On a mountaintop

[Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>]

Greetings, programs,

Well, my wanderings are on hold for a bit.  I am on a moutaintop about 400 km
Northwest of Sydney.  Near a town called Coonabarabran, if you want to try to
find it on a map.  Which means I am finally getting the opportunity to transfer
my photographs from the last few weeks over to a web server.  It's going to
take a little while, because the whole observatory just has one ISDN line, and
I don't want to clog it up with my photos, but I should have everything
transferred over the next couple of days.  I do have the first week or so up
now, so if you want to see a photo of me holding a wombat, head over to my
home page and click on "photo album".

The scenery around here is gorgeous.  The observatory is built on an ancient
volcano crater.  Apparently there's a "hot spot" in the earth's crust, and
every so often it flares up to the surface.  Since Australia is sliding
northward along that surface, there's a widely spaced line of volcanos marking
where the hot spot has been.  Now it's all heavily forested, and I'm looking
forward to doing some hiking.  There are kangaroos all over the place, and
this afternoon there was even a wallaby just outside the window.  I have to
say though, roos look all cute and adorable during the day, but at night they
can be rather startling.  

I hope this message finds you well, and I apologize for the form letter, but
if you write to me and tell me what you think of the photos, I promise to
write back.  :-)

Fiat pax,
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                 http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics:  Things get worse under pressure.


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