Yesterday, I arrived to Narrabri, a little town about 550 km from Sydney. We flew there in a Dash-8, and got a taxi to the telescope. The lady driving the taxi had an astonishing dialect. I wish I had recorded some... I could barely understand a word! As we got closer to ATCA, the telescope area, I was keeping my eyes open for kangaroos. I had already seen two Galahs (rosenkakduor) by the roadside. Then they appeared. About 10 at a time, standing by the road, watching us, jumping away if we got too close for comfort. The closer we got to our destination, the more of them there were. The sun was setting, and the CB cloud that had made our landing bumpy and fun, gave a great background to one of the telescopes (there are 6) as I took a fair amount of photos. I'm just adding one right now (showing some of the kangaroos, hence the washed out colours of the sky), but more will come to a webalbum at a close location hopefully soon.
After dinner and setting up the observations, I was the first one to get some sleep, which would be 4 hours - and then I mightily surprised woke up in the middle of my deep sleep. Walking outside to the control room soon cured the sleepiness - The Milky Way was clearer than I'd ever seen - and since it's the sky of the southern hemisphere, the Magellanic clouds were visible too. I took my time walking... Now I'm monitoring monitors, hoping that nothing goes wrong, since I probably wouldn't know what to do about it :P
3 comments:
Underbar bild med dessa hoppfulla åskådare - ingen tvekan om i vilken del av världen det teleskopet ligger!
Sounds so fantastic. Hope you are having the time of your life. Enjoying the heat.
It all sounds so incredible. I heard that the temperatures are something else.
When we were there in 86 we say Haley's comet ; )
Post a Comment