Day Trip to Observatory

This is the 82" Telescope that the guide moved into place by rotating the top half of the dome. He only opened it a few inches so no birds could fly into the facility.

We discovered this little roadside park built into the stone alongside the road on our way to the observatory.

On Saturday we drove over to the McDonald Observatory about 16 miles north of Ft. Davis, TX. Beautiful drive as the cottonwood trees were a gorgeous bright yellow and the oak trees a very dark burnished red. The road is very curvy and winding up to the elevation of 6,791 ft. (atop Mt. Fowlkes), which also happens to be the highest maintained road in the state of Texas.

We took a 90 minute guided tour that featured the 82" Otto Struve Telescope and the 107" Hobby-Eberly Telescope. There also was a solar presentation in the auditorium showing live images through a 35" telescope with a white filter to capture images. We learned all about the sun's magnetic fields, solar flares and the sun orbits. It would take 109 of the Earth's planets placed side by side to make up the diameter of the Sun. Really fascinating info but a lot of the technical info on the actual telescopes was way over our heads. We did see how the telescopes moved to track stars in the sky. Different telescopes have different functions such as the one used to track man-made satellites orbiting around earth.

About 80 residents/astrologers live in close proximity to the facility and of course their workday begins about 11:30 at night until dawn. Certainly would be a different way of life. The facility continually has visiting astrologers from all over the world gathering data for research and study.

The image of the silver geodesic building houses the largest mirror telescope in the world and the 2 white domed buildings house the 82" and another smaller telescope. One of the white domes top is open for the postcard image - usually it is only open at night. The top half of each of the domes rotate around so the telescopes can track the stars as the earth rotates. Our guide rotated to dome while we were inside and it almost felt like a Disney ride because of the optical illusion it created (we were stationary yet we felt like we were moving!).

All in all, it was quite an educational day that we truly enjoyed. Enjoy the photos and if you ever get close to an observatory go see it and explore the possibilities.