Our Whipple Tour

If you look out our back patio door you see Mount Hopkins, and at the highest peak of Mount Hopkins is the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. So on a sunny September day, Bob talked me into going on a tour of the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. We needed to make reservations to go on the tour about two weeks in advance; so after making said reservations, I began talking to different people around the subdivision. All the women I talked with said they wouldn't do this tour if their life depended on it. But being the good wife that I am (ha ha), and not wanting Bob to have to go alone, away we went. We met the rest of the tour at the Whipple Visitor's Center and loaded up on a bus--a big bus. The bus holds 38 people, but on our tour there were 15. Keeping in mind this is Green Valley--Bob and I were the youngest people on the tour and this includes the bus driver and his "assistant"! Yes, assistant bus driver--my mind played awful tricks on me like what if the bus driver has a heart attack as we're chugging up the mountain, does the "assistant bus driver" throw him on the floor and hop in the seat to keep the bus from careening backwards down the mountain. Needles to say I was frightened to death, so I put my ipod on and only looked at the mountain side not the side that was the scene of my imaged death. (Bob took this picture looking out the bus window back from where we came, I didn't look that direction)

We finally made it to the top and our tour guide, Ben, who was 85 (yes, 85 years young) and a fountain of information, gave us an interesting tour of the telescopes and grounds. He talked about gamma rays and looking for planets that are 460 billion (yes billion) light years away! Wow, my mind can't fathom 100 light years let alone billions of light years. Bob asked the question, "What will you do when you find a planet that many light years away?" No one had an answer for him. (Bob--always the trouble maker.)

I took a picture of this multiple mirror telescope. Look carefully and you can see me in the mirror holding my camera.

You can see forever from up at the top of Mount Hopkins, and as long as my feet were on solid ground I was okay. It was an interesting day and we learned a lot, but BEEN THERE DONE THAT!