Chairman’s Chat
USA South - 2004

In February this year, I drove 5600 kilometres, in a giant loop across the southern United States, in search of observatories, a space centre, a crater and a canyon.  I travelled on lonely country roads, winding mountainous passes, wide interstate highways and in six lane rush-hour traffic through downtown Houston.  Sit back, relax, and sip a hot cup of something while I tell you about it.

It was an awakening experience to drive my brother’s Ford Tuscany panel van through the morning rush hour traffic of Houston, fourth most populous city in the United States.  At one point, I counted four layers of flyovers, stacked one above the other.  As I drove in a state of heightened awareness and extreme concentration, I avoided the many dozens of exits, each trying to sell me a new direction of travel, and headed single-mindedly towards the Galveston/NASA signals.  Finally, I arrived at the Johnson Space Centre at NASA, exhausted and elated. 

America is built on commerce.  NASA in Houston is no exception.  That’s the way it is and one just has to go with the flow.  So I dutifully purchased an admission ticket, and was immediately up-sold onto the tram tour and the set of headphones to plug into various audio visual ports distributed strategically around the visitor’s centre.  What a sucker I am for a good deal.  I’m sure you get the picture - perfectly packaged and merchandised for the masses.  So, I’ll cut my cynicism short and tell you that I visited the old Apollo Mission Control room, the X38 test vehicle facility, the International Space Station training modules, and the space shuttle training vehicle.  The highlight of my visit was spending much time in vault containing a fascinating array of lunar rock samples collected from various lunar sites as well as seeing the Gemini and Apollo VI test capsules.  

Sunset and it was time to drive west through the Big Country. Afternoon rush hour traffic through Houston again.  Why did I do this to myself?  By 9pm that night I was safely parked at a truck stop and tucked into the bed I’d made in the back of the van.  Very comfortable indeed.  I found these truck stops on the side of the interstate highways very clean and convenient.  There are ablution and shower facilities as well as the obligatory array of fast food outlets and convenience stores.  Every second night or so, I booked into a Best Western Motel - mostly to remind myself that I wasn’t doing this for penance sake. 

I arrived at McDonald Observatory, near the diminutive town of Fort Davis, Texas at 1am. With a freezing wind buffeting the vehicle and tiny flakes of snow pressing onto the windscreen, I snaked up the hill, with lights dimmed to parking setting, just in case. I met no one and no resistance.  There was no boom control or guard gate and I drove right up to the Hobby-Eberly telescope dome.  After a brief walk around the outside structure and a gaze at the CCAS (Centre of Curvature Alignment Sensor) Tower, it was time to take 40 winks in the back of the van and see what the morning would offer.

Freezing cold and with snow flakes drifting into my eyes, I knocked on the door to HET dome and Jim Fowler, facility manager, opened the door.  I jovially introduced myself, nonchalantly mentioning that I had just come from Africa to see this telescope.  When you do that, they can’t help but smile and invite you in.  And so it was that Jim and I sat for over an hour sipping hot coffee while we talked about this 9.2 meter effective aperture telescope with 91 hexagonal segments, and the research that they are busy doing with the instrument.  While we talked, I freely snapped pictures of the primary mirror, the tracker and camera system.  I reciprocated by offering everything I knew regarding the progress of SALT and I felt real SA pride at that point.  What a dream come true.  Kicking the dirt with the facility manager at one of the larger observatories of the world.  Finally, Jim suggested I pop across the hill and visit the 2.7 meter (107 inch) Harlan J Smith f8.8 Cassegrain Ritchey-Chretien telescope.  Why not indeed!

John Booth, site director, met me at the door and we immediately struck up conversation about all things astronomical.  He graciously whisked me on a personalised tour of the facility and I again managed to get some amazing pictures of both the 2.7 meter telescope and the 2.1 meter (82 inch) Otto Struve f13.7 Cassegrain telescope.  He talked constantly and affectionately about the equipment and when possible, I managed to slip a word in sideways about South African equipment at Sutherland.  I was pleasantly surprised by his very impressive knowledge of Southern African astronomical activities and achievements. 

I was so encouraged by the friendliness and hospitality of these people.  I must stress that I arrived unannounced and unscheduled and these people took some time out to show a complete stranger around the facility.  I wonder if South African facilities would do the same for an American visitor?  But then it was time to act like a regular tourist and go down to the very impressive McDonald Observatory Visitor’s Centre and spend a dollar on a nice large cup of hot coffee.  Now I wish I had bought that T-shirt.

On the road again and I continued my journey westwards.  Not quite an hour later and I was out of the snow and travelling through Karoo-like desolation.  Beautiful.  Deep western Texas and acre upon acre of oil fields, with their mechanical nodding donkeys laboriously pumping oil 24 hours a day.  The pungent smell of oil was both novel and repulsive.  Two days of clear driving and I was finally out of the State of Texas and into New Mexico.  The recent cold front had just dumped 200 millimetres of soft snow onto the New Mexico desert; the landscape I encountered was magnificent beyond words.

As a youngster, I enjoyed piecing together puzzle pictures of snowy forest/derelict barn scenes - I was now looking upon these picturesque scenes with my own eyes.  After stopping for a quick Budweiser in the snow-covered dreamy hamlet of Cloudcroft, I pressed on towards the Sunspot Solar Observatory on Sacramento Peak, deep in the Lincoln National Forest.  This time, I found my way into a very active control room at the solar observatory.  I was warmly welcomed by four young solar astronomers who explained the workings of the telescope to me and what they were currently working on.  They were busy calibrating the telescope on a 10 arc second square portion of the solar disk.  I sat quietly in the background for a while, just watching and enjoying the activity.  I could hardly keep my eyes off the control screens broadcasting real-time solar images in various filtered forms - hydrogen alpha, coronal, 630.3 continuum image…now this would have been rather nice observing equipment for the Venus transit.

I gingerly navigated the van down the mountain pass and onto the New Mexico desert pan.  I passed the White Sands nuclear test facility, passed through the towns of Socorro and Magdalena and headed for the giant dishes of the Very Large Array.  Great white leviathans spread-eagled in a great Y-shape across the planes of San Agustin.  Each arm extends 21 kilometres.  The data from the 27 antennae is combined electronically to give the resolution of an antenna 36 kilometres in diameter and the equivalent sensitivity of a single dish 130 meters across.  I stood dwarfed beneath one of the 230 ton structures and snapped pictures from various angles. 

I made my way to the VLA control room and was met there by Public Information Officer, Dave Finley. Dave was extremely friendly and allowed me to chat to the operator on duty.  They shared information on where the telescopes were currently pointing and what they were observing - a powerful radio source near the centre of the milky way galaxy in Sagittarius.  The visit to the VLA instilled a new-found respect  for and interest in radio astronomy.

I crossed the state line again and entered the arid state of Arizona.  After an overnight stop in Winslow, Arizona (where I was reminded of the Eagles song, mentioning the town, by a friendly patron in a pub), I headed for Meteor Crater.  I could not help but smile at the publicity signs leading to the site: “Prototype for the study of all impact craters in our galaxy”.  This 1200m diameter, 180m deep cavity is called Barringer Crater and is thought to have been formed by an impactor of 40 meters about 50 000 years ago. With not another soul in sight, I stood on the crater rim and tried to imagine the sequence of events, from the time the object entered the Earth’s atmosphere to the scene before me.  The upper sides of the crater are near vertical, with only the lower one-third tapering off to the horizontal floor with a large central blemish where the vaporised impactor had left its signature.  Looking at the impact site with one’s own eyes, the damage seemed smaller than aerial photographs implied, but it is no less spectacular.

Flushed with thoughts of astronomical philosophy, I headed for the large Arizona town of Flagstaff. Disappointingly, Lowell Observatory, on the ridge overlooking the town was closed, locked and deserted.  I was so looking forward to gazing at the 24 inch refractor used by Percival Lowell to sketch his infamous Mars canals.  I decided to replace the disappointment immediately by pushing on to the Grand Canyon.  My senses were totally unprepared for the spectacle that greeted me at N36° 03’ 59”, W112° 08’ 45”.

I stood on the edge of the rocky outcrop, soft freshly fallen snow underfoot.  1.6 kilometres below me and off in the distance, the Colorado river flowed serenely and silently.  26 kilometres away in the distance - the other side!

The first impression was that my common sense did not believe what my eyes were transmitting to my brain.  A sensory overload that I had not experienced since freefalling from an aircraft with some stitched fabric strapped to my back.  After what seemed like a very long time standing looking rather silly with my mouth wide open, repeatedly uttering “wow”, an American visitor standing behind me remarked “Now, if they had built the Hoover Dam a little earlier, all of this destruction would have been avoided!”

It’s strange what one thinks of at times like this.  I thought of Mars!  This 443 km long fissure would fit into one of the small tributaries of the 4 500 km long, 7km deep Valles Marineris.  What would it be like to stand at the edge of the grandest of canyons in the entire solar system?  I found a quiet ledge, sat down in the snow at the edge of the canyon, poured myself a stiff coke with a dash of Spiced Gold, and drank a toast to a beautiful universe.

That’s it.  I had performed my partial transit of Southern USA and it was time to begin my egress.  Third and fourth contact involved some visits to Native American Indian reservations, but my time allocation was over and I needed to move quickly. 

As a consequence of choosing my route on the fly, I had to make some agonising decisions.  My general direction of travel was westerly.  The result was to include certain observatories at the exclusion of others. Kitt Peak Observatory was a big one to have missed.  Yet, I have a strange feeling that I will be back to catch that one and others some day. 

Dave Gordon

Dave has supplied some outstanding images of his trip which cannot be inserted in our printed copy of Canopus.  These will however, be shown in all their glory when uploaded to our website..................Ed.     ( see hyperlinks in the above text )