Astrophysics and Vodka

Sam and I had had our eye on this trip since first arriving at the hostel: “watch the stars at night” this was trip up to the Mongolian observatory just outside of UB. Mr Kim the guest house owner has made friends with the scientists so for a small fee and a bottle of vodka we were able to visit. Apparently Mongolia is great for observing the sky as it has the one of the highest number of clear nights per year compared to other countries. This is due to it being so land locked. The observatory is a collection of quite grand buildings perched on top of one of UB’s surrounding mountains, built by Russia in the 60’s now was now only used by a couple of people.
Sam and I also managed to get an Auzzie guy and German girl to come with us. Pickup was at 20:15 and we jumped into something similar to an old Toyota Corolla. The trip up there was experience enough! The Mongols drive like crazy people. To add to this already bizarre mindset our driver had a right hand drive car which meant he drove in the middle of the road for most of the way unless he was forced back onto the right hand side by oncoming vehicles, and even this was done reluctantly and at the last second. Overtaking in Mongolia is something which is done by most; Have a look, make sure something is coming the other way, put your foot on the slow reacting accelerator (automatics), beep your horn loudly and flash your lights, decide that you are going then to play chicken for a bit longer while you continue to try and overtake every other car, truck, bus heading your way then swerve in at the last breath, let the car go past and resume middle of the road position until an equally exciting opportunity for this favourite Mongol drivers game presents itself again.
Luckily though we weren’t on the main roads (by this I mean tarmac) too long. Our driver had already stopped of for a bottle of vodka to give to the guy at the observatory who would be showing us around and let us know he doesn’t like driving on the main roads as it is too busy. He then announced with this we would be taking a short cut – to the observatory perched on top of one of the surrounding mountains. So we headed off the road through a yurt/badly built housing estate. Pausing every now and then to decide a left or right through this wooden fenced warren. Eventually we were spat out of the estate into what can only be described as its sewage/rubbish dumping ground. The driver picked his way between the piles of rubbish and squeezed through an extremely narrow tunnel (he got the wing mirror on the way back), through some slurry the other side and then jetted off in his Toyota Corolla up the hillside. Now the type of car we are in is definitely not built for this sort of ground at this sort of speed, but we bumped and rocked our way up there and finally met the ‘main road’ (not tarmac, but less bumpy than the rest of the field) taking us the last bit of our journey up the dark hill.
On arrival at the observatory we were met with a rather large, austere looking building, which we later found out was were where the astrologers lived/did their work. Our guy referred to it at the 7 star hotel (a good double pun as they call the Plough constellation the seven stars of God). We found our star man buried in his tiny work/living quarters, he could speak very good English and gave us a small astrology lesson before we set off to the telescope. We learnt about the distances of our planets, other galaxies and stars from the earth (he was very relieved when we said we understood light years). He was also an avid researcher of meteorite crash sites, this was his ‘thing’ so we got to look at some pictures and hear some stories about them, there are even a few large ones in Europe – Germany, Finland, Spain, Latvia. Outside on the way up to the telescope our enthusiastic and very knowledgeable sky guide pointed out various stars and constellations, which, despite the large number of stars in the sky and vague hand waving we saw! so learnt some new ones, we have learnt Taurus and Pegasus, saw Saturn, Mars and the Polar star. The telescope we were going to be using is now only for visitors, they have a much more hi-tech digital one (which was from America and had been broken for the past 7 months) that they use to see galaxies, comets etc.. Our telescope was in a large circular building which was getting a paint job on the interior, the instructions “don’t touch the walls” seemed an easy enough order to follow until we got inside and had to walk up some stairs barley wide enough for your shoulders. We got to the domed room at the top and turned off the lights. Then, with much creaking and wooden panel sliding noises part of the roof slid open to reveal the night sky. Very exciting stuff! Our galaxy guide then set to work finding the Orion Nebula, which he managed no probs. The telescope itself was something to be reckoned with. Built in Eastern Germany, it is made up of three interconnecting parts (honestly you couldn’t dream this stuff up) which all acted as….arms, which meant the telescope could be swivelled, angles changed, heights adjusted, all the things you would expect a telescope to do, but moving from one part of the sky to another required moving all three parts in certain patterns to get to the right position – watch your heads!
Through the telescope we first saw the Orion nebula – a cluster of stars on Orion’s sword (or as the Auzzies would say, on the handle of the upside down saucepan) surrounded by a huge slivery cloud of star matter – very pretty. We also saw Mars, though at this point he hadn’t told us how we adjust the focus so it was a big red glinting blob. What was good was once we had seen it through the telescope we could then look at the sky and see the red twinkling star and know it was Mars. As Mr Cosmos loved impact craters he was particularly keen to show us the impact craters on the moon. Unfortunately at this point it had moved behind a large clump of trees, after many frantic movements, Mongolian “tchiss” ing and cursing the trees he beckoned me (Sarah) up to the eye piece. Looking past the blurry streak of a tree down one side of my vision I saw, crisp as anything, a crater on the edge of the new moon – amazing, so clear and so detailed. By the time I dragged my eye away the moon had properly settled itself behind a few sickly looking pine trees and no-one else got to see as much as I did (sorry!) but it was worth it and I want a telescope now! The highlight came when we were told we were going to look at Saturn. Peering through the eyepiece and adjusting the focus Saturn and its rings shimmered into existence. Truly a memorable vision.
Crater man had been living up at the observatory for 200 days, and we think it showed. Our driver was nowhere to be found on our arrival back at the work/living quarters so we piled into his tiny office/kitchen/”sex room” (nice) and cracked open the vodka. After a couple of shots we got to learn all about his family, Studies and love of impact craters. His wife is a palentologist and his daughter is 24 and working in Japan. He studied in Moscow (for 15 years!) and went on expeditions to the black sea for six months of every year, he then came back to Mongolia where he works in the observatory and travels Mongolia and other countries studying craters found by satellites. After agreeing that three large shots of vodka is lucky we had a look at loads of pictures on his computer, some of his crater trips, family, the moon, eclipses, Saturns phases and the best of all, the collection of pictures aboard Voyager. Sparing a thought for these pictures and Voyager in general, we have given them our chemistry, anatomy, lifestyles (in the 70’s/80’s), address, basically some darn good intellegience if they ever decide to come and destroy us. After this sobering though we decided another ‘chut-chut’ of vodka was required. By the time the driver reappeared he could hardly drag us away or stop galaxy guy from finding new things to show us! The journey home luckily was much less scary as we had finished off the bottle of vodka…