One of my Professors in the early 1970s, Isidore I. Epstein, carried
out a site-survey of places in Australia and South America for
suitability as potential homes for a new survey-telescope station
for a joint Yale-Columbia telescope, and for a Southern Hemisphere
wing of the US National Observatory.
This was in the early 1950s. Sites in Argentina and N. Chile were
chosen.
But he found the Nullarbor Plain of Australia quite a striking place.
The Atacama Desert, however, is the driest desert in the world -- with
points in Antarctica a close "second" -- there are places in the
Atacama where it has not rained since the "Conquistadores" came
through (not that it rained THEN, either, for any particular reason).
After his successful surveys (which involved a lot of riding around on burros,
carrying instruments to test the darkness and steadiness
of the skies), Epstein wrote that "...there were places in Northern
Chile that made the Nullarbor Plain look like the Garden of Eden."
I've since been able to confirm that the N. of Chile is amazingly
free of any vegetation in places, for hundreds of miles, and worked
on a mountain there for a few years at Cerro Tololo.
In Arizona I followed in my Prof's footsteps, and did a site-survey
leading to the adoption of sites on our Mount Graham, at about
10400 feet. The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is now sited there,
and the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), plus an
American-German sub-millimeter-wave radio telescope. It's a good
mountain!
Australia does not have very high mountains. I think the highest,
Mt. Kosciuszko, is only 7300 ft. high. Twice as high would be better.
But Australia's mountains are old, and eroded. They are not like the
Andes, Himalaya, or ours Rockies, which are young and still growing.
--Joe
> Kristopher Grey <kris@...> wrote:
>
> Nullarbor , Null- Arbor, Without Trees. Yes, a treeless wordworker is a
> bit of an enigma - but no less roughness to sand than the desert.
------------------------------------
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