HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting my blog UP TO DATE
WORD OF THE DAY: Shopping Centre!!!
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 411KM
An 8am departure this morning, which is sort of like a sleep in, well in overland terms. The showers were cold, but it can make for a refreshing start to the day – positive note, cold showers suck right.
I’m not watching much of the scenery today; it’s not that spectacular compared to what we have had the last 3 weeks anyway. I am on a mission to get my blog completely up to date and took a seat straight at the truck tables as we pulled out of Bahia Inglsea. I hate being behind and I was only 4 days behind, but they are big days. I wanted to recap on my year for 2011 and what my plans are for 2012. It’s nice to have some time to actually spend on these 2 entries and not feel rushed to ‘get them online’. So it basically took me around 5 hours to piece the 2 entries together. I think they are also the best 2 entries I have written so far and I think it is because it was all written from the heart and not from a travel view to make a nice change.
We arrived into la Serena just after 1pm and this was our other supermarket stop. From the outside it looked like a massive super mall, Kate and I were so excited; it looked just like a shopping centre back home. We decided to forgo the truck lunch, as we were in the car park of the mega mall and we could hear a food court calling our name somewhere…… Well we found the food court and it was a little disappointing, but we had 5 places to choose from and an ice-cream shop and the backup was Macca’s on the lower level. After lunch we had an hour to walk around the centre before having to report back to the truck and getting to camp. It was a little bit of a letdown, as it had the looks of all the bells and whistles but wasn’t all it cracked up to be. So we found a café that that had Wi-Fi and we had a coke instead.
We only had to drive 15 minutes along a beach esplanade to get to our camp site that was one block back from the beach. A first impression of La Serena is what I imagined the Gold Coast to have looked like back in the 80’s. There were rollerblades; life guard chairs every 200m, little shops by the sea, jumping castles, beachside café’s etc…. It had a great vibe about the place and with the sunsets at around 8.45pm, the beach was still mega busy as we rolled by at 3pm with the sun high in the sky.
La Serena is a city and commune in northern Chile founded in 1544, it is the country's second oldest city after the national capital, Santiago, located 471 km to the south. It has a communal population of 190,716 areas, the country's fourth largest city. It is one of the fastest-growing areas of Chile, witnessing a population increase of 32.6% between 1992 and 2002. The city is an important tourist destination, especially during the summer, where people go to visit the beaches. It is in the headquarters of the University of La Serena and also is home to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of La Serena, one of five Catholic Archdiocese of Chile.
The town has retained its historic architecture and this, along with a selection of beaches (known as Avenida del Mar, "Sea Avenue"), has caused the city to become a significant tourist centre, attracting many foreigners (most of them Argentines from San Juan and Mendozaprovinces) during January, and later Santiago residents fleeing February heat. The beaches of the Avenida Del Mar are one of the most crowded walks of La Serena, joining El Faro Monumental, in the south with an extension of 6 km and adjacent with Peñuelas's beach (Coquimbo). However, the beaches of La Serena have very rough water and are not suitable for swimming. This avenue includes 12 sections of beaches.
There was an optional excursion offered tonight to one of the Observation Telescopes that they have in Chile. 30% of the world’s telescopes are found in Chile. They may not have the money to build them all, but they have the night skies and right conditions that just can’t be found anywhere else. So after dinner our ride arrived at 7.30pm. When we were picked up from La Serena, a phone call was made to the observatory to check the weather conditions because if it is too cloudy you won’t be able to see anything through the telescopes. We got a 50/50 call, so we had to decide if we wanted to take the chance. It was costing us 30USD for the trip, if we got there and couldn’t get to the Observatory then the rise was going to cost us 14USd instead. We really had nothing else planned so we decided to throw caution into the wind and take a chance. Leaving La Serena for the drive to the city of Vicuna is along Route 41 through the Elqui Valley and takes approximately an hour. There is a short stop at the main square, the Plaza de Armas in the centre of Vicuna to collect the pass from the Municipal offices. This is where we were to find out if we were going to see some of the universe tonight. After waiting 10 minutes the answer was no. There was too much cloud cover at the time, but if we waited 40 minutes they would see if the clouds would clear. So we recongregated back at 9pm and then they said it would be more than likely to go ahead at 10.30pm. Since we had come all this way, what was another hour to wait. So 10.30pm came and we got the all clear, so we all piled back into the van for the 15 minute drive up to the Observatory.
After leaving the town the way to the Municipal Amateur Observatory is through the village of San Isidro following up the unpaved road to the open aspect where the observatory buildings are located. Upon arrival the staff give an explanation and with assistance of a multimedia presentation an introduction to the stars, planets and galaxies to the whole group. Dividing into smaller groups allows visitors access to use the 12 inch diameter telescope which is installed in the small dome or to use the portable telescopes outside in order to observe the stars in one of the clearest atmospheres in the world.
Here more than 300 nights per year have clear skies and it is no accident that three of the worlds' most important scientific observatories are situated in this region. Astronomy in the Coquimbo Region has given rise during recent years to an increasing upturn in the number of visitors who come here to enjoy observing the Southern Hemisphere skies at night. This amateur observatory with its practical hands on approach and its good location in the hills is increasing its facilities to accommodate the developing interest in astro-tourism. Time is allowed for the visitor to observe the stars and watch the skies unfold above in one of the few places where the skies are so clear that up to the eighth magnitude can be observed with the naked eye and the center of a galaxy can be easily seen.
The programmer that the guide recommended was Stellarium, which is a planetarium software that shows exactly what you see when you look up at the stars. It's easy to use. http://www.stellarium.org/ which was pretty cool, you plug in your country and town and will show you what you are looking at in real time. Give it a go yourself it’s an amazing programme.
Now our guide went through so much information, I was taking notes as he spoke so below was some facts and figures that I took out of the wealth of information he was giving us. It really is another universe/world out there and the mind boggles on all the possibilities in outer space!
Jupiter was the first planet we got to look at through the 40,000 USD telescope. It has 120,000 stars and planets programmed into it and Jupiter looked amazing and we could see 3 of its 4 moons and we could see her rings as well. It was pretty special.
Jupiter Facts You Might Not Know About
If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 264 pounds on Jupiter.
Jupiter has a mass 318 times greater than the Earth's and a diameter that is 11 times larger.
The mass of Jupiter is 70% of the total mass of all the other planets in our Solar System.
Jupiter's volume is large enough to contain 1,300 planets the size of Earth.
Jupiter rotates faster than any planet in the Solar System.
It rotates so quickly that the days are only 10 hours long...
But it takes 12 Earth years for Jupiter to complete an orbit around the sun.
The great red spot on Jupiter is a storm that has been going on for over 300 years.
You can fit 100 Earths into Jupiter's great red spot.
Jupiter has the biggest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede. It is even bigger than Mercury and Pluto.
Jupiter has a ring just like Saturn and Uranus.
The Planet has over 60 known satellites (moons) but most of them are extremely small and faint.
Jupiter is covered by an ocean of hydrogen with a sludge-like consistency.
Unlike other planets, Jupiter sends out a strong radio radiation that can be detected on Earth.
In 1994, pieces of a comet called shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart and crashed into Jupiter. This left patches in Jupiter's atmosphere that lasted for many months.
The moon was the next thing we focused the telescope on and it is best to view it when it is not a full moon as you lose all the shades and craters and perspective. We were lucky it was a ¾ moon, so we got an amazing view and it looked so close you could touch it. All the while our guide was talking and answering questions about the solar system, black holes, super novas and just how many of millions of light years away everything is. It is mind blowing and a little hard to understand the concept of millions of light years away some things are.
The next thing we looked at was some stars that are part of Orion, often referred to as The Hunter. It is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the most conspicuous and most recognizable constellations in the night sky. Its name refers to Orion, a hunter in Greek mythology. I always knew about the 3 stars in the row, but to be shown where his sword is and where his shoulders are and his legs. Everything in the Chilean sky is upside down, but it was good to get an explanation on this guy that pretty much everyone knows.
We headed outside then to some telescopes pitched out there. We were shown the Milky Way and you can tell when it finishes in the sky as there are no more stars to look at past the end. Most of us know that we live in a galaxy known as the Milky Way. However, not many of us really know very much about our own galaxy. Here are 6 interesting and random facts about the Milky Way Galaxy that will help expand your knowledge about it.
Any stars that you can see in the night sky without the aid of a telescope are part of the Milky Way.
It is estimated that the Milky Way contains between 200 and 400 billion stars.
Our solar system makes up an extremely tiny part of the Milky Way – if you imagine our solar system were the size of a US quarter, the entire Milky Way would be almost half the size of the United States!
Edwin Hubble is credited as conclusively defining the shape and scope of our galaxy through the use of telescopes.
The size of the Milky Way is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter.
The mass of our galaxy is estimated at 5.8 × 1011 solar masses. A solar mass is a unit of mass equivalent to the mass of our Sun.
We were told about the next supernova to explode called Betelgeuse, also known by its Bayer designation Alpha Orionis. It is the eighth brightest star in the night sky and second brightest star in the constellation of Orion. Distinctly reddish-tinted, it is asemiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude varies between 0.2 and 1.2, the widest range of any first magnitude star. Classified as a red supergiant, Betelgeuse is one of the largest and most luminous stars known. If it were at the center of our Solar System, its surface would extend past the asteroid belt possibly to the orbit of Jupiter and beyond, wholly engulfing Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. However, with distance estimates in the last century that have ranged anywhere from 180 to 1,300 light years from Earth, calculating its diameter, luminosity and mass have proven difficult. Betelgeuse is currently thought to lie around 640 light years away. Astronomers believe Betelgeuse is only 10 million years old, but has evolved rapidly because of its high mass. It is thought to be a runaway star from the Orion OB1 Association, which also includes the late type O and B stars in Orion's belt—Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. Currently in a late stage of stellar evolution, Betelgeuse is expected to explode as a type II supernova, possibly within the next million years. So don’t hold your breath on seeing that in this lifetime!
I could keep boring you with more facts and figures about blinking stars and non-blinking stars, clusters of stars, names of the 88 constellations, blue, white and red stars, super nova’s, the fake Southern Cross, the Magelenic and La Luna stars and the information possibility list goes on, but all I can say was it was a great night looking into our night sky. It’s not something you get a chance to do every day and to think that there still maybe life out there, somewhere on another planet, star or in another galaxy is something to think about. The only downside was that the two hour long tour finished just before 1am and then we had the hour drive back to La Serena getting us back to camp at 2am. Lucky we have a free day here, so a sleep in is definitely on the cards and this time we have made sure that we have pitched our tent under some shade so as not to have a mid-morning sauna here like San Pedro.
Is there life out there? That is a very good question and one that may or may not ever be known.
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