Noelle dropped by last night, interested in seeing Mars through telescopes while it was at its closest. The night was clear, so I decided to go. While Noelle ate some leftovers for dinner, I drove us in her car to the small town of Sultan, SE of here, where there is much less light pollution from the cities, and we picked up our friend Laurie on the way. We managed to find the athletic field at Sultan high school where the telescopes of Boeing's Astronomy Club and others were set up. Mars loomed bright and larger than usual in the distance, meanwhile amateur stargazers walked about with their red flashlights. There were a dozen or so telescopes and various numbers of people lined up for each. The first telescope we peered through was small and poorly focused -- we only saw fuzzy white dot. The next was better, and had a red filter. The next was comparable though lacked the filter. I was expecting something like the Hubble telescope images of Mars I had seen online, but no features on the planet could I see in these 12" (or so) wide telescopes. The last one was worth tens of thousands of dollars and was 20" wide; it was the size of a hot water heater. By far it was the best, as it made Mars look about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and some surface features could be seen.
We headed back home, but after driving a few blocks Laurie spotted a mink on the roadside. We recognized it as one of the 10,000 released from a local mink farm in Sultan by some extremists in the Animal Liberation Front a few days ago. So far, about 9,000 have been recovered. Noelle pulled over to try to catch it. Elle and I watched in the car while Noelle and Laurie ran around the trying to nab the poor thing using a sweatshirt. Noelle stepped on in its tail but fearing it would be injured, let up. It escaped into someone's yard and they gave up the chase. We saw another along the highway, but kept on driving.
Posted by seander at August 28, 2003 09:38 AM