James Lick

James Lick had a problem. He was a very rich man and wanted to be remembered after his death. He thought about building a giant pyramid in downtown San Francisco, he thought about a colossus on the San Francisco coast before a friend talked him into funding the construction of the largest telescope in the world and an astronomy department at the newly formed University of California.

If you are willing to drive 45 minutes up a very windy road from San Jose, California to the top o Mount Hamilton (at 4212 feet the tallest mountain in the San Francisco Bay area) you can see what $750,000 would buy you for a legacy in the 1880s.

Guided Tour

I had the opportunity to take a private guided tour yesterday with one of the 3 resident astronomers at the facility. There are now 9 different domes with different telescopes that have been constructed at the site. The newest two telescopes are robotic telescopes that quickly scan the sky for particular phenomena. One of these is spotting 1-2 supernovae a week (it used to be that the scientific community would find about a dozen in a year). The newest one will look for planets around other suns using a technique pioneered here at the Lick Observatory that has found roughly half of the 300 planets that have been discovered.

Adaptive Optics

Our tour lasted from 6:30pm to about 11pm. We learned about the history of Lick and his observatory. We also learned about a technique that was pioneered there for using adaptive optics in astronomy. In adaptive optics you focus at a bright star close to the object you are trying to observe. Sensitive instruments detect distortions in the atmosphere in front of that bright star and you use that data to deform a reflector to compensate for these distortions. All of this is done by a computer 1000 times a second. Since only 1% of the sky had a bright star near it a technique was invented where a bright laser is shined on sodium molecules in the upper atmosphere that glow creating, in essence, a temporary fake star.

The View

The culmination of the tour is a peak through the old 36 inch telescope that was the worlds largest when it was installed directly over the tomb of James Lick. To make it easy to reach the eye piece the entire floor in the dome can be raised or lowered on hydraulics. This was originally driven by water power supplied by a local windmill. Even today, long after the telescope ceased to be state of the art, this is still a pretty great feat of engineering that does its namesake proud.

Visitor Center

James Lick’s vistor center is open:

• Saturday and Sunday 10 am - 5 pm
• Monday thru Friday 12:30 pm - 5 pm

But to look through the 36 inch telescope yo need to buy a ticket through the Summer Visitors Program.

Next time you race to catch a train… try and make sure you get INSIDE the train.

Tourist Chad Vance clung to Ghan train for two hours

A YOUNG American tourist has survived a terrifying train ride in which he clung to the outside of the legendary Ghan in the freezing dark as it hit speeds up to 110km/h in the South Australian Outback.

Chad Vance, 19, frantically pursued The Ghan after missing it in Port Augusta, managing to climb on and squeeze himself into a tiny stairwell as the train raced for almost 200km through the night.

Ever since SARS, China has take quarantines seriously as the mayor of New Orleans learned this week.

New Orleans mayor quarantined in China for possible flu exposure

The mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, has been quarantined in China after possible exposure to the H1N1 virus, his office said Sunday.

Mayor Ray Nagin, who traveled to China on an economic development trip, flew on a plane that carried a passenger being treated for symptoms suspected to be from the virus, commonly known as the swine flu virus, the mayor’s office said in a statement.

Want to take your 9mm pistol with you when you move? No problem, just get your roommate who works for the airline to help you sneak it on. Great idea… right?

FBI: Airline worker helped roommate get gun on jet

The FBI charged a US Airways employee with helping his roommate get a concealed, semiautomatic handgun onto a plane departing Philadelphia early Thursday.

Customer service agent Roshid Milledge switched black carry-on bags with passenger Damien Young at the gate so Young could board the 7 am flight to Phoenix with the unloaded 9 mm weapon, the FBI said in an affidavit.

Expect this study to spark a debate over how you should travel if you want to save the planet.

Train can be worse for climate than plane

True or false: taking the commuter train across Boston results in lower greenhouse gas emissions than travelling the same distance in a jumbo jet. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is false.

A new study compares the “full life-cycle” emissions generated by 11 different modes of transportation in the US. Unlike previous studies on transport emissions, Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California, Berkeley, looked beyond what is emitted by different types of car, train, bus or plane while their engines are running and includes emissions from building and maintaining the vehicles and their infrastructure, as well as generating the fuel to run them. (Table 1 on page 3 has a complete list of components that were considered).

But the bad news for the airlines:

World’s airlines set to lose $9 billion

The world’s airline will lose $9 billion this year on top of $10.4 billion lost in 2008, IATA has warned.

The airline body’s director general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani cautioned that a return of rising fuel prices was putting recovery from global recession at risk.

Airlines post 79% on-time rate in Apri

But some things have actually improved… of course it is easier to be on time when fewer passengers are getting on the plane.

U.S. airlines’ on-time performance improved in April compared to the previous month and the same month last year, according to a monthly federal report released Tuesday.

The 19 largest carriers recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 79.1%, better than both the 77.7% of April 2008 and March 2009’s 78.4%, according the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight is considered on time if it arrives within 15 minutes of schedule.

Some other blog posts that I liked:

• Seven Ways to Immerse Yourself in Spanish at Home
• 9 of the Weirdest World Heritage Sites
• Traveler’s 101 - The Complete Travel Tip Post

This is a transcript of an episode of the Amateur Traveler focusing on traveling to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

• Travel to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks - Episode 183 Show Notes
• More blogs posts about USA National Parks and Monuments
• More podcasts about USA National Parks and Monuments

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Today the Amateur Traveler talks about geysers and bison and the majestic beauty of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park.

Chris: I’d like to welcome back to the show, Eric Smith, who’s come to talk to us about Yellowstone National Park. Eric, welcome back to the show.

Erik: Thanks for having me back Chris.

Chris: And I say welcome back to the show, for those of you who haven’t listened that long, Erik came on earlier because he has a quest to visit all of the US National Parks and so he is a great lover of the National Parks as am I. How we doing on the quest, first of all?

Erik: Well, I’m limiting the quest for right now to the lower 48 and I’ve got about 340 parks on the list and I visited 243 of those so far.

Chris: And when we talked last time, we said that we would have him come back on and go into detail about some of the other parks and Yellowstone seemed like a really good one. For one thing, the oldest National Park in the US.

Erik: In the world.

Chris: In the world. Well, I hadn’t thought about that but I suppose that’s true. Ok, why else should we talk about Yellowstone National Park? I won’t steal your thunder here.

Erik: Well, it’s a great summer destination. I have a few friends who are preparing to visit Yellowstone and Grand Teton this summer. Coming from Michigan where I’m at it’s a perfect trip to the west. You get your mountain scenery and you can stop and visit places along the way. Like the Black Hills is about a one-day drive from Yellowstone so you stop there and then you hop into your good mountain scenery with all the unique features that Yellowstone has to offer.

Chris: Well, we also have done it as a driving trip from California when I was a kid. It is accessible via a car trip without spending too much time in it unless you’re very far away.

Erik: It’s a long way from anywhere. It’s a long way from California, a long way from Michigan, a long way from the East Coast. But that’s part of the fun about the drive out, is you know you’re not at home anymore.

Chris: Well and when you’re driving through portions of Wyoming, it feels like a particularly long way. My cousins in Colorado, I think we’ve mentioned, have talked about Wyoming as a state that’s kind of like a cake with all the frosting pushed up into one corner and that would be Yellowstone and also Grand Teton. We should mention the other beautiful area just south of there.

Bryce National Park in Utah is a wonderful place to take pictures because of the strange shapes of the hoodoos left mostly by the action of ice. Bryce is high enough that it freezes and then thaws 100 times a year. The last time I was there I was sleeping in a tent in October and the temperature got down into the 20s Fahrenheit. But when the day heated up I was hiking with a day in the 70s or 80s. This action of freezing and thawing cracks the limestone that forms Bryce’s features. Spires like the one shown (Thor’s Hammer) have a deposit of dolomite at the top which is a harder form of limestone. So when the rains come down the dolomite protected the limestone which had been cracked by the ice and this spire did not wash away.

Check out my other pictures of Bryce National Park including hiking “Wallstreet” which is a trail that walks down into the hoodoos.

Reminiscent of the man without out a country is this cruise ship without ports of call because of fears over swine flu.

Australia orders ’swine flu ship’ to remain at sea as more cases confirmed

Concern over an outbreak of swine flu on a cruise ship off the coast of Australia has prompted authorities to order the vessel to remain at sea through at least Saturday.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports P&O Cruises’ Pacific Dawn, which left Sydney Monday on a 10-night voyage, has been told not to dock in Port Douglas or Cairns over the next two days as scheduled because of worries passengers and crew could spread the illness into the local population. The “swine flu ship,” as some Australia media outlets are calling it, already has been steered away from one other port this week and has yet to touch land since leaving Sydney.

And the worst idea of the week award goes to…

Bird magnet? Trash depot near LaGuardia called bad idea

About 700 yards from the end of a runway at LaGuardia Airport, where thousands of planes take off and land, New York City officials want to build what could be the equivalent of a bird magnet: a very large garbage transfer station.

This just four months after a run-in with birds sent a jetliner full of people into the Hudson River separating New York and New Jersey.

Having trouble with the high cost of air travel? How do $9 tickets (plus fees) sound to you?

New low-cost airline targets smaller markets

Clearwater, Fla.-based JetAmerica said 34 nonstop passenger flights a week will start July 13 at Toledo, Ohio; South Bend, Ind.; Melbourne, Fla.; Newark, N.J.; Minneapolis and Lansing, Mich. Twenty-eight flights start or end at Newark Liberty International Airport. The carrier will add six more flights — from Toledo to Minneapolis — starting Aug. 14.

Prices will start at $9 a seat and top out at $199. The $9 price will apply to the first nine to 19 seats on each plane. Passengers will pay $15 to check a bag. Food, drinks and in-flight TV will also come at a cost.

Talk about taking your work with you on vacation…

Two vacationing San Jose cops subdue violent airline passenger

At 40,000 feet over the Pacific, the only thing vacationing San Jose police officers Luan Nguyen and Manny Vasquez wanted was to catch some Z’s, maybe see an action movie and finally hear the announcement: “Welcome to San Francisco International Airport.”

What they heard instead was the captain: “I have a situation on board. If there are any law enforcement officers on board, please identify yourselves to a flight attendant.”

The unarmed officers were soon battling a violent and possibly mentally ill man and holding him down for hours using seat belts, coffee cart straps and Vasquez’s black cowhide belt he got for a birthday.

Other articles that caught my eye:

• So Long, Coach: Get an Upgrade at the Airport
• Virtual Pilot - Lufthansa Destination Game
• Flying in comfort — or not