Photos from 2002 October 21
This is the dome for the Anglo-Australian telescope. The telescope itself is 3.9 m in diameter. I hope to get inside and take a picture of it later in the week. You can get a sense of the scale of the dome by comparing with the cars parked at its base. There are kangaroos hopping all around here at dusk and through the night.	Another shot of the AAT dome, with a slightly different composition.	The enclosure for the ROTSE telescope is to the right. The telescope itself is not here yet, dangit. But thats where its going to go, in that little white hut. The bigger dome on the left is for some old telescope that is theoretically going to be refurbished into a robotic telescope, but apparently nothing has been done on it in several years.	A panoramic shot from the road just up the hill from ROTSE. On the far right, you can see the giant dome of the AAT, and directly below the left edge of that is the top of the ROTSE enclosure. To the left of ROTSE, you can see the larger dome from the previous picture, with a rectangular building between and behind them that houses the APT, or Australian Patrol Telescope. Thats where Im currently sitting. Further to the left, up on the horizon, you can see another telescope dome -- thats the Schmidt telescope. Its a 3.2 meter, I believe. As you keep scrolling to the left, you can see the remaining peaks left over from the ancient volcano that created this mountain.
The original volcano was some 50 km across, and most of it has eroded away in the millions of years since then, but denser rock that boiled up through vents and cooled created spikes that stayed behind when their original channels washed away, leaving these sharp peaks you see in the middle of this panorama shot. Dont be fooled by the thumbnail; its just a small piece of the panorama. I used a wide angle lens on this one, hence the distortion and the difficulty in making the fence railing match up. This fence marks the back edge of the building that houses a 3-m telescope, and this building was built so the whole building can rotate, rather than just the dome (actually, there *is* no dome on this one, the whole roof opens). Im not sure why they designed it that way, but there it is.	The next few photos are of a koala that was sleeping in a tree near the 3 m telescope. It was a very deep sleeper, and didnt budge, even when a loud alarm went off less than 10 meters away.	More of the sleepy koala.	The AAT dome under the sleeping koala.
A different telescope dome (and the sleeping koala).	The sleeping koala from a different angle.	Me, the AAT, and the sleeping koala.	About sunset, when it had cooled off considerably (and most of the flies had disappeared -- the number of flies here is unreal, and they tell me this is nothing compared with western Australia, but I digress...), I went back to see if the koala had woken up, and sure enough, he was chowing down. Completely unfazed by anything we people staring up at him did. Note the two thumbs on his left hand.
I took about twelve photos of him eating, but I only kept three, the ones where you could actually see his face rather than the tree branch.	He had to really reach to get those leaves.	Some wildflowers by the road I liked.	The sun is setting over the crest of this mountain, so I went up to see what the crater looked like at sunset. Wow.
This is the old volcano crater, aka Warrambungle National Park. Somehow, the name Warrambungle makes me think of a puppet sitcom family. Anyway, the sunset was just staggeringly beautiful. I was going to try for a panorama shot, but shooting directly into the sun was really not an option. Ill have to try that in the morning, when the suns behind me. This shot is essentially 180 degrees in orientation from the center of those last two panorama shots, which were looking east.	Just to the left of the previous shot, you can see more of those hard peaks caused by the volcanic vents millions of years ago.	Just to the right of the first sunset shot, looking out over the rolling hills to the northwest.	Looking back to the East, you can see the AAT and the Schmidt telescopes. The tree in the foreground is the same tree I photographed in silhouette a few shots back.
I went back to the office and then I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a stunning full moon was rising over the Schmidt telescope. So I took a whole slew of pictures of it, experimenting with different exposure levels and image quality settings. Here are the three best. First, a very short exposure that brings out the dusky quality of the moon (theres been a huge bushfire blazing in that direction for weeks). You can also make out the dark patches on the moon, and if youre really sharp-eyed, you might be able to tell that its upside down relative to what Im used to in the North.	This, longer, exposure setting is more for the landscape, but the moon still comes through pretty well. The sky also has a nice rosy glow to it.	This image was taken with the same settings as the previous one, but with the camera set to its highest resolution.
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