Adler Planetarium

One of my obligations on this trip to "Ketelsen East" was that I had agreed to speak at the September meeting of the Chicago Astronomical Society - at Adler Planetarium! I think it was a big deal because Adler is a big deal! It is the oldest planetarium built in this country and is part of the lakeside museum complex where Chicago meets Lake Michigan. In fact, flying into O'Hare the day before speaking, we flew out over the Lake before turning and landing towards the west, and had a great view of the downtown area, including the shot at left of the museum complex. This is a full resolution (cropped from the full image) and labels added to identify some of the major structures. The planetarium is on a manmade island which also used to have a small plane airport (Meigs Field). The airport was demolished in 2003 and "North Island" is now entirely park land, as is much of the lakeside. From the base of the stairs at the entrance, mostly only the original marble building is visible with the projection dome at center.

The original building was a 12-sided structure, and perhaps you can make out in the wide shot above, that each corner of the building had one of the signs of the zodiac. Four of them are collected in the collage at left - I just love the art deco design of these! Unfortunately, most are hidden by building expansion and while some are visible inside the additions, I suspect not all 12 can be located (I didn't have the time!). If you get a little further from the structure, you can see some of the newer additions that wrap around the lakefront side of the original building, also, you can pick up the figure of Copernicus seated on a marble plinth in front of the planetarium! The photo at left was taken shortly before sunset...


And you can imagine that with Adler located on a spit of land so close to Chicago, that the view of the city is great - and you would be right! At left is a 2-frame panorama looking down Solidarity Drive towards the west. Not exactly looking towards the skyline, which is a little more to the north, that would be the image at right! The image needed someone in it and luckily these two girls served the purpose well! The skyline view is great and in fact, there is a webcam atop the Adler dome, but I've not found a public-available view of it! It is used for several of the local TV weathercasts as it is a good indicator of weather and cloud cover, so perhaps it is now a "pay for play" camera!

Fortunately, I had an escort to make sure I got to the Adler from "Ketelsen East" in the far-western suburbs! Mark met me at the Geneva, IL train station and guided me through the station downtown where we were picked up by Tony of the CAS for the drive to Adler. If not for all this, it would have been tough for me to make it on my own! Melinda and I made it to Adler once in the last 10 years, and it was a tough drive, needing a navigator, then paying $20 for parking once arrived. The train was a nice method, but introduced its own set of "need to know" facts!

Anaglyph - use red/blue glasses to see Gemini 12 in 3D!

We had a couple hours to go through some of the displays. One of my favorites was an entire gallery devoted to "local boy" astronaut Jim Lovell. There was quite a collection of his papers and artifacts of his growing up and time in NASA, including the Gemini 12 spacecraft on display! That is it on at left - amazingly small for 2 people to spend 4 days out in space! BTW, that is a 3D anaglyph at left, so get out your red/blue glasses to see it in 3D. For those of you without glasses or only one eye, check out the similar image at right...





At an institution like this, you expect a good collection of instruments both historical and more recent, and they had a very good collection. At right is a selfie image of me taken with a thermal IR camera demonstrating invisible wavelengths not visible to the eye. I was wearing glasses, and carrying my camera that took this photo of the monitor, so they are near room temperature, and it appears my cheeks are the hottest (brightest) exposed part of me... I was also wearing a hat, so the top of my head is clipped too... At right, Tony and Mark examine a collection of antique telescopes from the early 1800s...

Of particular interest to Tony and Mark was a large refractor (18.6" diameter) Clark refractor that was on display. There was some discussion whether it still belonged to the Chicago Astronomical Society as it once was. There was some uncertainty in that...


Adler officially closed at 4:30 until the evening programs started, but we had arranged a tour of the adjacent Doane Observatory which serves as a public telescope at the facility. Located on the lake side of Adler, it is blocked from direct lights of the city. Our tour was given by long-time employee Michelle Nichols who apparently wears many hats including director of public observing. That is her standing in front of the facility at left, and in front of the 20 inch telescope at right. We were debating the various effects on seeing of the building - Mark thought the concrete walls would heat up during the day, but my thought was that the ivy shaded much of that effect. The dome is a little unusual in that it is the truncated cylinder as shown in the image. Because one side of the "dome" is heavier, the wheels wear unevenly and require frequent inspections. There also seemed to be an ongoing issue with collimation of the telescope affecting the image quality, of which all three of us offered assistance to inspect and adjust. While my time in Chicago is limited, Tony and Mark may get put to work to try to improve the images.


After Michelle's tour, we had "dinner time" on the schedule and while we had talked about a ride over to Millennium Park to enjoy "The Bean" and get a snack, we stayed adjacent to the planetarium and talked about things over a couple chili dogs at the stand a few feet from the steps.

Eventually my time came and my talk about working on the GMT project at the Mirror Lab was very well received. It was under attended though - evidently the thinking was that with a local concert, the parking was enforced at $35, which might have turned off a lot of club members - a significant jump over the normal $4 for night time parking! And even with us amateur astronomers preaching against light pollution, I had to admit that the night time view of the Chicago skyline was quite striking! I've got more from this visit to post - stay tuned!

The Rest of the Road Trip!

Seems strange to still be writing about the eclipse road trip with the Russian kids, but since I've not done it yet, have been busy since, and haven't been blogging a lot, time to finish it out since it ended 3 weeks ago! I likely won't get very far, as I'm writing this from the sunroom of "Ketelsen East", where there is a perfect late-Summer day calling out to me! The temp outside is 73F and the acorns continue to rain down like shots onto the roof, distracting me to come outside and play... Maybe after a few paragraphs!

The last I wrote about the eclipse, we had just finished observing the spectacular totality! It was sad to see it end, but we were glad to have shared it with friends! Most all of those who joined us packed and hit the road for their next destination even as the partial phases ended. Our group made the wise decision to stay till the next morning to avoid the traffic jams of tens of thousands of people all leaving the narrow path of totality at once. And we did hear lots of stories of crawling traffic going on for many hours. So after another night's rest and more hospitality from our hostess Karen and her two lovely granddaughters, we left for parts south on Tuesday, 22 August. We had come up the eastern side of Utah and our idea was to come down through central Utah to visit some National Parks - Bryce and Zion to be the highlights...

No issues at all with traffic - the crowds were all hundreds of miles ahead of us evidently! We drove all day watching the pretty scenery from Central Wyoming to near central Utah. The highlight of the day was winding our way down past Flaming Gorge, with a visit to the dam and reservoir there. It is part of the huge complex of dams to control the Colorado River basin, and was interesting to see one close up. We stopped frequently, but never for very long, ending a long day of 450 miles (for us) at Green River, Utah... Interestingly, I didn't get the camera out all day!

Anaglyph of I-70 entering San Rafael Reef

Note that this post has an abundance of 3D anaglyph images - over a dozen!  Those photos captioned "anaglyphs" can be seen in 3D if you have a set of red/blue 3D glasses.  They consist of 2 photos taken from a few inches to many yards apart and when combined and tinted in Photoshop and viewed thru the glasses, a 3D image results.  Believe me, the results are worth it if you can find the glasses!

The next day we hit the road at the crack of 9am and made it a whole half mile till we hit a café for breakfast! We didn't have a goal for an overnight yet, which always makes me nervous... We had hopes of visiting Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, but having not been to either, wasn't sure about the distance we had to go and the logistics of those visits. We stopped again at a rest stop looking up at the San Rafael Reef, where Interstate 70 traverses a swell of sandstone that blocked westward flow of pioneers in the old west. Showing the first of many stereo pairs in today's post (get out the red/blue stereo glasses!), you can see I-70 going thru the blasted-out canyon. The sign at the rest stop indicates in places, outstretched arms could touch both sides of the canyon before the widening!

We made it to Bryce by early afternoon. It is an amazing place! It is well hidden from the main road - a turn towards the east slowly transforms from red rock to the amazing amphitheaters of tinted hues and hoodoos that make Bryce like no place else!

Of course, as we hit highlights like this we restarted the tradition of the group photos in front of the park signs, then had to do the same in front of a multi-hued overlook.

We stopped at the visitor center and I was surprised by a very nice display on dark skies and light pollution. With my involvement with the Grand Canyon Star party over the last 27 years, we were among the early promoters of dark skies in the National Parks, but Bryce has taken the thought and run with it, hosting a similar star party to ours, though I've never been to their version. The display was nice to see and of very high quality and accuracy!

Anaglyph - close-up of hoodoos

Anaglyph - wide shot, overlook and trail in background

Similar to the San Rafael Reef above, I had to try to capture some 3D views of the amazing landscape at Bryce. It was almost impossible though as clouds moving through changed the lighting and strong shadows on a timescale of seconds... These two show a wide view and close up of the hoodoos from "Inspiration Point". It seems amazing that these structures were formed from water and frost weathering (erosion from freeze/thaw cycles). But it isn't only the shapes, but the delicate change in hues that make it amazing...

I would love to explore some of the hiking trails that were visible from our vantage points, but we were very limited in our time this trip. Perhaps in the future, a trip to the star party with some daytime hiking exploration would be in order!


Zion National Park is similarly a surprise - not revealing anything from the main road (only about 30 miles or so south of Bryce). It takes a turn off the road towards the west and a traverse of a dozen miles or so. We had an additional goal - our Wyoming hostess Karen, who used to be a ranger here told us we HAD to go to "Flying Monkey Pizza" in Springdale, just through the park. The scenery, like Bryce is AMAZING! The narrow main road winds down a canyon and includes a disconcerting narrow tunnel blasted through solid rock that is over a mile long! It is tough to drive because you want to be looking out at the view. Springdale is just past the west entrance to the park and looks to be very similar to Sedona, AZ, complete with high-end shops and restaurants, and of course, surrounded by red rock! We had a tough time finding the pizza place as the sign on the street had faded to nearly blank, but we eventually found it and truly enjoyed the wood-fired pizza there. We didn't get back on the road till about sunset, and drove the 45 minutes to Kanab where we overnighted very near the Utah and Arizona border...


I felt energized for the next day - back to Arizona! We were going to hit the north rim - for my second time, though it has been decades since I've visited! The first order of business was a rest stop at Jacob's Lake, where the road forked to the south to head to the park. It wasn't just a bathroom break, but a quest for some of the best cookies anywhere. On my first trip I was told I HAD to stop (advice might have been from our ranger Marker) at the Jacob's Lake Inn. I recall the cookie to order was the "cookie on a cloud", shown at left. It was as good as I remember from 20 years ago!




The Canyon is always impressive, the north rim significantly different that the south! The northern side is a good 1,000 feet higher, and the major vegetation is ponderosa pine, which limit the views off the north rim. The day we were visiting we had high clouds which also added haze and diffuse lighting that cut into the color saturation, but still - its the Canyon! We took some rim trails near the North Rim Lodge, taking some group photos and of course, Polina taking more of her selfies! We let the kids run around and explore some - not much chance of getting lost at the north rim, where the development area is pretty localized. I went in search of some lunch, and found a sandwich at the Deli adjacent to the Lodge. I think the kids went for pizza again, after gorging on it the night before!

Anaglyph - 3D at the Grand Canyon!

In part of our explorations as a group, I looked for 3D images to take, but the scale of the Canyon is so huge that you can't get much of a 3D effect. It wasn't till I looked at the downloaded images that I found that taking an image from 2 different pair sets taken worked - kind of! The image at left shows good 3D effect in the peninsula of land crossing the front of the frame, but the image separation is too large to easily follow around the rear of the Canyon to the treeline on the horizon, though it can be done. I like it - and since it is my blog, it stays!

We took the obligatory group shot with the entrance sign on our way out, after spotting it on our way into the park a few hours earlier...

From the north rim, it was a few hour run to Flagstaff where we stayed for the second time.  It was at this point that Donna got dropped off where she had parked our car and left our merry group to return to reality!  After another uneventful night at Motel 6, we toured the U.S. Geological Society in Flagstaff that works with a lot of the data from interplanetary space missions and had displays from early moon missions, to the latest Mars rover data.  They were very nice to us, since we showed up unannounced, and got poster packages for everyone along with some scientific research papers...  From Flagstaff, we hoofed it down to my place in Tucson where all found spaces to crawl into their sleeping bags among the couches, futons, carpet and cats.  Some even slept outside on the chaise lounge and my home-made wooden bench - for me, it was nice to see the kingsize bed again, even if Melinda's cat Annie was too upset with our visitors to share it with me!

Anaglyph - SR-71 w/Lockheed D-21B drone

Anaglyph - SR-71 engine

Saturday, 26 August dawned bright and clear - another hot day in Tucson! Hoping to get an early start, I dropped the kids and Margie off at a local breakfast spot while I returned to feed the cats in peace! The plan was to go to Pima Air and Space Museum - a great place for aviation in general. I had given up on matching the energy of the kids, and after negotiating them waiving our admission fee (they will do that for special groups, and have done it for us the last time we brought a Russian group), I wandered about, taking stereo pairs of my favorite craft.

My clear favorite is the SR-71 spy plane, shown at left. Nestled under its wing is a Lockheed D-21B drone, designed to be launched from an early version of the SR-71. I just love this, the fastest and highest flying plane ever designed, and the technology that went into it. Even one of its engines, exposed for display, makes a worthy 3D image!

Anaglyph - B-52 Looking north

Anaglyph - B-52 Landing gear

Perhaps it is the size of the plane that appeals to me - the venerable, long-serving B-52 also appeals to me and is a true behemoth! Although the older, and even larger B-36, the largest bomber ever produced appeals to me to (not shown). But the B-52 is shown at left. Note there is a little bit of "ghosting" from the red engine covers and the red/blue glasses - can't be helped with the anaglyph glasses! There are lots of things to find photogenic, but have chosen the wide view at left and the close up of the landing gear at right. In the wide shot, a little drone designed for use is also shown adjacent to the bomber...

Anaglyph - B-52 looking south

Anaglyph - F-14 Tomcat

A look down the sweep of the wing makes for a good 3D shot too. At one time they had a few B-52s on display, and a B-36 too, some of which appeared to be off the field this trip anyhow...

And of course, how can you not love the F-14 Tomcat, made famous by Tom Cruise in the "Top Gun" movie?! Especially in 3D, with the toothy grin, it looks pretty formidable!



After leaving the Pima Air and Space Museum late in the afternoon, we stopped by for a tour of the Mirror Lab where I still work part time. Our major project is the Giant Magellan Telescope, where they saw the front surface of GMT-2 that is being worked, and also the rear surface of GMT-4.  At left they are standing in the polishing lab in front of GMT2.  8.4 meters in diameter, it is one of 7 similar mirrors that will be mounted and work together as a single optical surface in the telescope! It is in fine-grinding stage and is a few microns (thousandths of a millimeter) rms. At right they inspect the finished mold for GMT5 that will be cast early in November. They seemed quite impressed with the largest telescope mirrors in the world!

After another dinner of pizza (at least their 4th or 5th meal of pizza by my count), we headed back to "Ketelsen West" for their last night in Tucson!

Anaglyph - Always loved this sundial - accurate too!

Anaglyph - McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope

While at Pima Air and Space Museum,
I had called up to Kitt Peak. They had been shut down even for daytime tours for some infrastructure upgrades made to the mountain observatory. It happened that it was their first day open for public tours, and so Sunday we headed up to Kitt Peak National Observatory, sort of on the way to Los Angeles! Kitt Peak, while less and less considered a national observatory as the NSF pulls back from funding the institution and they move into private hands, it is still an impressive place to visit and I really had wanted them to see it. We arrived just as the orientation talk started with Joe, our docent, who gave a great intro to the place! The afternoon tour normally went to the 4-meter telescope, but it was still closed, so instead went to the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, also defunded and closed, at least this day, even though it is tied with being the largest solar telescope in operation. It has been defunded in favor of the new 4 meter DKIST telescope on Maui, set to open in less than 2 years. That is the odd-looking solar scope at right as you approach it on the road.

Anaglyph - 2.1 meter from solar telescope

Anaglyph - 2.1 meter from near admin building

After walking up to the structure, we peered in at ground level to see the layout of the optics mounted in the inclined shaft, then walked down to go to the observing room where the action was normally taking place. Along the way we looked into a glassed-in case where an old logbook was displayed - Gemini and Apollo astronauts had signed in to observe the moon through this telescope back in April and May of 1964! Way cool! Joe gave a good talk about the sun, impressed that in his group were some Russian kids that just got back from the solar eclipse! I also won Joe's cookie contest for answering a question... He was talking about the sun being a plasma, a 4th state of matter.  He asked what the other 3 states were. While most appeared to be dozing and no one volunteered an answer, I correctly stated "solid, liquid, gas" and won a chocolate chip cookie! Woohoo!

After ambling back to the visitor center for some last-minute shopping of souvenirs, we descended down the mountain, but instead of turning east towards Tucson, turned left towards Sells and points west for the trip to LA. We got stopped by a border patrol checkpoint north of Ajo - that route a direct road north out of Mexico. While they were looking for undocumented aliens, they likely had rarely seen Russians pulled over at their stop! All the kids had to show their passports and visas, and we were on our way again. We spent one more night in Blythe and at 1pm met our contacts near Redding, CA that would transport them around for the next 10 days through the astronomical sights of Los Angeles and San Francisco!

And suddenly they were gone! Margie sped off in a cloud of dust and I was suddenly in isolation for the first time in 2 weeks! It was kind of odd... Anyway, drove through 2 haboobs in quick succession west of Casa Grande, and a little rain fell as I drove into Tucson, arriving after dark. It was a great 14 days of travel, formed some unforgettable memories with friends both close and far and witnessed one of nature's true spectacles in the total solar eclipse. It won't soon be forgotten, and almost everyone who witnessed it is looking forward 7 years to the next one in April of 2024.  Will we see you there?!

Arizona Aflame!

All of you have likely seen the nightly news and the reports that the western US is suffering simultaneously record high temperatures and dozens of forest fires. Even in my last post here I talked about a fire detouring my trip to the Canyon, and a glimpse of the fire showed one of the ancient cinder cones as if the volcano had come back to life! We've had close to a dozen within a hundred miles of Tucson the last few months, but two in particular have attracted a lot of attention. 

Most recently, the Burro Fire started about a week ago. It's cause is not yet known, but wasn't lightning as it was a storm-free day when it started 30 June. It is in a popular area for "wildcat shooting", so that remains a possible cause. While on the east end of the Catalina range just north of Tucson, it is not directly endangering any houses, but is very near the only access road to Summerhaven atop Mount Lemmon, so as a precaution, the mountain has been evacuated. Yesterday (5 July), I flew to Chicago and was surprised when we took off to the west, and circled around, flying along the front range of the Catalinas. We were not near the main part of the fire, but what did become clearly visible were the slurry paths from the aerial tankers as they controlled the southern extent of the blaze.  Current estimates have it over 25,000 acres burned, and only 11% contained...

Another major fire that had attracted my attention several weeks ago was the Frye Fire atop Mount Graham. Now burning for a month, it was initially not actively fought as it was a lightning-caused fire, not near any structures in a remote part of the range. Ten days later it had exploded wildly and threatened the major observatory at the peak, as well as cabins at several locations.

Now I'm a little paternal when it comes to the telescopes up there, as I worked on making all three of them! While I was at the Canyon a couple weeks ago I was looking for news to see if the scopes survived. Thankfully they did! Troy Wells was with firefighters atop the LBT structure and took the following video. Interestingly, it is mis-identified as being in Utah, and it is also reversed left-to-right, but the video is no less amazing. As the fire bears down on the structure, the cavalry arrives in the form of a DC-10 with a load of slurry!



The Observatories there literally appeared to be saved by that drop. An inspection a couple days later by the director of the Vatican Telescope resulted in the following report...


I took a Sunday visit to a friend living in Safford, just east of Mount Graham on 2 July. The fire was still very evident even if the danger to the Observatories and cabins have passed. At left is a view of the only access to the mountain - highway 366, Swift Trail. Smoke hangs heavy over the eastern slopes, and while not easily visible in this shot, there was a sheriff and a roadblock a kilometer down the road. I was heading home about sunset, driving south paralleling the mountain and suddenly noticed the lighting had changed! A glance towards the sunset showed the sun hanging low directly over the main column of smoke. That was certainly worth a stop for a photograph!



Now Mount Graham is another waypoint on the flight to Chicago - it normally is visible outside the left window as we jet to the northeast. I paid the extra fee to get a port side window and was rewarded with the following view at left! Normally the 3 telescopes are clearly visible as we pass, but the smoke from the fire totally obscured the entire mountaintop!

Interestingly, I had also packed my IR-modified camera. This camera has a filter that ONLY allows infrared light to the sensor, instead of being blocked out like most cameras. As a result of the longer wavelengths used, blue skies get darkened and the chlorophyll of healthy plants appear almost white. At right is the infrared view. Most interestingly, the smoke is all but invisible! Blackened burn scars are much more easily visible against the white of normal forest growth. They were taken only a few moments apart, so the only real differences are the wavelengths of observation... The current status of the Frye Fire is about 48,000 acres burned and is about 66% contained.

WARNING!  Anaglyphs ahead!

For those of you who are fond of my anaglyph 3D images (I know there are a few of you out there!), I've combined image pairs taken from the plane to make 3D images. At left is again the color shot at visible wavelengths. You will see the 3D image with using the red/blue glasses with the red filter on the left.

At right is similarly the infrared anaglyph. I am truly shocked at how well the longer IR wavelengths penetrate the smoke of the fire. The 3D effect also seems stronger too - perhaps because of the mostly black and white image and its effect on the tinted anaglyph.



And believe it or not, the LBT is visible through what is likely about the thickest part of the smoke in the IR shot. Check out this full-resolution shot at left of the above image. Just under the center of the cloud at the upper profile of the mountain, the silver box of the LBT can be spotted!

While fire season is hanging on as long as the summer rainy season is staying away, it won't be long till the rains and humidity will extinguish the AZ fires at least. Meanwhile, I'm happy to be back in the green Midwest for a few weeks. I'm even looking forward to some hot muggy days - can't be much worse than the 115 degree days we've survived in the desert!

ADDENDUM!
I'm editing this entry as I just finished a new anaglyph of the slurry lines at the Burro Fire, and it was too cool not to include! Shown at left, the 3D anaglyph shows how the slurry lines were laid down mostly along ridge lines to prevent the fire's spread. That is all - enjoy!

Saguaro Saturday!

My buddy Donna was down over the weekend. Since our Jeep outing last Fall, a group of fellow astronomy nuts has been debating where to go on a 4WD outing as the weather gets warmer, and someone suggested a petroglyph site in Saguaro National Park, western unit. It isn't a difficult drive even for a passenger vehicle, so Donna and I hit the road on a lovely Saturday yesterday to check it out. I haven't been there in a good 15 years, so reviewed the maps and hit the road for a couple-hour road trip.


The first stop was Gates Pass, where Speedway/Anklam Road crosses the Tucson Mountain Range. It is spectacularly scenic with groves of saguaro cacti, and as shown at left, the view opening up towards the west quite dramatically. The main photo was taken with a 16mm full-frame fisheye on the Canon 6D, so has a 180 degree diagonal field-of-view. To show some of the details at reasonable scale, the inset shows a blow-up of Kitt Peak National Observatory about 35 miles to the SW with a 500mm lens and blended with the magic of Photoshop...

The view towards the north is no less exciting, even in the dull light of midday - saguaros all the way up the slopes to the profile of the mountain ridge, though the fisheye lens doesn't show them much. It again takes the inset from the 500mm lens to bring out those details...

We drove down past the West Unit's visitor center and checked in (free, thanks to my Golden-Ager NPS pass). We continued north a bit on Sandario Road before hitting Golden Gate Road, a dirt road we followed for a couple miles to the Signal Hill picnic area. From there we could spot the petroglyph site about a 1km hike away, with the trail spiraling up the far north side. An image is shown at left, with a group atop the hill, behind a protective fence checking out petroglyphs. It didn't take us long to hike over a well-maintained trail - literally a freeway compared to some of the raw trails I've seen in the SW!

The petroglyphs were made by the Hohokam culture about 1,000 years ago and are quite striking. The main spiral is shown at left, with many others scattered about the stones of the hilltop. Besides the spirals and possible symbols for the sun and moon, you can also imagine figures of deer or sheep, scorpions and snakes. Niles Root has done some spectacular images and analysis, proving that the site was used as an astronomical calendar, finding dates of the summer solstice(first day of Summer) and vernal and autumnal equinoxes (start of Spring and Fall). His website with fascinating photos and descriptions is linked here.

A wider shot of the area showing a few more symbols is shown at left. The main spiral shown above is now near the left edge, with more visible at lower right. And at right is another large spiral on a nearly horizontal stone. Root's description didn't mention the symbols over here on the west side, so there are still mysteries about!


With all the examinations of the
petroglyphs, you forget you are still in Saguaro National Park, and the view towards the NE towards Mount Lemmon, shown at left shows the forest of Saguaros in the area. That is Mount Lemmon at far distance at center.

And because THIS IS MY BLOG, I've got lots of 3D photos too! So grab your red/blue glasses and follow along. Since I just showed the cactus forest at left, at right is an anaglyph (3D shot by adding another shot taken a couple feet away). Using the glasses, each of your eyes sees the appropriate frame and your brain reconstructs a stereo image.

And, of course, I've got 3Ds of the
petroglyphs too!  At left is a close-up of the main spiral at the site.  This was taken with a telephoto and is a "hyperstereo", taken with a baseline further apart than your normal eye separation.  Doing it this way emphasizes the stereo effect, amplifying the unevenness of the stone and spiral itself! 

At right is a wider field including some of the mountainous background too. and finally below, is the wide shot showing other petroglyphs...

We returned to Sandario Road, but rather than return the way we came, continued north and returned to Tucson on Picture Rocks Road  (so named because of the numerous petroglyphs), making a big loop for our Saturday adventure.