Day 8 - Asteroid (Crater) Hunter

After a breakfast at the Villa Merced (pronounced Merchedee, you have to say it with an Italian acccent for full effect) , we headed out to the Observatory at Campo Imperatore - a two hour bus ride from Frascati. I found out on the way there that scenes from the movie The Name of the Rose were shot here. I got really excited about that!

We arrived at the mountain, about 2200 m high, so snow covered but not too cold, and headed straight up in a gondola for lunch. The restuarant was in a building where Benito Mussolini was imprisoned till he was liberated by Nazi commandos in 1943.

After lunch, we walked through deep tunnels dug inside the mountain to get to the

Campo Imperatore station of the Rome Observatory. In winter months, this is the only way to get from one part of the observatory to another. It is also very windy on the mountain, and in the movie we saw about the observatory, it did not look like a pleasant place to work, especially in the windy and snowy winter momths.

This is which the Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Object Survey and other astronomical studies are carried out. The observatory has two telescopes, both fairly old, one bought from the Russians after WW2. Everything looked quaint and antique especially after our visit earlier this year to oh-so state of the art MIT Lincoln Lab's Haystack Observatory. The tour was nonetheless fun, and it was even more fun to talk to the astronomers there. I learned a lot. This is not the fittest bunch of people I have ever seen.

After the observatory, we drove to the bottom of a valley whee we saw what could potentially be an asteroid impact crater. It was very exciting. Last spring break, I was in the Yucatan - the Chicxulub crater that may have extinguished the dinosaurs.

This spring break, I am discovering a crater in Italy. Talk about luck! What was even more fun than examining the rim of the crater was watching the scientists get all excited about the discovery (see pictures). There will be many discussions about this one the next few days.

The bus ride back was very long - over three hours. We were starving and luckily the restaurant at the hotel was still open. I am now starting to watch portion sizes though I am still eating it all. I have almost given up on finding the perfect tiramisu. I will have to go to Pacci's in Silver Spring for that.

Off to bed now. Miles walked today - not much. 5.75 miles