Day 6 - Mountains and Telescopes

Sunday we went to church in the morning and then headed to Kitt Peak Observatory in the afternoon.   

This was the first time that the children had driven up a mountain.   Joe and I were very pleased that they enjoyed themselves very much.   They weren't scared by the height and neither motion sickness or altitude sickness bothered them.

They were thrilled to find snow up on the mountain.   When we got to the top, we were at 8000 ft above sea level.

There were lots of telescopes dotting the top of the mountain.   Three are open to the public.   We saw two of them.

This is one of the biggest on the peak.   We were able to get inside the one on the right.   

This is only part of the telescope.   It was huge inside.

They had put observation windows all around the building and we had wonderful views of the valleys below.

The second telescope we were able to see was a solar telescope.   The telescope is in the slanted part of the building.

This part was deep inside the ground and was mounted on some kind of track.

There was another device about halfway up that had many polished mirrows on it.   It could move up and down on the track also.