Kartchener Caverns and Tombstone

Kartchener Caverns and Tombstone

Kartchener caverns are a series of live caves that were
found in the desert just outside of Tucson. The cave has fortunately become a
protected area with small modifications made to allow visitors to view the
inside with minimal damage caused to the natural formations. There were many
beautiful examples of stalactites and stalagmites along with draperies and soda
straws. We were able to see the initial path that the discoverers walked on
their first venture into the cave and all of the preserved areas that have
never been touched by humans. There is an extensive care regime for the caves,
anything that gets contaminated by lint or being touched is carefully cleaned
after visiting hours are over. Any contamination can ‘kill’ the formations by
disrupting the calcium balance and the oil negates the water, which is what
makes these caves living. Unfortunately we were not able to take any pictures within the caves due to the conserved ecosystem.

Tombstone is a town preserved from the days of the Wild
West. This was an interesting place to visit, with many historical references throughout
the town. Besides the tourists, the town looked like the set of an old western
film, with people dressed as cowboys waking around and riding in horse-drawn
carriages. There were many attractions, including shooting ranges and a
recreation of the famous O.K. Corral shoot-out asking with tours of many of the
buildings that are still standing since the glory days.

University of Arizona

Thursday was spent at the University campus. First we
attended a lecture by Don McCarthy, an excellent science communicator as the
entire lecture was very interactive and had plenty of practical examples. After
the lecture, we met Jim Scotti at the Lunar Planetary Lab and visited the Space
Imagery Center where we were able to look at photographs from all of the Apollo
missions along with images from Magellan and Gemini amongst others. We were
able to wander freely around the centre and access all of the planetary atlases
and photobooks. After a break for lunch we visited the Steward Mirror Lab where
we were able to see the final stage of the mirror for the LSST, which should be
shipped to its location in the coming weeks. There were also two mirrors in
progress that are to be part of the Giant Magellan Telescope, a 7-mirror scope,
where each mirror is 8.4m in diameter, giving a total collecting area of
24.5m,which will make it the largest optical telescope in the world. The
mirrors made in the SML have a maximum diameter of 8.4m due to the unique way
in which they are created. The use a spin technique as they melt the glass to
give the surface a parabolic shape, which requires much less grinding and
polishing to be done after casting. The Oven Pilot is responsible for ensuring
that the furnace rotates at the correct speed and temperature. The glass used
is shipped from Japan by a Japanese company called Ohara in large chunks that
are inspected for impurities before becoming part of the mirror. The final
visit was to the HiRISE building, were we were shown around by several members
of the team and given a variety of images from the project to take back with
us. The team at HiRISE were so welcoming; they printed special images for our
visit with Welsh captions at the bottom as they knew we were visiting from
Wales, It really was one of the highlights of the trip.

The Titan Missile Museum and Mt Whipple Observatory

The titan missile museum was an interesting experience. Our tour guide took us through the silo and to mission control, at stages talking us through the crews actions and the procedure of launching a missile, which fortunately never happened.

At Mt Hopkins, we first looked at the VERITAS telescope array at the base of the mountain which are used for finding gamma rays and other charged particles. The journey to the other telescopes took almost an hour. First we went to the ridge to see the two smaller telescopes, one needing an operator on site, and one fully automated which can be used remotely by the partner universities. After the smaller telescopes, we visited the MMT, Monolithic mirror telescope (previously the multi mirror telescope) a 6m single mirror telescope, where the telescope building revolves, rather than just the dome.

Kitt Peak National Observatory

Today we visited the Kitt peak observatory, which has one of the largest collections of optical telescopes in the USA. We were kindly shown around by John and Katy who have both been involved with Kitt peak since its early days.

The first telescope we visited was the 4 meter scope which was built on the mountaintop over 50 years ago. The mirror alone weighs 30,000lbs and a variety of instruments can be used with it. It was originally designed to be used with photographic plates but has been updated and now uses CCDs or spectrographs. The building around the telescope includes a workshop for any maintenance that needs doing, and a room designed to hold the machine that re-aluminizes the mirror’s surface every few years.

We then looked at the WIYN 3.5 metre telescope, which has a significantly smaller dome built around it. This was jointly funded by various universities from different states across America.

After a brief visit to the solar scope, we met Jim Scotti, who showed us around the two spacewatch telescopes. Their mission is to monitor the sky for asteroids and comets, cataloguing the main belt asteroids and any near earth objects that come into the field. To date, the project has found around 100,000 objects thanks to it’s 1.8 and 0.9 metre telescopes. The 1.8 metre telescope got its mirror from the Mount Hopkins Multi-Mirror telescope when they upgraded it to a Monolithic Mirror telescope. The 0.9 metre telescope was originally on the university campus and is a very old scope in excellent condition and with a few significant upgrades such as an automated mount and CCDs for data collection which all feeds to a network of computers to be processed by a specially written program.

The highlight of our trip to Kitt Peak was after speaking to Katy about outreach and the jewelry I make, she took me to the gift shop to show the people running it that day and talked about the possibility of bulk ordering the bracelets for them to sell at Kitt Peak!

The Pima Air and Space Museum and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

The Pima Air and Space Museum had a massive variety of planes from all eras, from fighter jets to a plane built to break the record for the smallest plane capable of manned flight. There were a few NASA planes on display including a huge cargo plane and a plane built to allow it’s passengers to experience weightlessness. The space center documented the space race around the world and major achievements in space exploration. There was a full-scale mock-up of the lunar command module and models of the ISS and space shuttle. There was a large display dedicated to the Phoenix Mars lander again including a full-scale model, but unfortunately thus has not been updated recently and had no details on the conclusion and findings of the mission, despite my later research showing that mission had in fact concluded almost 7 years previously. There was a section on each of the planets, and one each on Europa and extreme life forms, showing how many of the missions have contributed to our understanding of the universe around us.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a large outdoor museum that showcases local plant and wildlife. We were able to see mountain lions, coyotes and javelina, amongst other animals and many varieties of cacti. The museum had a section explaining the history of Arizona such as the basin in which Tucson is located was once filled with water, and displaying relics of previous civilizations and fossils found in the area. There was also a lovely room filled with samples of the precious and semiprecious metals, stones and minerals that can be found in the area. There were a number of interactive exhibits scattered throughout the museum, including a section where visitors were able to dig out their own fossil to keep, I was able unearth a trilobite to take home!

Biosphere 2

This time, we visited biosphere 2, a project built originally to see if humans could live in a closed ecosystem, which would have been used for colonizing other planets. When the primary 2 year experiment took place, 6 people were locked inside biosphere 2 and left to run the centre from the inside, unfortunately it was revealed that they did not create enough oxygen for themselves, and so had to have a top up every few months. Some people considered the experiment a failure sure to this, but it is a learning process that revealed the limitations of a closed ecosystem, the limitations of which will be useful for the upcoming human Mars mission, Mars one. Biosphere 2 is currently owned by the University of Arizona and, while no longer used as a closed ecosystem, is still used as an experimental facility. Experiments conducted in previous years helped scientist’s discover some of the affects of climate change, such as CO2 being detrimental to coral in our oceans. Current work has turned the old agriculture area into an experiment on landscapes and weathering.
In the evening we met with some members of the universities astronomy club. About half of the members are astronomy majors with access to some of the amazing local telescopes we will be visiting later in the week. Being able to use these telescopes gives the students a wide range of research options and experience. I met Riley, who conducts spectroscopy research on exoplanets and works at one of the telescopes. Talking with them and learning the differences between American and British universities was very interesting.
And for anyone wondering, biosphere 1 is Earth!

Arriving in Tucson

Yesterday we visited the university of Arizona and got to know the grounds. The campus is far larger than any I have visited in the UK, with the student union being more than triple the size of the one at USW treforest campus. Within the university grounds there is an American football stadium and a baseball stadium along with other sports facilities. We unfortunately missed the planetarium show, but should be able to catch another one later in the week.

Tucson Trip

If anyone is interested in the scientific and space related areas in Tucson, I will be visiting them at the end of this month and blogging about each location on here and my website. There’s a full list of places being visited on the site and there will also be sliiight detours to NYC and Vegas either side of Tucson, which may also appear, probably just on my main blog though. Anyway, for those interested, enjoy =]

Tucson Trip

Background information

This is Kitt Peak National Observatory, located over 2km above sea level in Tucson, Arizona. This is one of the locations we will be visiting during our trip.

Kitt peak is part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), It contains 3 major telescopes and and hosts consortia which operate 22 optical telescopes and 2 radio telescopes