400 Years of the Telescope

We awoke bright and early atop Cerra Tololo for the last time this morning. Kris Koenig collected his Canon camera that spent the night taking time-lapse shots of Cerra Pinchon, we got ourselves caffeinated at the dining hall, said our quick goodbyes to the staff and crew at Cerra Tololo, and headed back down the mountain, destined for Las Campanas. We were once again stuffed into the Toyota Pickup we rented from Avis and headed north along the 41 freeway. We passed the beautiful shore-front property above La Serena on our way to Las Campanas, a place where Kris swears he will live one day.

We reached Las Campanas around lunchtime, which gave us enough time to greet our welcoming crew and get settled into our rooms that had been reserved for us for the night. We joined the summit's Observer support crew, engineering staff and a few of the visiting astronomers from MIT and Michigan State while we dined on the summit's exquisite cuisine - kudos to the chefs! After lunch, we were off to work. We visited the Twin Magellan Telescopes first. We were invited to spend the afternoon in the Clay telescope dome where we were able to ask the engineering staff to rotate the dome and the telescope while we got some amazing footage of the telescope. The 6.5-meter mirror was a beautiful sight when it could be tilted down towards us watching from below. It was nearly close enough to touch! Scott Stender, our Director of Photography, was allowed to sit on a landing on the rotating part of the dome. This angle allowed him to get some close shots of the primary mirror as well as rotate with the dome to maximize the amount of movement we could catch on camera.

During our visit to the Clay telescope, a doctor from the University of Arizona in Tucson was in the process of making some technical changes to the fiber optics systems used in conjunction with the telescope. He took us step-by-step through the process of changing the lenses and fiber-optic cables on the system.

The evening concluded with another night of beautiful sunset shots. Scott was able to resume his position on the dome's rotating landing, getting a great view of the opening of the dome at sunset from the interior. Meanwhile, Anita Berkow and Krista Shelby were positioned outside the Magellan Domes to get a shot of the golden and orange lights cast on the telescope domes. As the wind picked up and the sun went down, leaving the girls cold, they got some great shots of the Magellan Telescopes as well as the DuPont telescope below in the coral and deep orange-red tones right before sundown. All-in-all the crew maximized the amount of shots that could be taken at sunset by splitting the crew and getting more variety of shots. They look forward to spending most of the morning tomorrow shooting more exterior shots of the summit before heading back down the mountain towards La Serena once more. Buenas Noches blog readers, join us again tomorrow!