As Matt Quandt told you yesterday, I’m on the road in Socorro, New Mexico, this week at the Enchanted Skies Star Party. Although it’s a relatively small gathering, the star party is a great one and an event you should consider attending next year. The former residence of Astronomy’s longtime editor Robert Burnham, Socorro stands in a scientific district that holds the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, the Very Large Array radio telescope to the west, the Trinity site where the first atomic explosion occurred to the southeast, several historic mines here and there, and Albuquerque to the north and Las Cruces to the south.
Last night some of the dedicated observers in the group trekked up South Baldy to observe at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory, offering a spectacular sky at 10,600 feet elevation. As the journey was all or nothing — go and stay up there all night or pass — I passed, as I had been up since 3:45 a.m. the previous day to fly out here. (Driving on the mountain roads at night is treacherous.) So this morning there are some awfully sleepy attendees, I imagine.
Today we’ll regroup for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Very Large Array, the famous multiple radio astronomy telescope with movable dishes on railroad tracks. Tonight we’ll observe at New Mexico Tech’s Etscorn Campus Observatory.
This morning, I’ll do a little mineralogy by visiting New Mexico Tech’s Mineral Museum and perhaps a mine or two. Geology and mineralogy are, of course, close allies to astronomy, particularly in planetary science. I became enamored with mineral collecting a few years ago when my father John, a professor of organic chemistry and one who has been interested in all manner of things, gave me his extensive collection. Not only is mineralogy important for studying the rocky planets in our solar system, but it also has big implications for the universe as a whole. After all, the same elements are involved in crystallizing pretty much the way they do here on trillions of unknown planets all across the cosmos. Some of the specifics of habits, forms, and so on could be quite different through the universe, but the chemistry is the same. So by collecting minerals from Earth (and of course meteorites, too), we can know a little more about what distant worlds may be like.
When I look at that wulfenite, benitoite, emerald, fluorite, or some other mineral, I can also better appreciate those other, unknowable planets far away. Which raises the question: Are there other mineral collectors in Astronomy’s readership, and if so, what are you interested in collecting? Let me hear from you.
In the meantime, I’ll report on today’s activities in another blog tomorrow.