David Aguilar on Television!

Tuesday, Dec. 9th / 9:00pm on The History Channel

The Universe: Alien Faces w/ David Aguilar of the Harvard-Smithsonian Ctr. for Astrophysics and owner of Aspen Skies (www.aspenskies.com)

They soar through the heavens, fly through the oceans and glide along land. But these are not creatures found on a wildlife safari. These are life forms from another planet. Armed with scientific fact and a little imagination, experts come together to take you on an unprecedented journey to the edges of our imagination. Scientists, astrobiologists and astronomers create five lines of extraterrestrial evolution, and explain how creatures on the surface of Earth offer a helping hand to understanding life in The Universe.

Aspen Skies

Got an email from Shirley today at Aspen Skies. Here's their latest newsletter.

Paul Loux posted his photographs

At last I have managed to upload some pictures from our trip to flickr. You should be able to view them here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31765712@N05/show/

They seem to be in reverse chronological order, I haven't quite figured out how to fake that out yet. These are all 640x480 jpegs, although I have them all in raw form so if anyone would like a larger version of something let me know.

I also have a few shots from the restaurant, and various shots of the Arizona Inn grounds. If anyone is interested, I'll post those as well.

I had a fabulous time on this trip, learned a great deal and truly enjoyed meeting you all. Please stay in touch, and share your own photos, I'd especially love to see anything from the MMT finale, that was truly special.

Chad, can you please post this to the blog? Thanks!

Have a great week!

-Paul Loux

Successful LSST Milestone

From: Dan Brocious

Hi Chad:

Would you post this please? I promise I'll do it myself in future.

Thank you.

Dan

This is a forwarded message
From: "Jeffrey S. Kingsley"
Received: 10/23/2008 11:37:27 AM
Subject: Successful LSST Milestone of transition of mirror blank from furnace hearth to vertical position


Yesterday the cast 8.4 meter LSST mirror blank was successfully lifted from the furnace hearth, put into the turning ring and tilted to the vertical position. The finished light weighted mirror will be 16,600 kg with the thickest outside edge height of 0.92 meters ever made at the Mirror Lab. Once completed this will be the largest two surface optical mirror made from one substrate in the world. The mirror is schedule to be completed in January 2012. See the pictures in the attached file.

This is a significant milestone for this project, the Mirror Lab and Steward Observatory. Thanks to all the staff that have contributed to successfully making this accomplishment happen.


Peter Strittmatter

Roger Angel

Phil Pinto

Jeffrey Kingsley


Attachment: Click here for pictures! (PDF)

Another email

Hi Chad,

Thanks for your e-mail and for your efforts in setting up the blog, etc. Les and I took a rather circuitous route on the way back to Kentucky. We went shopping down on the Mexican border, stayed a few days in a lodge in the White Mountains in eastern Arizona and enjoyed the cool weather and beauty of the area (especially the Fall colors of aspen), went through New Mexico and the northwestern corners of Texas and Oklahoma, visited the Cimarron National Grasslands in southwestern Kansas, and spent a few days at two wildlife refuges in central Kansas where we saw thousands of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds.

We enjoyed meeting you and Debi, as well as the other participants. Les and I thought that the quality and quantity of food would have caused weight gain for both of us, plus the fact that we skipped our daily walking program. But, I actually lost a couple of pounds and Les stayed even. Go figure!!

Thanks again,

Cheers, Joan of Art and Nature

Arizona Observatories in the news

Hi everyone,

I've gotten a few bounces and corrected some emails, and I thought I would send this one out with everyone's email address. I saw this on the home page of Wikipedia, and then read the article. It mentions the Observatory on Mount Lemmon, and I think it's one that we did not visit, but it hits close to home after last week. Here's the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_TC3

Hope everyone had a great trip back, and I look forward to sharing more news via email or on the blog.

Larry and Bev Moyer, Sinking Spring, PA

Hi Chad,

Great idea, you got our e-mail address correct. We would like to be on your blog but have never used one before. I added it to our favorites on the web but don’t know if we need to do anything else. Let us know or if you would add us to the list we would appreciate it.

Also, received this since we got home and thought you would enjoy it…http://www.greatdanepro.com/Blue%20Bueaty/index.htm

We too had a spectacular time and you are correct in that Dave and Dan were great at what they do. Their love for the universe showed in everything they did. We also had a wonderful and diverse group of people.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. Hope we will all stay in touch.

Larry and Bev Moyer –Sinking Spring, PA

Good memories grow

This blog was set up for the members of the last Smithsonian "Focus on Astronomy" Tour. David Aguilar and Dan Brocious did such a great job, I wanted to thank them by putting up a place for the members of our group to share and collect information, maybe to become a community.

I hope this will grow into a continued exploration of our world and our universe.