Vagaries

12:49 am - music of the spheres

I have tons of small entries to make for all these days I have been away from LJ. Lets start with most recent first.
Last Friday, I and roomie went up to Lick Observatory to attend Kurt Ribak Trio concert at Mt Hamilton. The volunteers
at Lick observatory had told us about the shows when we went up there last winter. And when a half-priced ticket offer
landed up in my mailbox, it was just too good to resist. A trip up to Mt Hamilton alone is worth much more; especially
because they don't allow cars to go up after sunset, when the astronomers get to work. The view on Friday night was
fabulous - with san jose city lights (that's astronomy-friendly sodium lamps)  below and a clear night sky full of stars
and galaxies overhead.

The $18 ticket included the jazz concert by Kurt Ribak Trio, an astronomy lecture on big bang and origin of the universe, viewing of a ring nebula through the old 36 inch telescope, and a commemorative coffee mug ( We took mugs, other option were wine glasses). In addition to that, there were a bunch of amateur astronomers at the observatory with their expensive  shiny telescope, willing to show you whatever you wanted and patiently answering all questions.

- Kurt Ribak Trio: was awesome. Try out some of the songs at their site. Havana Gila and Tango Para Mi Padre are my favs from the show.
- 36 inches telescope: We also got to experience setting up of the telescope: the wooden floor is raised and dropped, and the
  dome goes around to place the slit above the telescope.
- Lecture on Big Bang was very basic but fun. And some of the simulations were really nice.
- The amateur folks with scoped were the best lot. We got to see Andromeda galaxy, A twin star system, messier 22 star cluster, saturn, and
   some other interesting bodies.

Oh, and later I found out that one Jeremy Zawodny was there at the show too - in the vip section though. Read his entry on the concert here.

All in all, one awesome Friday night! For anyone interested, there are a few more concerts coming up in the first week of September. Google for it.