The comet sculpture here is in honour of Whipple, who did a lot of the early work in comets.
When I worked here, we had two telescopes up on the mountains. After many years of developing the next generation telescopes and more importantly, trying to find a site, the collaboration finally decided to build them around the visitors centre until a better location became available. They finally got first light last year, and have been successfully operating since them.
I wandered around the telescopes, and one of the techs opened one of the telescope cameras for me to have a look at. Technology has moved on in the last decade or so. There are now about 5 times as many elements in the camera, and the optics of the mirrors is much better, and the electronics is much better. Whereas in the past we took a snapshot of the gamma rays (technically the Cerenkov radiation generated by the gamma ray interacting with the atmosphere and creating superluminal particles), they can now take movies of the gamma ray showers. Means there is much more data and computer processing involved, but the basic principles are the same.
I drove up the mountain as far as the gate near the top of the mountain. From the gate I could see the original 10m telescope which is still in operation, and the MMT (although it is no longer multi-mirror). The view from the mountain is spectacular. Ironically, the only accommodation is at the top of the mountain, so users of the 4 telescope system (VERITAS), drive UP the mountain to sleep!
I returned down the mountain to the visitors center, where I was able to catch up with Trevor Weekes, the guru of the field and original developer of the field. We had a great chat about the "old" times and where everyone is now from back in the 1990s. I took a photo of Trevor in front of one of the new telescopes. Gives you an idea of their size. It has been great to visit both of the places we used to live and catch up with those that I worked with all those years ago.
