Palomar, and Some Final Thoughts

Hello all,
this is my final post (at least for now).  This will mainly be a reflection on the last quarter.  I'd like to start with our trip to the Palomar Observatory.  I have to say it's pretty impressive.  I wanted to be a bit more informative, but our tour guide gave A LOT of detailed information and I don't remember most of it.  I thought there would be more about actual astronomy.  Had I known there was going to be so much about behind-the-scenes detail, I would have brought a pen to take notes, so, sorry about that.  Some of it was interesting, like the making of the mirror and how it is cleaned.  Who knew smoothing and cleaning glass could be so difficult?  Check out the blog from one of my classmates: The Everlasting Symphony  He found a video of the process.  Some of the information is available on the observatory website.  The pictures don't do it justice, however.  The telescope is huge.  The best part of the tour was seeing inside the observing room.  It's too bad we couldn't be there while someone was observing something.  I am left with the hope that one day I will learn enough to be an astronomer (although after this class, I realize that is quite a lot) and maybe I can observe at Palomar, or someplace like it.
     I have always loved astronomy but now I am even more excited about it.  As the quarter progressed, I realized that I was spending more and more time on astronomy and soon I did not want to do anything else.  I have learned a lot in this class, but there is also a lot that I wish I had more time to understand better.  I realize now that astronomers are even more amazing than I previously thought.  So, I sadly say good-bye to the PHYS 111 class, but I may still add to my blog in the future if I have time.   I had some topics in the works that I never had time to post.  In the meantime, I leave you with this interesting website I found while at the Palomar website looking for information:  http://www.black-holes.org/.  Just hover the cursor over the circles then click on the topic of interest.