Picture of the Day - 3/16/09

This week is a work week for me, as I'm finishing up a presentation for an upcoming engineering seminar in April and May. Thus, little in the way of photography lately. So, I'll dip into the archives for some pictures that didn't quite make the cut for "picture of the day" earlier, but that I wished to show eventually. On the way from Tucson to Organ Pipe Cactus N.M., we stopped in at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, southwest of Tucson. The air was clear and markedly colder than the Sonoran desert below. Pictured is the facility from the observation deck of the 4m telescope - the largest one there. In the distance to the left is the well-known solar observatory, which I was able to tour. Unfortunately for ham radio operators - no sunspots yet! Note: It's the solar energy from sunspots that highly ionizes the Earth's atmosphere and allows radio signals to "bounce" further. We're currently in a sunspot "minimum" - cycles that repeat every 11 years. The second picture shows the 2.1m telescope. The Web site for the Kitt Peak observatory is at: http://www.noao.edu/kpno/