expecting. Instead they where nothing more than mounds of dirt with pottery chunks scattered throughout. I was a little disappointed. I suppose the trip back down the mesa made up for it. Pictographs were dug into any flat part of the wall. It was awesome to see something left from these people's culture. They hinted at the Indian's beliefs on everything from weather to religion. After ducking in some caves for a brief bit of shade we were back at the beginning of the path. I have never been so dust covered in my life. It's a good thing Galen decided to take us to his community pool after our hike. We were all more than ready for a cool break. We skipped Fenton for the evening. Instead Galen decided it was about time we start on our journals.
Sunday, June 21 FATHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!
Today, apart from being Father's Day, is the Galen's birthday. Early in the day I made a few phone calls. My fabulous Father answered the phone in a less than happy mood. Two of our cars broke down that morning. Poor Dad. I talked to the whole family on speaker phone for awhile. Then I called my Guy. I miss all those Ohioanites, so it was good to hear them. So anyway, to celebrate the Galen's Birthday we had a cookout at his house in White Rock. Corrie and I ordered a cake from Furr's the day before. We wanted a really cool one with killer comets and spiral galaxies and telescopes and aliens on it. Alas, the bakery lady informed us that she had more important cakes to bake. Like anything could be more important than the Galen's cake, yeah right. Instead of being an astronomical feast for the eyes, it turned out quite simple. It had a blue background and bright yellow stars on it. Quite pretty...... We ate Southwestern type food (tasty, though I'm starting to miss cows in the edible form) and lounged in the backyard. After dinner we played badminton. I forgot to tell them that I was on the Olympic badminton team in '84. Or that I was born with a racket and silver birdie in my mouth. Oh well. I have never seen such a collection of strange musical instruments. I mean they had a harpsichord, dulcimers, a harp, a piano, and some of those crazy Australian instruments. We all had fun attempting to pick out recognizable tunes on instruments we had never played before, let alone heard of. I picked cherries for the first time in my life. Gisler's tree in the back yard was sooooooo full! I've never seen that many cherries in my life!!! To cap off the day we watched Gattaca, a movie about the genetically engineered future.
Monday, June 22, 1998
Yes. My prognosis of the C-14 being sick the other night was correct. We went up to Fenton right after getting up at two. The makers of the large dome came shortly after we got there. The sliding door on the top of the dome was sticking. With their help we sanded the edges to make all the pieces fit together better. It took hours to rewire, screw in plates, and generally heal the dome. Instead of going to Fenton Lake for a picnic dinner, we ate right there at the sight. By the time we were finished dusk was approaching. We turned the dome and C-14 on for a trial and....IT STILL WASN'T WORKING!!!!!!!!!! It was about this time, as we all starting pull out our hair in utter frustration, that Robin showed up. Robin is a amateur astronomer in the area. He brought with him a couple of rather interesting telescopes he made himself. They were unlike anything I've ever seen and probably can't describe even now. Sorry. Maybe next time. Jim and Don came up at about ten. With all these additions the pad was quite crowded. Don brought with him a huge radio antenna. It must have been 25 ft. across!!!!!! I probably could've picked up a couple of Cleveland stations on the thing. I learned that (if it had been a good night) I could have listened to Jupiter. I wonder what their music is like...But anyway, I found this really cool. I might try to pick up the signals when I get home. Though I suppose I would need a huge thing like Don's to do any good. The group in the Astrohaven was again me, David, and Elyne. Megan joined us about half way through the night. We went back through the list of double stars to test the seeing. We did get to see a few more this time. Our observations were a bit better than last time. There were more diameters in between the doubles. We were relatively quick. It only took us an hour and a half to get through the list of about fifty stars. WOW! I was shocked when David and Elyne taught me how to use the remote control. I was the "wand wizard" for the evening. We crashed in Galen's trailer for coffee and candy around three. Back out on the pad we laid on the cement and watched for shooting stars, which were nonexistent. The bubble kids hadn't seen a thing all night. They took over the Meade while we were inside. Everyone was done with all we needed by four, so Galen called it an early night. I think I passed out as soon as I hit the bed.
Tuesday, June 23, 1998
Today was lecture day. Right now I do not care to go into to any details of the lectures we attended. Maybe later if you're lucky. Don introduced us to the history of Radio Astronomy. Quite an interesting field I must say. We also listened to a talk on the "Physics of Star Trek". This was the best lecture I've been to yet (no offense Don!) It was very listener friendly. This guy actually had an evident sense of humor. Todd briefly explained neutrinos. Neutrinos are yet another part of astrophysics that I will never be able to fully understand. Who am I kidding? I will never even begin to understand them. Our last lecture of the day was back at Bradbury. Jack Hills gave a very happy speech on killer asteroids. It makes me feel a lot safer to know that there are asteroids coming closer all the time that could completely wipe out our entire earth. Too help this idea along I have a picture:
(bethcomet.jpg)
Wednesday, June 24, 1998
Whoa. I've never seen that poor "government property" van so packed with people. Every single seat was filled as the eight of us, Cathy, Guthrie, and Diane (a friend of Galen's) piled in. Guthrie (oh my Gosh! No! Not Guthrie behind the wheel! The inhumanity!) replaced Donna as our driver. So off we went to the VLA.
V.L.A....Very Large Array. You would think that our government could spend a little of the billions of dollars they use each year on a bit of creativity. Oh well.... When I saw the VLA I realized maybe the gov. isn't that stupid after all. The telescopes where HUGE!!!! And they stretched on for miles across the dessert. Today our tour guide was no where as good as Gary. He was simply a worker there who got saddled with the job. Inside the main building we saw the operating room and the control room. All I kept thinking was that this was where they filmed 'Contact'. Cool. I could have been in a movie if I had been here two years earlier....Everytime we went outside no one could do anything but drool over the dishes. That poor dessert probably hasn't seen that much moisture for years. To cap off our day at the VLA we visited the sattelite barn. Megan was almost beginning to feel at home when she heard the word barn. Then she saw the size of the thing. I saw her eyes get all big thinking about how she could fit thousands of cows in that one... As a special treat we got to climb up inside the dish in the barn. I didn't get to walk on the actual dish part, but I did get to look at it through a trap door. I'm impressed. The two hour trip back didn't seem to take as long this time. Maybe it was because of our singing. Have I mentioned yet the I love B-I-N-G-O? hee hee.
Thursday, June 25, 1998
Today Carol gave us a complete geological tour of the surrounding Jemez mountains. First stop: Valle Grande. This is the huge valley where we saw the cow-elk on our very first day. The valley is actually part of a giant caldera, or the remnants of a long inactive volcano. Soil samples tell just how long ago the volcano last erupted. The caldera is now privately owned by a cattle ranching family in Texas. There are 5,000 head of cattle and 5,000 head of elk on the property. It was really strange to see the valley during the day. Usually we pass only pass it in the evening or the wee hours of the morning on the way to and from Fenton Hill. Next we pulled to the side of the road to look at pumice. All I know about pumice is that my sister likes to rub it on her feet. Carol said it is really the ash of the volcano that erupted and made the caldera. I've never seen rock quite like pummice....It's so light...and almost fluffy. After the pumice experience Carol took us back to Soda Dam. David and I climbed around the back side of the dam. I managed to scale up a log perched in between two cliffs. This adventure cemented my alter- ego as "the Mountain-Goat". We learned why there are so many of these hot springs in this part of New Mexico. Again, it stems back to the volcano. Soda Dam is neat because it has the hot spring and a river with raging rapids right next to each other. Some boys were diving off the top of the rocks into the river 30 feet below. I was so close to diving in after them when Donna put her foot down. I suppose that's good because I didn't have my bathing suit with me..... One of the last stops of our tour was a small hole in the wall of the mountain. I suppose long, long, long ago New Mexico was a vast ocean. This had nothing to do with the volcano (surprise of all surprises). We started rooting around in the dirt like a bunch of dirty pigs after the remnants of dead sea life. I, being the archaeological wonder that I am, found all sorts of stuff. Carol, unlike Diane from the Indian walk, said we could take as many of the fossils home as we wanted. I have sacks full. Maybe I will grind them into a powder and turn it into my very own baby powder. Later, back in LA, we went to the Brabury for another lecture in the Astronomy Days series. Geoff Reeves colored our minds with tales (and the technical side) of the aura borealis. He was a great speaker. He really kept my attention. Perhaps it was because he was younger, and not as dry as some of our speakers. I'm not saying any of the others were bad, just that he kept my attention more. The only mistake he made was showing us a 20 minute long film of the Northern Lights. After many nights of only a couple of hours of sleep this put all of right to sleep. It was very relaxing. He also told us how the Northern Lights work...but in my state of mind at the moment I cannot recall how it happens.
Friday, June 26, 1998
Galen just told us all that we are no longer sleeping--like this is different from any other night. Our schedule is looking increasing busy as we run out of time to do everything that's in the itinerary. Elk. New Mexico has many, many elk. I think we almost hit 60, and saw a couple hundred more, on the way home tonight. But anyway, I suppose I should stop writing this journal backwards. On to the middle of the day (when we got up). Well, never mind. We didn't do anything important in the afternoon. For dinner we had a picnic at Fenton Lake. Compared to Lake Erie the poor thing looked like a puddle earthworms would swim in. A very pretty puddle......We fed the native wildlife (ducks) until I thought they were going to explode. Which could have conceivably been an interesting sight. Elyne found his first love at the lake- a dead crayfish. Dana was less enamored with the crustacean when she found it on her shoulder......
Everything was sort of not working at the Hill tonight. The dome telescope is shot. The radio telescope is no good because Io is on the back side of Jupiter. Even my baby, the Meade 7 inch, wasn't cooperating. I thing the only thing I gained from this night on the Hill was how to optimize the heat you can get out of a single sleeping bag. Perhaps it was simply a fluke of a night for our team. Better luck next time.
Saturday, June 27, 1998
Much of Saturday is a blur to me. I recall getting the hotel people to open breakfast an hour early for us. I kinda remember laughing a lot- because everything is funny when you're sleep-deprived. Then it all goes fuzzy........
We all crawl from bed around 4:30. Elyne, Corrie, Dave, Megan, Dana, and I sat outside Canyon School for a couple of hours contemplating just how much trouble we would get in if we broke into the locked doors. By the time Elyne started standing on his head we knew it was time to go. As a group we decided to spend our last free night up on Fenton with Don. It was CCD theme night. Guthrie wrote a CCD song and Chad came dressed as a camera. Cathy ran around with Jon juggling lens filters. What great fun! Actually we just took a whole bunch of CCD images...a couple great ones of the moon....some more of those great galaxy things with the spiral arms........After a couple hours with the computers I took a break and scanned in my nightly artwork....So here it is for our last observing night:
(bethskyscape.jpg)
We decided to call it an early night and left the Hill around 2 am.
Sunday, June 28, 1998
Today we went to Santa Fe. Why do I keep singing "Rent" anytime I say that? Anyway. I know Galen wanted to culturally educate us, but I didn't know he meant this way....Let me set the scene. We arrive to an overly busy plaza downtown. Lots and lots of people. There's even a stage set up on one side. The group thinks nothing of it until the parade starts. All sorts of people in funny dresses come walking down the street. And most of them are carrying little rainbow colored flags. Yes. We unknowingly went to Santa Fe on Gay Day! Talk about ironic situations.....
This entry is going to be choppy. Sorry. We looked in all the galleries. It was all nice stuff, though it was also all the same no matter what store you went into. I wish Cleveland had some sort of open-air market like this. Went to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. I was impressed, but only to a certain degree. You have to give the lady credit for being so famous and everything...but some of her stuff just didn't do anything for me. I really liked the flowers and the seashell pictures. My sister would have loved the whole museum.
The evening was spent at a local production of Hamlet. I never saw the whole play before. Very cool (for lack of a better word). I've never seen anything like it, even at the professional plays in Cleveland. Hamlet himself was by far one of the best actors I've ever seen. Spellbinding. that's word I was looking for. It completely took me away from the word for two hours.
Monday, June 29, 1998
Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee
We are B.A.D........hee hee. Dana and I decided toady (with about two hours till presentation time) that we would be good Samaritans and wake the oversleeping Jon. Yup. We sure woke him up alrighty......and I never realized just how much fun a can of shaving cream can be. Matt was our accomplish in the "Gotta-Get-Jon" scheme. He gave me a key earlier in the week. Every night Dana and I would try our hardest to stay awake so we could get Jon in his sleep. Every night Dana and/or I would fall asleep too quick, so Monday morning was the perfect opportunity. We snuck in with our cans ready. YES! Jon was still zonked (or so we thought). Within five minutes the whole bed was covered. The only problem was that Dana and I kept laughing....next thing I knew I was smashed in the back of the head with a cream-filled pillow. In no time all four of us were completely covered. Needless to say, I think this caused Galen to sprout a few more gray hairs (we still didn't have our presentation done. After cleaning up we finally got to work. Instead of listening to some lighthearted music we had "Night on Bald Mountain" playing in the background. Well, not really. Cathy (sounding like the devil incarnate) told us frightening tales of cannibal scientists that where going to eat us al alive. (This is where you shiver) If that had been the case, then we were the meal that bit back. I have never been a part of a presentation that ran as smoothly as ours did. Everyone knew his/her part. We almost even kept the big bad astrophysicists interested. Our last night ended on a good note. Everyone we worked with came to a farewell dinner. I couldn't do it. No matter how hard I tried I could not eat one more Mexican dinner. Sacrilege, I'm sure. At 11:00 we 'painted the rock' in front of Galen's community. That was fun. I've never been a vandal before. : ) This trip really was culturally diverse. We should have gone to bed early since we were going to leave at 7:00 the next morning. But when have teenagers actually done something they're supposed to? Instead we stayed up until about 4:30 talking about everything and nothing at the same time. I might just miss these people when reality hits in a few days.
Tuesday, June 30, 1998
Last day. Wow. What can I say? The whole two weeks went by way too quick. I can still remember all my first impressions of everything. Now things that seemed so odd to my Midwestern eye look common place. I'm just beginning to know my way around the town...and now I have to leave? I finally got Jon to stop picking on me....with only half a day to enjoy the new peace and quiet?!? The car trip to the airport is shockingly quiet for our group. I think the two hours of sleep from the previous night (and all the other nights of no more than 5 hrs.) are finally getting to us. David and I are on the second plane to leave. It's sad to a point to know I will probably never see any of these people again. I mean, I just spent two weeks where I was never without one of them