Green Bank Excursion

Hiking, Spelunking

The hiking was so fun. We got awesome views of the neighboring mountains and town, lots of exercise, picnic food, and great conversation while hiking.

I got to learn more about the freshmen that joined us on the trip. We talked about everything from how technology is transforming society to us politics to nuclear power ☢️. I can’t believe we covered so much ground on hike of just a few hours.

I felt a lot worse about the spelunking. I seemed more of a tourist trap to me. Our tour guide (though engaging) made up a lot of folk lore to describe the geological formations we saw, and got the science behind the formations wrong a few times. I didn’t like that at all 🤬.

Spelunking seemed more of a sightseeing time killer to me, but I don’t think anyone else felt close to the same way.

Green Bank Observatory

I forgot the name of the employee who took us around, but they were very knowledgeable and professional. They took a complicated topic, operating a radio telescope and interpreting its data, and turned into something we could understand after a quick explanation. Also they gave us helpful packets.

There were lot of jargon, but nothing I hadn’t already heard from other astronomy discussions or from Peel. I learnt that we could figure out roughly how fast our galaxy was rotating by looking at whether certain stars were moving toward us or away from us.

Final Thoughts

Being without internet/wifi for a few days was eye opening. I had to download all my content beforehand, and it took time to figure out what I even needed to download. It was awesome for hanging out with my friends. Who knew, hours of isolation w/o internet is great for bonding. We played so many board games…​ I absolutely recommend this excursion to everyone, its worth making time for.