Trips from March, 2009
Hollywood Sign
Today was a quick hike up to the Hollywood Sign again. Just one quick photograph as I was being lazy and not doing any photography. It was a beautiful day though to hike.
Joshua Tree National Park
I went with a group to Joshua Tree, where we did two somewhat long trails. We started off doing the Lost Palms Oasis Trail, which is in the southeastern portion of the park. It's a nice trail that leads down to one of Joshua Tree's oases, where there's a group of fan palms. Beautiful scenery both on the trail and at the oasis.
Afterwards, we decided to do a bit of off-trail hiking and did a loop in the northwestern portion of the park that's kind of a trail but not really. It was extraordinarily remote, and without GPS we probably would've gotten rather lost. But, it also let us see some gorgeous sites and to see Joshua Tree during sunset.
We also managed to see some wildflowers on the way, and stopped at the Chollo Cactus Garden. All in all, an amazing trip.
Eaton Canyon
I went up Eaton Canyon today with a few friends. Not much different from last time, though plenty of wildflowers right now.
Palomar Observatory
Being an astronomer is a lot of fun - especially when we get to do observations. I finally got to do my first observing run at Palomar last night (although I was just helping out - just a bit). For those who don't know what it's like, essentially you spend the night finding targets using a guide camera, and then taking exposures that will theoretically tell you something. We were able to observe from about 8:30 PM till about 5:30 AM, which meant I got to see sunset and sunrise from the top of the mountain.
When not observing, observers stay at the "Monastery" - the lodge for visiting observers. It was a lot of fun, and I'm hoping to get observation time again next semester, so this should hopefully be a semi-regular sort of thing for me.
I took some time to take plenty of photographs. To explain the P16/48/200 references, they refer to the diameter of the mirror in the telescope (in inches). The P48 is a wide-field telescope, the P60 (which I don't think I have any photos of) is primarily used to measure how much light (photometric), and the P200 (the one I was observing on) which is primarily used for spectra. The P200 (also called the Hale telescope) is the 19th largest currently constructed telescope in the world.
