New Mexico
Day 5
6/29/1999
|
Click Here to return to Place |
|||||
One of 27 dishes |
||||||
|
||||||
| At the Very Large Array | ||||||
|
||||||
|
Show Low is a town in the North Eastern corner of Arizona. Some guy won the land playing cards by showing the lowest card in a poker game, hence the name Show Low. I stopped at the Show Low visitors center to check things out and to see what I could see. I walked into the visitors center and opened with the line, "I have an hour to spend in your town, what should I see?" The lady at the visitors center looked at me completely blankly, as if I were speaking a foreign language. Seeing that she was completely confused I expanded upon my statement and added, "Is there anything of cultural or historical significance in this town? What should I see?" She told me to go look at the forest and some lakes, as if I have not seen enough forests or lakes. I took a local map and bailed on the stupid town.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Now this place was cool! The National Radio Astronomy Observatory consists of 27 antennas that point up into the sky and collect the radio waves that the objects in space are emitting. Each dish focuses the radio waves onto a receiver that is cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero. The signals are then run into a bunch of huge main frame computers that crunch all the data and compile it into usable numbers. I truely have no idea how it all works or what is going on, but it is still cool.
The visitor center at the Observatory is unsupervised so I kicked back in air-conditioned comfort for hours just checking things out and resting. Even the gift shop is on the honor system, if you buy something you are just suppose to put your money in the box.
Click Here to return to Places
Created
7/3/1999
Copyright © 1999 Mike Barre. All rights
reserved.
