Your Incredible Neighbors: Whipple volunteers vital to operation

It’s tour day at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory southeast of Green Valley, and visitors crowd around to pay up and sign up for their bus trip to the top of Mount Hopkins to see the telescopes there and to enjoy one of the best views in Southern Arizona.

Staffing the reception desk Friday morning was Lorraine Michael, one of 30 volunteers who help the Smithsonian Institution’s scientists and staff members do their job.

Dan Brocious, the observatory’s public relations chief, oversees their work of helping the public and doing such behind-the-scenes tasks as making sure some dials are read regularly and that all the first aid kits have the requisite number of bandages and pills.

For instance, Brocious said, volunteers read water flow dials as a way to watch for leaks in one of the safety systems.

One volunteer, engineer Bill Foust, is helping organize the observatory’s scientific drawings and blueprints, one of those jobs that probably “would never get done otherwise,” said Brocious.

And Brocious said he could use a few more volunteers at the observatory about 20 miles south of Green Valley. Call him at 670-5706.

Michael was busy answering questions and collecting fees from the visitors going up the mountain, many of them members of the Green Valley Lions Club that day.

The Smithsonian runs three tours a week from March through November, and usually the small 30-passenger buses are filled. One of those making the trip is a volunteer tour guide.

Brocious said most tour guides are serious amateur astronomers and can usually answer just about any question about the observatories, the instruments and the science of astronomy.

Brocious said, “We’ve had thousands take the tours,”— which probably wouldn’t have happened without the volunteers.

Friday morning the air clear, washed by an overnight shower. Outside the grass, cactus and trees were a healthy green.

Visitors were milling around the visitor center’s small museum, looking at exhibits and even feeling some of the wild animal pelts on display.

Others studied astronomical diagrams, used computers to ask questions and looked at colorful pictures of the wildlife found in this part of the Sonoran desert.

From the east patio, visitors can look toward the top of Mount Hopkins and the MMTO observatory that’s housed in a gleaming white building there.

When the Multiple Mirror Telescope was built in 1979, it was a innovative instrument. The building is a barn-like structure, unlike the domes over traditional astronomical telescopes.

The MMTO building rotates to follow a star or constellation that astronomers are tracking that night. The instrument points up through the front of the building that opens up.

The MMTO instrument is a 10-meter optical reflector. That means its primary mirror is about 32 and a half feet across.

On there are also 1.2-, 1.3- and 1.5-meter telescopes and one of the original Veritas telescopes, an instrument made of scores of 30-inch mirrors that look for evidence of gamma rays, high-energy light.

There are four, larger Veritas telescopes operating at the visitor center and administration building, but they’re not part of the tour.

To schedule a tour, call 670-5707, and check in before the 9 a.m. lecture on the day scheduled. Fees are $7 for adults, $6 for Smithsonian associates and $2.50 for children 6 to 12.

Tour members need to bring a jacket or other wrap and maybe rain gear during the summer rainy season. And they should also bring a lunch. The tour doesn’t end until about 3 p.m.

There are restroom facilities at the picnic grounds near the top, and fresh water and a vending machine.

If the weather is really bad, tours may be canceled. Call 670-5707 for recorded information early on the day of the scheduled trip.

The visitor center is a brown, split-rock structure, where many of the astronomers also have their offices.

Another reception desk volunteer, Barbara Raney, said when visitors have astronomical questions she can’t answer, she generally calls Brocious.

But if he’s gone, she wanders back into the offices and cubicles and gets an astronomer to come to the front desk to answer the query.

She said the astronomers welcome the chance to answer questions, and visitors get an expert answer, and they’re usually quite appreciative.

The visitors center, and the rest of the installation all the way to the top of Mount Hopkins, are on U.S. Forest Service land.

At lower elevations there are grass, ocotillos, mesquites and acacias. Toward the 8,550-foot summit there are pines and aspens.

And there’s wildlife.

Jaguarundi, a mid-sized wild cat, are occasionally seen near the visitor center, and within the last month a small black bear paid regular visits to it.

“He was at the front door, sniffing at the door handle like he wanted in,” said volunteer Lorraine Michael.

She said the young bear—a female—been living in a mesquite tree near a picnic area, but when she’d eaten all the mesquite beans there, she came calling at the center.

Eventually she moved on. “One of our people saw the bear heading up the road” toward the summit, said Michael.

The visitor center volunteer has many jobs, and one thing he or she gets to do it to raise the flag in the morning and then lower it and fold it properly at quitting time.

jlamb@gvnews.com | 520-547-9749