Puerto Rico - Arecibo Observatory and Rincon (Thursday, March 7th,2019)

A few months ago, we started planning a cousin's cruise with Steve's brother and one of his cousins he grew up with.  And now the time has come, and we're back on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, USA, getting in a few attractions before we head out on a Caribbean Cruise.  We rented a car for a couple of days, so today we are heading to the west side of the island with Dennis and Cyndi.  They wanted to visit the Arecibo Observatory, so that is our first stop. 

There is a parking lot and restrooms at the admission gate to the observatory.  From there, you walk about 1/2 mile.  As we walked, we could see some of the support towers for radio wave collectors.

The walk is on a nice wide side walk, through some beautiful jungle, so a really nice part of the experience.

The Arecibo Observatory is the world’s largest fully operational radio telescope.  It was built into a sinkhole in a mountain range in northwest Puerto Rico and is used for deep space study.

It includes 118 acres; with its reflector covering 18 acres, the size of nearly 24 football fields.

When completed in 1963, the observatory cost $9.3 million.

The Arecibo Planetary Radar is used to study celestial bodies in our solar system such as planets, moons, comets and asteroids. The  1,000-foot reflector directs a powerful beam of radio energy in the direction of a target object. A small portion of this energy is reflected by the target back in the direction of Earth. This radio echo provides information about the size, shape, density, spin, composition, and surface properties of the target object.

The telescope has been featured in several films and television series, including GoldenEye, Contact and The X-Files.

When we got to the observatory, we did a self guided tour to start.

Check out the guys on the cat walk.  It's all in a day's work for them, but it wouldn't be for me.

When we finished our self guided tour, we met up for a guided tour.  Our guide, Jade, spoke great English and made the experience really interesting.

A few more facts about the observatory:

Discoveries:

2017. Arecibo discovered two strange pulsars that undergo a “cosmic vanishing act” – sometimes they are there, and then for very long periods of time they are not. This has upended the widely held view that all pulsars are the orderly ticking clocks of the universe.

2016. Arecibo discovered the first repeating fast radio bursts, which are millisecond radio pulses that appear to be extragalactic.

1992. Arecibo discovered the first-known exoplanet. In subsequent observations, an entire planetary system was found around the pulsar PSR 1257+12.

1981. Arecibo produced the first radar maps of the surface of Venus. Optical images show only the top of the thick cloud layer.

1967. Arecibo discovered that the rotation rate of Mercury is 59 days, not the previously estimated 88 days. The rotation is not tidally locked, but rather the rate is an orbital resonance with two orbits for every three rotations.

When we left the observatory, we made our way through the jungle, toward the west coast of the island, with a few stops along the way.

We ended up on some very narrow, windy roads overlooking the jungle.  What an adventure!

By the time we made it to Rincon (on the west side of the island), we were hungry, so we stopped at a little empanada restaurant for some lunch.

The restaurant had nice views, and a nice breeze.

After lunch, we headed to the beach to see what the Rincon beaches had to offer.  They were interesting.  They had sandy beaches, but it was hard to get in and out of the water because of the rocks between the sand and the surf.

There were some fun little tide pools, and some fun shell collecting.

The observatory was the most impressive part of our day, it was really interesting!  Although the Rincon beaches were beautiful, we weren't that impressed, but still really enjoyed a fun day on the west shores of Puerto Rico. 

Upon our return to San Juan, we enjoyed a nice leisurely dinner at Buenos Aries.  The shrimp bisque and beans and rice were really good.  Hopefully we will get to enjoy those again at some point!