Mar 30 Wed - The Hubble space telescope IMAX movie & an evening hike over the dunes at white sands

Mar 30 Wed Day 72 - sunny & warm, (70 F)

We paid for another night and then were off to the Visitors Centre to get addresses for a Post Office & barber shop, then, we were off to the noon IMAX show on the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope and what it can do. It is an amazing instrument, showing distant galaxies & star nebulas in colour. Interestingly, a dying star has a bright orange aura, whereas a new, strong star’s aura is shades of blue. Sheila thought it should be the other way round. We heard many, many interesting facts, only a few of which we can remember. But here goes: The Hubble telescope took 10 yrs. & 10,000 people to build. When it was first sent into space, one of its lenses was warped so the images taken we fuzzy, just like the ones we see from our very powerful telescopes on earth, so another lens was made & sent into space with a team of astronauts to remove the faulty one & replace it with the good one. That was what we saw today. We learned that the strong stars in a nebula can produce winds of up to 15 trillion mph—creating images of tails on younger weaker stars named “tadpoles” because of their “tails”. We also learned that we’re the largest galaxy in our universe, but that scientists estimate that there are a 100 billion more galaxies in space, some much larger that ours. We really enjoyed the film & I tried to get some screen shots with the camera. Sheila tried to take notes in the dark in a small notebook, but discovered after the movie she’d written most of her notes on top of each other—so what she had was an unintelligible mess!

After the film & museum, we went back to the local hospital cafeteria, for some more cheap & good food. Then it was off to the Toy Train Museum housed in an early 1898 train station. They had a great collection of trains and several model setups running. While I was looking at everything, Sheila went off shopping for assorted stuff—stamps & clothes. She returned 1 1/2 hours later. We went to get me a hair cut and then home to get ready to drive back to White Sands National Monument for a Ranger guided Sunset Walk over the sand dunes, all included in our original admission of $6.00 each, which is good for 7 days. It was fun, but I’m glad it was guided as I looked around at one point & had no idea which way back was, all I saw was miles of snow white sand dunes and some scattered vegetation. Before we left on the hike the guide said that shoes were optional, you could hike over the sand in bare feet, Sheila did. Sheila noticed that the sand was cool even in the sun and it got quite cold to the touch as the sun set. The guide said that the gypsum sand never gets hot like ordinary beach sand, it could be 100 degrees out & it would still be easy to walk on, cool even. One really interesting fact is that the water table is just a foot or so below the interdunal surface, (the low area at the base of, and between the dunes where most of the vegetation grows), so, if you were lost & thirsty you could drink sandy water. Our guide pointed out various plants as we walked explaining the adaptations each had made in order to survive when the nearby dune moved & buried them. For instance, the Soapstone Yucca cactus grows extra quickly then, managing to keep its stem & leaves above the sand. This plant is also called the ‘supermarket’ of the dessert because its blossoms & fruit provided native people with food. (The ‘fruit’ tastes like squash when boiled.) Its spiky leaves provided them with material for clothes, baskets, mats etc. (In fact, citizens of NM & AZ provided WW I soldiers with bags woven of Yucca leaves as part of their contribution to the war effort.) And, finally when boiled, the roots of the Yucca plant became their shampoo/soap. We also learned that when the incline of the leading edge of the sand dune becomes greater than 34% the dune begins to “avalanche,” causing it to move.

The sunset was great, just enough thin cloud to really show up red over the white sand. After we drove back, we stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up some stuff. I finally bit the bullet & paid $4.38 plus deposit for a doz. Coke Zero. Then, it was back home for a light supper, (by now it was 9 pm), plus an evening of journal-writing, (mostly Sheila), blogging & expenses, (Bren).