My first flight alone turned out O.K.! At Albuquerque Airport, my frantic eyes skimming the perimeter of the baggage claim area, I was happy to find a group of friendly people welcoming me with "Earthwatch SCAP" signs. From the airplane window, New Mexico appeared dry and desert-like, but as we drove uphill to Los Alamos, a chilly wind and beautiful, green and white trees greeted me. We ate at two nice Mexican restaurants and had a great time introducing ourselves to each other.

 Here's us at Albuquerque Airport. From left: Corey, Jesse, Matt, Ge, Katie (lower peninsula), me, Katie (upper), Galen, and Don. It was really hot and dry this afternoon.

At the Bradbury Science Museum, we listened to an interesting lecture about ice (and life) on Mars, given by Bill Feldman. Both poles of Mars are covered with ice, and the geology of Mars provides evidence that life did exist some point in the distant past on the red planet. Mr. Feldman is a very good speaker and I walked out of the Auditorium with a better mental image of Mars. With good resolution and clear imaging, satellite photos of Mars really helped me envision Mars and consider it to be something tangible and real.

I loved visiting the museum--from our visit I learned so much about nuclear weapons, esp. their power to prevent global warfare. I took some awesome pictures of Fat Man and a model of a nuke.

Today I got a 100 on our General Employee Training test at LANL. Funny thing is, I often forget to take off my LANL badge when we go to restaurants in the Los Alamos area. We tried using the CCD camera for the first time, and our initial pictures came out like works by Andy Warhol, their red, green, and blue overlapping messily like shadows. But after that initial try, we successfully took three matching pictures of random books and objects (including my yellow highlighter) with red, green, and blue lenses. After adjusting the shutterspeed so that the photons per pixel were about the same (appr. 35000), we merged the three pictures... Even though it was late and we were lazy from eating dinner (or "supper," according to Corey =P), we rejoiced from our achievement: a nice, unlike-Andy Warhol's work color picture! (BIG =D ) Now I really appreciate our tiny digital cameras, except when working with astrophysics, where you need to check the photon concentration (brightness of an image).

My teammates and I joke about how the SWAT team's going to march in and burn anything in our LANL room that looks "out of place" or "unusual." =P

Everyone's very friendly and Los Alamos is beautiful, esp. at night when the magenta sky arises from the valleys of the Jemez Mtns (or maybe the magenta descends upon the Jemez Mtn. Valley).

Collecting fossils and climbing the soda dam entertained me and gave me a workout. Our informative geological tour guide taught us about calderas and the history behind the beautiful rifts and mountains in the Los Alamos area.

I was very excited to discover brachiopods and chrynoids that are 350 million years old. I brought two pretty large pieces of Pumice and a handful of brachiopods and chrynoids back to the hotel with me. All these fossils excite me because it helps me imagine what life on Earth was like millions of years ago. It surprised me that all those fossils weren't buried deep under new layers of rock, after 350 million years!

I have to admit that climbing the soda dam frightened me a bit, but when I got atop the 1.6 billion-year old hot spring, the beautiful view was well worth it. Since I've never been hiking before, I enjoyed pseudo-hiking around the Soda Dam and the cave opposite the Soda Dam. I felt like I was enticing death.

We just came back from a lecture in the Bradbury Science Museum on "Space Weather and How It Affects Our Lives on Earth" by Geoff Reeves. I never knew that auroras were caused by an interaction between the sun's solar winds and the earth's magnetic field. Nitrogen causes a green color while Oxygen causes a red color.

Aurora, or "Northern/Southern lights," are most easily observed near Alaska in the Northern hemisphere and near Tasmania in the Southern hemisphere. Because I did not think of observing aurora in the past and Texas is not exactly a suitable area to view aurora, pictures of aurora really dazzled me. =)

So far each lecture at the Bradbury Science Museum has taught me a wealth of information about astrophysics-related objects. After the lecture, we all bursted into chuckles, laughing about the "pinching off" of the Earth's magnetosphere when the Sun's solar winds interact with the Earth, creating aurora.

What really amazed me was how two congruent aurora can appear on opposite hemispheres. After all the other guests had left, Geoff Reeves used his hands to show me a sort of folding effect that creates this beauty.

Cloudy and rainy weather disappointed me--I've been longing to visit Fenton Hill because I really want to launch our 12 Victoria search and orbital calculations. I simply cannot wait to work with such powerful telescopes and look up at a beautiful night sky without all the city smog of Dallas.

At the LANL Canyon School, we worked with a Meade LX 200 telescope in Alt-Az mode and discussed dark matter.

At 6:30 PM we listened to our third lecture at the Bradbury Science Museum auditorium, "Black Holes and Collapsed Stars" by Bill Priedhorsky.

Here's us in the front row of the Bradbury Science Museum auditorium. We're pretty excited about hearing about the black holes of our universe. Interesting point: A theory for black holes is that a compact star collides with a normal star.

Tonight was our first night at Fenton Hill.

Check out the picture in my file entitled "FHillSleepy.jpg". How energetic I seem after setting up, aligning, and looking through 12 in and 8 in telescopes for hours in the cold! The view at Fenton Hill was unspeakably awe-inspiring; it was the most beautiful sky I have ever observed. After we aligned the 12-inch aperture telescope using Vega and Spica, we searched for 12 Victoria.

Before we headed back to the little building at Fenton Hill, John O-Donnell showed me two CCD images of 12 Victoria and its surrounding stars inside the dome of the Raptor A. Spherical and white, the domes at Fenton Hill resemble those in the movie "Contact."

We stayed up until 3:47 AM.

Rollerblading in the First United Methodist Church was very, very fun. We played a lot of skating games, such as the spread eagle. I hadn't rollerbladed for years so I tripped a few times, but the tripping was definitely worth it.

At Canyon School we matched sketches to the Project Universe CCD images and identified the stars near 12 Victoria.

Fenton Hill tonight was a blast:

"Weapons of Moth Destruction"

Emo music: Sugarcult (What a soft, soothing voice the singer has! Thanks Katie K!)

What really brightened my night was looking at M31 (Andromeda Galaxy). I had heard so much about Andromeda so seeing it was a great experience for me.

On the car ride from Fenton Hill back to the Hilltop House Hotel, we told either really funny or really-funny-when-we're-sleepy jokes. (Note: *Sparky*)

At 5:30 PM we gathered at Galen's house for his birthday party, which was filled with friendly faces and finger food. They have a really nice backyard with a fish pond, barbeque tables, and a drumming dog, Tipper.

We watched an anticlimactic video entitled "The Way Things Go." Built in a German warehouse, this film tracked a 100-foot chain reaction consisting of household items and many, many spare tires. Katie Kruger and I complained when the credits jumped up at an anticlimactic moment --how indignant we were when the chain reaction built up to nothing! But I do have to admit that the video was truly something special--I kept thinking "This chain keeps on goin' and goin' doesn't it?" Those scientists must have dedicated much of their time to setting up this chemical and physical project !

Best part of the day: "Contact"

Although I had seen this before, all the technical terms of RA & Dec, Vega's coordinates and distance, the VLA and more had flown over my head previously.

"Delilah after Dark" on Magic FM cracks me up! Yesterday night when we were driving back to our hotel in the huge light blue van, Katie K and I joked about Delilah. I played Delilah while she played a stalker who has grandchildren at the age of 38.

Today was a relaxing day--we had time to enjoy our time at Los Alamos.

Don Casperson taught us a lot about Jansky, Reber, and radio astronomy. The cool thing about radio astronomy is that radio waves can penetrate clouds and other visual impedances while optical astronomy depends on clear skies and nice weather.

Unfortunately, the fire near the Jemez Mtns prevented us from going to Fenton Hill again.

But we did some other very fun and interesting things.

At 6:30 we listened to Bill Junor's lecture on "Low Frequency Array of LoFARs, a new interferometric radio astronomy instrument." When Bill Junor spoke about Jansky and radio astronomy, I was really thankful that Don had taught us about all that information already because I knew exactly what Bill Junor was going to say about Jansky and other pioneering achievements in radio astronomy.

When Junor mentioned the VLA and the VLBA, I got really excited about visiting the VLA (tomorrow). I can't wait! We've been learning so much about it and we've seen it in "Contact"!

Matt, Oliver, Jesse, and I worked on asteroid tracking again. Although our sketches weren't perfect, it was neat to do science the real way--trial and error.

We're going to take more precise sketches hopefully tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, when the fire clears up.

Everyone on our Earthwatch team, whether a mentor or a fellow student, has been so fun to hang around! I'm having a wonderful time not only doing astrophysics, but also spending time with these people. I won't ever forget this experience. While my mentors encourage me to think, my teammates encourage me to laugh.

Wow, the VLA was awesome! It took us three hours to drive all the way to Socorro. When we visited, each of the 27 antennas was 13 miles away from the next closest antenna, meaning that the VLA was in A position. The VLA can spread out to A position (with the most distance between consecutive antennas) or it can shrink closer to B, C, or D position. Many of us bought really cool long sleeve T-shirts with lines of 9 antennas down the fronts and on each arm of the shirt. The VLA antennas made me feel very, very diminutive.

When the VLA antennas need to be re-positioned, the control room monitors the progress of the antennas while a heavy red truck carries the antenna upon a railroad track to its new position. Although very embarrassing, pretending to be VLA antennas in a human VLA proved memorable.

The ride back was really amazing. From Socorro to Albuquerque to Santa Fe to Los Alamos, a marvelous sunset distracted me from the left window of the van. Such pretty skies deserve a place in my memory.

When we got back to Hilltop House (*Hilltoppers is the mascot for the LA HSchool), we walked over to Smith's and bought lots of candy for poker-playing at the guys' room. I lost a lot of candy, but I was pretty tired to crave sugar in the middle of the night.

Laid back and relaxed, we've been working on our presentation for tomorrow, which will be in front of many LANL astrophysicists. Time has really flown by! It's going to be sad leaving Los Alamos, where the sky is so beautiful and there is the highest concentration of PhDs in America.

When we had a picnic at Ashley Pond, there was a little boy with a blonde fro!

Galen delivered a very captivating presentation about the K-T asteroid. Run by the ASCI, the Q Machine offered us very vividly detailed images of a simulated asteroid's impact with the earth, nominally with Texas (rooster tail end).

We gave our presentation to the LANL astrophysicists today. Our skits and explanations went really well. For the gamma ray bursts, Ge ran into the room randomly, and for 12 Victoria, I did a mock Delilah session with Galen. For water on Mars, almost everyone pulled red shirts in front of them while I stood behind with a white shirt as the polar ice cap.

Some other things we did for our presentation:

Matt vs. Oliver in a parody/debate on Ed Fennimore's view of the Scientific Method.

An aurora-inspired poem

I'm relieved that the presentation flowed smoothly, even with all the intimidating astrophysicists.

After finishing the presentation, we hiked up Bandelier National Monument, which was amazing. We saw lots of Anasazi drawings and kievas and climbed up 140 feet of ladders. My new disposable camera from the gas station almost ran out of film! Sniffing trees with bark that smelled like vanilla was fun, although Galen looked like he was kissing the tree when he smelled it.

We then returned to the Bradbury Science Museum for the last lecture in the series, Katrin Heitmann's lecture on cosmology, which is the science of our universe and its evolution. Cosmology is so, so interesting!

When we drove to Santa Fe to buy a few souvenirs, I saw some beautiful, authentic pueblo-style houses and apartments. It's pretty cool that houses are still built with such traditions.

Haggling is not my specialty--I offered $5 for some $12 and $15 earrings, and all I got was a man showing me his dirty fingernails. --But I did save $1 by starting at $4 for a pair of $6 earrings.

Alas! (as Galen would say) Our last night at Fenton Hill (as an Earthwatch team, of course--I plan on working for LANL some time when I'm in college) depressed me because I didn't want to leave Raptor A, B, and S, the 12-inch Meade LX 200 telescope with a 26 mm eyepiece, and the beautiful view behind.

Listening to Delilah was great! She does an evil laugh that I just can't do justice to by trying to mock it. When I get back to Dallas, I've got to visit www.radiodelilah.com!

Alpha, Alpha, 5 Papa Alpha!

I had an awesome time listening to the Field Day contest with our AA5PA amateur radio operator. After listening to both English and morse code, we recorded the time, station/location and license number of other amateur radio operators from both the US and other countries.

Fenton Hill looks so much smaller in the daytime! Nevertheless, it was enough space for all the Raptors, pads, and Milagro! Milagro is pretty neat--it's a huge pool-like area with black detectors around its perimeter. From John I learned that in the ten years LANL has operated Milagro, they have detected a gamma ray burst! That's really exciting, esp. since we've been hearing so much about them during these past two weeks.

While I was taking a break at the little building at FHO, I interpolated my sketch from yesterday night, and I was only off by one arcsecond! Everyone must have thought I was crazy when I screamed in joy and ran to tell Don. Then when I used a sketch from the 20th (midnight so really 21st 00:00) and combined my interpolation results with yesterday's, I was overjoyed to find that ("Holy Moley" as John O'Donnell would say) my curve intersects the CCD curve for the orbit of 12 Victoria! John said that Don should hire me! I probably will return to Fenton Hill someday, most likely when I'm a college student. Too bad there's an 18-yr age requirement because I'd work for LANL this year if I could.

I'm truly sad that we're all leaving tomorrow morning. I have the latest flight, at 2:26 PM.

It doesn't feel like we've been here for 2 weeks. It's a real stinker that we've gotten to know each other and now we have to leave. I've become attached to all these cool people and places--New Mexico is so, so pretty with all its mountains, trees, elk, and dead moths splattered on the van's windshield (I take that back). But seriously, New Mexico is amazing and I have to come back here someday and contribute something to LANL.

Some (including but not limited to) qualities I like about each of my teammates:

Katie Kruger--I like her sense of humor. ("Biggerstaff, like bigger staff")

Katie Walton--She's very down to earth and I could say anything to her. (<camera explosion string aftermath> and the blurted out word)

Matt Peddie--He's very intelligent, spontaneous, and fun to be around. ("Shafter!" "Victory!" "Interesting")

Ge Vang--I don't understand how his mind works and how he comes up with all his random words. He really is a human random noun generator. ("reindeers" "sushis" "Yo mama" "chickens" (for chicken breasts))

Oliver Huang--He's imaginative (referring to his creation of a sci-fi world) and thoughtful.

Jesse Palmer--How cool his site is! He's such an awesome gnome dancer! (referring to his popcorn-like bouncing yesterday night at Fenton Hill).

Boy I'll miss these people (or "characters," Matt)!

Tomorrow we'll be taking pictures at the airport again, only this time we're comfortable around each other and we've gotten to appreciate each other.

Why do we have to leave? =(