PARI

Eli has been working on the astronomy merit badge. He's also had an interest in things astronomical and meteorological for some time, thanks in no small part to his mother. And we've heard several folks talk about PARI. So for yesterday's school holiday (a teacher workday) we decided to make the jaunt.

PARI is 75 minutes from Black Mountain, on the other side of Brevard. The scheduled tour was billed for 2PM; we got there about 1230PM and the docent was kind enough to begin with us then rather than make us bide out time. We did the galaxy walk. (If our Sun is four inches in diameter the next nearest star is in Arizona!!) We also got to poke around in most of the buildings. One of the highlights was the 950' tunnel from one building to one of the satellites. We didn't walk the whole thing, but it was awesome.

We spent a lot of time looking at old glass slides of outer space and learned about how they are being digitized (by a fellow named Thurman Barker!). The site has two 26-meter radio telescopes that are fun to see; we missed by minutes seeing one move. But all-in-all it was a nice visit.