VLA

The VLA is a beautiful, alien sight, the arms of the array forming different, shifting patterns from every angle. The dishes point their heads towards the sky like fragile white daisies in a meadow, seeking radio waves from distant sources rather than solar photons. The interferometer is set on a flat, dusty plain, populated with jack-rabbits and tumbleweed, and enclosed by faint purple mountains. The sky was brightest blue, scattered with fluffy cotton-wool clouds, which reflected the white of the antennae.

Climbing the lower parts of the antenna, the metal stairs swayed and shook, and the breeze was cool. Further up, under the dish, there is a ladder to the top. I managed to be the first one up, and the brightness of the white dish and the blue sky are incredible. The metal sheets which form the dish feel fragile, and creak when they are stepped on. It was magic... and I also got to wear a hard hat.

Cloudbusting

I stepped out of the Super-8 for a stroll just as the sun was sinking behind the mountain. The air was still hot and dry, but without the vicious blaze of the day, and sheets of dust were blowing across and draping the mountain in a diffuse halo of light. Large clouds were gathering, some with what looked like miniature whirlwinds under them. The hills on the other side of Socorro, glimpsed between the supermarkets and motels, were lit Uluru-red by the setting sun, which was already behind the nearby peak, and the sky was apocalyptic shades of peachy grey. I went to have a look at Socorro's plaza, which is pleasant enough, but it was really the clouds that I was watching. By the time I was walking back in the early dark amid the neon signs, the clouds were all stretching dark fingers towards the earth in a way that I have never seen before. Maybe it is because I bought myself The Cloudspotter's Guide at the airport, knowing that I'd run out of books, but they seemed remarkable. The nearest thing I can find in the book is cumulonimbus with mamma, but I don't think that describes the strange tentacles of black cloud, some set stunningly against a pale blaze.