But before I got to Ames, I had to take two flights (that left way earlier than I wanted them to) in order to reach San Jose/Mountain View area. And as someone who had never traveled further west than Lubbock, Texas, I was ready to see things. I made sure when I booked my flight to get a window seat...and I'm sure glad I did! The view was gorgeous!
It was interesting to see how quickly things changed, too. In the first picture below, you see the mountains. But if you look closely in the top right corner, just beneath the wing, you can see the farming areas start. I wasn't expecting it to change quite to rapidly, but one second there were mountains, then there was a definitive border, and BAM - agriculture. In the second picture you can see the border, then all the little plots of land for farming.
These last two pictures were from the Visitor Center at Ames. It is of SOFIA, which stands for Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. Basically, it is a plane that they changed the insides so they could fly it around with a chunk missing from the side to stick out a big infrared camera. The first picture is a model of the plane; you can see the chunk missing from the side with the infrared telescope. The bottom picture shows a few things. At the top are two TVs that were videotaping what was in front of them, so you can see me in the pink shirt taking a picture of the display on the left, and a infrered picture of my upper body on the right. The bottom picture shows Jupiter how we can see it (higly magnified, of course) and how it is seen using infrared technology.
One of our leaders here made a video of what we did yesterday afternoon, which was lots of giggling as we did ice-breaker and get-to-know-you activities. I'm pretty easy to spot...I'm the tall girl in the blue Dallas Mavs shirt :)
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