Sunpot, NM ---- The National Solar Observatories
While we were staying in Ruidoso we decided to take a 50 mile road trip up to the National Solar Observatories. They are located atop Mount Sacramento at 9200ft. On the way up this very winding road the only wild life we saw were cows and horses on the road. We passed through Cloudcroft on the way. Nice little touristy town lots of cabins for people that want to beat the summer heat down in the valleys. We finally hit NM 6563 (named after the wave length in angstroms of light produced by hydrogen gas), on the way we stopped at Haynes Vista where you over look the valley and 25 miles in the distance you can see the White Sands National Park and how expansive it is. Also found a geocache while we were here. On up to the observatory. This place was pretty neat a lot of hands on exhibits. We were also allowed to go in to a couple of the telescopes. The nice thing was we were basically alone up there. No screaming kids, no bus load of tourists etc. :-) I think it was just Peggy and I and maybe one other couple. Before going into the largest telescope we stopped and talked with this lady that maintains the electronics. Smart lady and explained what goes on inside of the telescope while there doing sun studies. As it would happen they were doing a study and when we walked into the telescope monitoring room it was very dark. They don't want extraneous protons bouncing around. It was cool to be able to see a sun study actually going on. I think we spent close to 3-4 hours up there roaming around. Oh did I forget to say we were at 9200 ft? Holy crap both of us could hardly breath walking around.
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