Friday night at camp. It rained hard just before we arrived. Wet wood was hard to start... glum campers. |
That's more like it! French Crepes a'la Nolthenius will bring smiles to anyone |
Ruby shows off some of the quality fruit going into our crepes |
After breakfast, we gather at the trailhead to Marble Falls, a few steps away from our campsite. |
A reflective moment... |
On the trail. |
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Quite a beautiful canyon we climbed up. |
We arrive at Marble Falls, a series of cascades through white pure marble |
Great shot I borrowed from our crack photographer - Kirk Bender. iPhone did the blur in-camera. Beautiful! |
Lunch at the Falls |
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Yo! |
The main falls, Full from a heavy winter |
Kirk, working his magic |
These foothills were created by ancient sea floor full of calcium carbonate sea animal skeletons, pressed, heated, contorted into limestone and then into marble. This rock is a bit halfway in that process. |
Panoramic shot of the walls scene |
The prime motive for the course - the graze of a 7th magnitude star on a skinny 3% moon setting over a distant hill. Beautiful! Only.... after getting everything done perfectly, when I turned on the power to the camera, the powercord fried into a smoking melted mess. I tried getting it visually, but it was not good enough data to salvage. At least, students could see what could go WRONG. And that's a new one for me! |
The gang, hoping for a good outcome for the graze |
The Earthlit cresent moon setting. Just the dim Earthlit portion is still visible here |
Orion over a classic California Oak, provided great views of prime targets for our night micro-lectures on star formation. M42, M35, M44, the Rosette Nebula |
Sunday morning. After breakfast of braised vegetables, scrambled eggs, and tortillas, we had a solar viewing and solar cycle lecture |
The class, at Hospital Rock, which has some impressive Native American paintings on a large "canvas" of split boulder, which we're looking down upon here. This is 3 miles up-river from Potwisha Campground |
Acorn grinding holes made by the tribe |
My final lecture, on the Inflationary Multiverse. Here, I'm trying in vain to demonstrate just how BIG it all is. |
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After passing out the take-home final, I spent another hour back at the Kaweah River across from the camp, to explore another famous pictograph, more grinding holes, and the convenient place where visitors can get into the river itself. |
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