Apologies and Observatories

For the apologies part of this post, I'd like to humbly ask your forgiveness for not posting anything for the past two days! We're in the middle of Texas right now and there isn't good connections anywhere! So instead of writing one reeeeeaaaaaallllllyyyyyy long post about Tuesday AND Wednesday, I'm going to seperate them and we can all pretend that they were posted when they should have been! :P By the way, pictures are officially working again! To see them go to the 'Pics' page. If you click on them it will give you their descriptions.

Today we went to the McDonald Observatory. It is a series of 3 large telescopes and several smaller ones located over the span of 3 hills. Trust me, these telescopes aren't just 'large', they are GIGANTIC!! We took a tour of the two largest and Zachary actually got to man the controls of one of them. (he moved the entire 6ton telescope with his thumb!) That tour wasn't the most... interesting thing ever but, the night program was MUCH better. In the evening is the Twilight Program. (it dosen't get completely dark here until around 11pm) We sat in an amphitheatre as the sun was setting and learned about the different signs of the zodiac and how they are really just constellations. (there are really 13!! so it completley discredits astrology) Anyways, it was actually very interesting. Then came the 'Star Party'. We sat in the same amphitheatre (by now it was getting rather chilly) and as it got dark, the astronomer pointed out to us major constellations in the night sky. The funny part of all of this was that all of the guys who have been giving us the tours are scientists and therefore, have a scientisnts sense of humor. Their incredibly dry jokes were hilarious after you got past their laughing at themselves. (considering they give these tours all day and repete the jokes every time) Another interesting point was the laser pointer with which he was pointing out the constellations. All of the guys in the audience thought that was the coolest part. :P After the 'Star Party', we got a chance to look through some of the telescopes. We saw Jupiter and Saturn as well as some M-somethingorother star clusters. It was really cool. Tomorrow we are heading to San Antonio and the ALAMO!