Kitt Peak

Sit back in you chair and get ready to go for a ride today! What a day it was, one of my favorites! We were up and out the door at 10:30 (ya, I know.... pretty early eehhh!) and we were headed for Kitt Peak. We had heard from several people this was a good ride and there is also an observatory at the top we were told... ya right.

It was a beautiful day as we headed due south on Hwy 86 about 80 kilometers to the Mountain. I did not have a clue what to expect. As we drove across the flat desert towards the mountain, I came to realize that this was a bit more than your standard mountain. As it turns out the mountain top is 7,000 feet up, however we are already at about 2, 000 feet in Tucson, so we had to climb 5,000 feet! As it turns out the road was fantastic and very safe... there are some that are not so safe as you go up. This one was great.... lets look at some pictures...

We are only up about a thousand feet here, but we just figured out this was going to be great!

Look at the top of that mountain and you can sort of see some buildings... that is where we are headed....

About a mile before the top they had a picnic area so we decided to stop and have our lunch we had brought with us. We sat at the table right in front of this dish. This dish is one of 10 across the USA that are all linked by computer to form one big dish and listen for whoever out there in outer space!

In the picnic area we came across this white stuff on the ground.... yuck.... yes, we were up about 6,000 feet at this point and it was a bit cooler, still nice enough for a picnic though...


We got to tour the largest telescope up on the mountain, and it has a 4 meter lens in it, and this is the exact size of the lens....yes, we actually had to drive over about a 14 foot section of road that had some snow on it... Judy said "not to worry, I am Canadian!"

This is the front office where the tour starts from and the gift shop is located.

This is inside the building where some displays are set up and this model of the top of the mountain. There are about 15 different telescopes up top and most are owned and operated by different Universities

Our tour group is headed for the big one in the centre, about 1/2 a mile walk for us all...

I took this picture as we walked over to the observatory to show you how high we are! That is part of the road on the left. It was a bit hazy today...

This is looking back at part of the road we had come up...

What a view from the top... you got a great view of the desert and other mountain ranges... We could see Tucson about 88 klms. away with no problem.

If you see the big satellite dish on the right, that is where we had lunch, at the base of it.

This is the final push to the top of the mountain...

Here is Judy right at the top... it is a long way up!

This is the view we got from the top of the top. We did now know there were this many observatories up here when we started out... it is like a city up here. This mountain was chosen for this work over 150 other locations in the USA.

Here is another view and you can see the road up...

This is what we climbed the mountain to see, a 4 meter telescope... one of the largest in the world. We actually got to see the thing spinning around as the scientist were getting ready for to use the scope tonight. It is big!

This panel is the one that opens up so the telescope can see out into the sky...

Another view of the scope. Our tour guide Joe, was real nice and had good knowledge of the whole set up. In the summer he heads up to Alaska as a back woods Ranger....

The observatory was built in 1973 and this was during the construction period...

This was taken from the observatory floor, and in the distant is Tucson, you can tell we are up there!

The next few pictures are actual pictures taken from the scope....

The last picture is of the Eagle, getting ready to fly back down....

Tonight we went out to a "Gas Light Theatre" but the blog is already way too long today, so you will catch a bit of that outing tomorrow... full day today, and I just finished watching Team Canada win Gold in the Women's Hockey.... great game!

Tomorrow I just want to drive back to Kitt Peak and climb it again just for something to do!!!!

Till tomorrow....