And now, a photo from the Chilean sojourn I mentioned in the last post. Somewhere I’m pretty sure I have a photo of the condor eating leftover meat outside the cafeteria, but I only found this one and one other. Maybe the rest will turn up someday. If you look closely, you can see the round circular office building in the background that proves this is Cerro Tololo. It’s easier to see if you click to embiggen.
They had a mess o’ these carts up at the observatory, and charging stations everywhere. I remember being confused that the battery was full when the meter read “0”. That would have been the meter measuring the charging current, of course. I was 9, what can I say. But hey, I got to drive around some. How cool is that?
Also, no grid power, cause y’know, big mountain in the middle of nowhere. So they had a big generator, running at 60Hz cause all the telescope drives were from the US and needed 60Hz. But the wall clocks were all local, and Chile running at a slower pace than the top gear zoom zoom zoom of America, they preferred 50Hz. So pretty much they were never right. Shoulda just unplugged ’em all so’s they could be right at least twice a day.
And then there were the sidereal clocks, which confused me even further. I should have complained more, but at that age I didn’t understand the greatness of a good Chilean whine.
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