Los Leones

A couple of days ago, we went out to a site about 20 minutes away to pick up some hardware as we thought it would be easier than going to the hardware stores in town. It seems no matter what, we always end up needing items we don't bring. The hardware stores here have all the items behind the counter, so you need to ask a clerk to get them for you. While the clerks are quite helpful, the selection can be limited but having a person fluent in Spanish makes all the difference.

Here's a photo of one the houses on the way out. I wouldn't say it's typical of the houses here, but it's not unusual. One of the interesting things about house construction here is that all the houses have water tanks on pedestals to supply pressure to the house. I'm not sure how the water system works here, but I saw a number of water pumps for sale at the hardware stores. I assume water is provided at some low pressure to the houses, but I don't know. I assume there aren't many earthquakes here.





























This is the backside of one of an observatory building. I'll have better photos later, but basically there are three other sites like Los Leones included in the array. Inside are five telescopes that look for flashes of light in the night sky from cosmic ray interactions.















Here's another spectacular shot of the backside of building from a distance near the site of there laser which is used to take measurements of the amount of dust and whatnot in the air so they can calibrate the flashes of light they see in the sky.














This building houses the laser on top. Again the top opens up at night















Here's a ranch property nearby. All the tanks are on ranch property but apparently the ranchers have been supportive of the research.














Some beef cattle nearby. It looks like they raise a lot of beef cattle, sheep, and goats in the region, but not much else. From my understanding there is some mining and oil extraction in the area as well. I've seen few gypsum processing plants, so I assume some of the mines are for gypsum.














In this photo you can see an abandoned building with the Andes in the background. The flora in the areas I've been changes a bit, but here you can see the salt on the surface of the soil. Not so good for growing plants.

Pierre Auger Observatory

I'm sorry for the formatting, I don't know why it won't cooperate.

I am currently at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargue, Argentina. It's the main building of a large cosmic ray detector that's spread out over 100's of square miles. Malargue is a town of about 20 or 30 thousand people and sits at around 4,500 feet. The flora reminds me of the Palmdale/Lancaster area. They have a number of tall trees lining the streets and nearby fields to serve as windbreaks, but you can get glimpses of the Andes which are quite spectacular.

The internet in my hotel is pretty slow, but I'll try to get some more photos up when I can.



In this first photo, you can see the main building of the observatory. It houses a visitor's center as well as administrative offices, labs, and the computer room. Attached to the main building is another structure that has a machine shop and high bay facility for maintenance and repair of the parts of the detector.






In this photo you can see the support building. Attached to it on the right is the tank they use to store their purified water that they use to fill up their detectors.




Here is one of the spare detectors. There are 1600 detectors spread out 1.5km apart. Each tank has it's own name, some of the local schools were able to name some of the tanks, but apparently the whole naming thing began when the first few were named after the girlfriends of the first few grad students.



This is a building across the street. I don't know anything about it other than it appears they are doing work on it, I hope they are trying to restore it.