This evening was the highlight of our trip! We were able to buy tickets to a "special viewing night" on the 82" Otto Struve telescope! This was the original telescope that was installed when the observatory was built in 1933, and it is still one of the best in the world for direct optical viewing. Its biggest discovery was the moon that orbits Pluto.
We got out to the observatory early, and enjoyed a light picnic dinner on the tailgate of the truck as we watched the sunset. I was worried because it was so cloudy. First, the clouds turned orange, and then they turned pink.
We met our group (just 10 of us!) and our hosts Mark and Jim at the Visitors Center. Mark drove us up Mount Locke to the telescope dome. It's the one on the right in this photo.
Inside, the building houses a control room and the onservatory's library. We did have to go up two flights of stairs to get to the actual telescope dome. It was built long before the ADA!
As we had pulled up to the building, a few sprinkles of rain had fallen, so we had to wait for 30 minutes before the dome could be opened. (Getting rain on the sensitive equipment is not good.) But finally, Jim turned off the lights, opened the dome, and we started looking at stars and stuff! Due to clouds coming in, we were only able to see 4 objects, but they were all amazing! We saw two different star clusters, a planetary nebula, and a group of galaxies. To view them, we got to actually look through an eyepiece on the telescope itself, which is very old school compared with the computerized systems that most modern telescopes use. But that made it even more special. It was definitely a night we will both remember!
At the end of the evening, Mark drove us back down to our cars. Then, we made the 16 mile drive back down the mountains in almost pitch darkness. We got back to the house about 10:30.
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