The McDonald Observatory sits in the Davis range in the Chihuahuan desert in West Texas. It sits beneath some of the darkest skies in the continental US. It has nine primary research telescopes with varying capabilities and purposes. Do you remember the radio spot on NPR called StarDate? Sandy Woods narrated, in the most calming voice, each day’s astronomy tip - with a little space music in the background. Ned and I loved this 1 minute spot broadcast from the McDonald Observatory and couldn’t wait to visit. We spent 3.5 hours at the observatory.
The first hour was sitting in a lecture on solar viewing. So cool to learn about sun spots, solar flares, northern lights and to view the sun through different telescope filters.
We then hopped on a shuttle to view two of the telescopes. The Harlan J. Smith Telescope has two different configurations for observing distant planets and other space objects. The 107-inch mirror and corresponding lens can direct light to attached instruments or to independent instruments stationed in a room one floor below the telescope. Ned got to control the 160 ton instrument!
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope is one of largest in the world. The main goal of this telescope is to make a three dimensional map of the universe when it was about three billion years old and measure its expansion rate since that time. This is where I tried to grasp the concept of dark energy. This telescope supports a mirror with a 36-foot diameter comprised of 91 hexagonal segments (each one individually controlled) and a 160,000-pound telescope. It was hard to get your brain around this one with all those mirrors. Our guide, Thomas, was incredible! So knowledgable, funny and patient explaining everything.
The view from the Harlan J. Smith Telescope was pretty great. We could see a mountain range in Mexico, over 100 miles away.
We went thru the town of Marfa, but because we spent so much time at the observatory we didn’t have time to visit the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum. (Anyone watching the Amazon show “I Love Dick” with Kevin Bacon? It takes place in Marfa.) I was expecting the actual town of Marfa to have more of an artist vibe. It actually didn’t look much different than most of the sleepy West Texas towns we roll through. Next time we visit Marfa we’ll also have to spend the night to hopefully see the ghost lights. Top pic is the viewing area for the ghost lights.
On our drive thru this very sparsely populated area of Texas we did drive through some artsy towns. We got a chuckle out of this proletarian statement in response to the Prada Marfa art from the day before. It was just an abandoned shack on the side of the road. Good one.
Our camping spot tonight is overlooking the high desert. I think this is our last night of desert camping. Tomorrow we head for hill country. It’s about 9 pm and the temp is 92 degrees. The sun gods are definitely smiling on me.
