The Davis mountains

Sadly leave Big Bend and head 150 miles NW into the Davis mountains. Fort Davis is the only town and this smaller than Scole! Because there are so few people here and the sky is clear most days there is a famous observatory nearby,The McDonald Observatory. It has 3 large telescopes on top of the mountains. As you get near they look like giant metal domes on top of the hills. The telescopes are inside the domes which open at night. Huge mirrors collect the light from the stars which can then be seen. Light has many colours and spectographers can look at the colours of the different stars to find out what they are made of! The largest mirror, which we saw, is 436 inches across. The astronomers measure the distances and track the movements of the stars. We were able to go in the domes and move both the telescope and the dome to see a particular part of the sky. We stayed at Indian Lodge, this is built of stone covered with mud and called adobe. Adobe buildings are painted the colours of the desert and are very pretty. There was another tarantula in the patio of the lodge but not in our room!