Sunday, August 17, 2008

We saw the stars!

After dinner, I made some sandwiches (two gooseberry jam, two garlic spread) on black rye bread for the Mt. Wilson trip. I also got a blanket and burned two CDs of astronomy-related music. At 21:30 I found Deepthi and we went out to look for Jeremy. He'd planned to meet us at 21:30, but actually arrived at 22:05, which resulted in me going back to my room twice to call him. Once he arrived, we drove to 150 S. Chester to get Jamie, and then got on the Foothill Freeway to head west to the base of the Angeles Crest Highway. As soon as we got on the freeway, Jamie mentioned that she needed to use the bathroom before we went up the mountain. We ended up driving around Arcadia a bit trying to find a grocery store that was open--the first one we tried had closed at 22:00--and eventually found one, where everyone used the bathrooms and we bought lots of Pepperidge Farm cookies. We then, very slowly, drove up the Angeles Crest Highway, stopping occasionally to look at the city from above and to be horrified that the smog made it twinkle even from only 2,000 ft. We also sang along with the CD of astronomy songs I'd brought, and had a lot of fun doing so.

We finally got to the top of the mountain at 23:45 or so, and spent fifteen minutes watching the city from above before going around to the north side of the mountain, which overlooks what I think is called Little Bear Valley, but which in any case is part of the Angeles National Forest and so doesn't have any light pollution sources in it. We spent about an hour and a half watching meteors and talking. Mostly we discussed stupid people from our high schools, reasons why Deepthi doesn't like India, how terrifying the smog in LA is, especially when one gets to see it from above (the "marine layer" glowed from all of the city lights shining on it), Laplace transforms, science fiction stories (including me retelling "The Nine Billion Names of God") and other things I no longer remember. We also saw an incredible number of very bright meteors, the rate of which increased as it got later. It was a lot of fun.

Finally, at 01:30, we packed up and drove down the mountain, singing "Waltzing Matilda" and "Jerusalem" and then listening to Sousa's Transit of Venus March and "Mercury" and "Jupiter" from The Planets. We got back to Tech at about 02:30, and I spent about half an hour unpacking stuff and getting ready for bed before finally going to sleep at around 03:00.

Labels: meteor showers, Mt. Wilson, Perseids