Dear Jake & Amelia,
From Big Bend, we drove on beautiful, back roads to Fort Davis to visit the McDonald Observatory. It sits high on a hill with not much around it but rolling mountains, volcanic outcroppings, sandy dry soil with grasses, an occasional plant or shrub, white-winged doves and other wild life. 

We saw the Harlan Smith telescope and the Hobby-Eberly. The Harlan is a conventional telescope. It's huge. The Hobby-Eberly is a multi-mirrored scope,  the first of its kind. Its mirror is made up of 91 six sided segments. Three laser controlled motors keep each segment aligned. Construction costs were minimized by using standard components such as a geodesic dome, bridge trusses and air cushion bearings. Rather than producing a visual image of the star, planet, nebulae or galaxy, this telescope uses spectroscopy. A spectrograph divides the light from whatever is being viewed into corresponding spectra to determine chemical composition, mass, age, temperature, and other characteristics. Fascinating. 

Nancy & Peter

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