you can tell i took this from the van on the drive up there, but it's still a cool picture. this is the resevoir they made when they dammed the rio elqui a couple years ago, the rio elqui being the only source of water for the agriculture around here.
another taken from the van, this time when we were about a km down the road from cerro tololo (where prompt will be). i really like the colors, but i don't so much like the way you can see the camera's reflection in the top. alas.
the first telescope we visited, blanco, on cerro tololo. it's unbelievably huge, a 4m mirror, but most of the size comes from the equatorial mount. standing on it is...tim, carrie, tracy, lissa, clara, bryon.
the requisite group picture with an incredible vista behind us. this is on cerro tololo still, and the back row from left is lissa, tim, adam, eliot, anjni, matt, bryon, and then in front there's me, carrie, clara, and tracy.
one of my favorite pictures from this roll. one of my favorite pictures ever. this is the view looking west from cerro tololo. t hat's the pacific ocean way out there (about 30 miles), and it's hard to see, but there's a tiny road down there in the valley. yep, that's the road we took. i still look at this and somehow it doesn't register that i stood there and took this. so surreal! but so incredible.
another favorite. we're standing on the site where we'll build the prompt array (yes, i do mean we). that's eliot and tim there on the right, and the dome of some random telescope up on cerro tololo off in the corner. if you look close in the sky on the left, that black dot is a condor. a condor! how awesome is that?
ok, so now we're up on cerro pachon, where soar and gemini south are located, looking east at an elevation of about 8700 ft. it's about 15-20 km by road from cerro tololo. sorry i'm mixing unit systems, but yay for the andes being so photogenic.
so this is our telescope, the brand-new and shiny 4.3m soar. yay! the main point of coming down here! it's really big and impressive-looking, and that's bryon and tim standing on it.
it's matt, anjni, lissa, and adam, standing in front of some part of soar's optics. maybe one day soon i will understand what part of those optics it actually is, but in the meantime, it's just cool.
hey look it's me! and i'm sitting under soar's primary mirror. all those crazy things are actuators that warp the mirror to sharpen the image, and keep it from warping strangely of its own accord. that's tim's back there, and anjni gets photo credits on this one.
this is looking east at sunset up on cerro pachon. but brace yourself...
yep, and now we're looking west. here we see the most beautiful sunset i have ever had the good fortune to witness. my picture could be better, but take my word for it, it was nothing short of incredible.
we were all hanging out watching the sunset and taking an ungodly number of pictures. i can't get enough of the colors the rocks turned in the light.