My daughter has work experience at the Space Geodesy Facility, Herstmonceux, so I'm in East Sussex for the week with her. After dropping her first thing today I just had to sweep up the 3 trigs in the Herstmonceux grounds.
I've yet to work out the raison d'etre for there being 3 here although the names are a bit of a clue.
First we have 'Solar'.
Which has a mighty fine receiver on top.
And an SLR for a backdrop.
Next we have 'Transit Meridian'.
No longer monitoring anything and looking somewhat sad for itself.
And finally we have just plain and simple 'Herstmonceux' which is sitting in front of a magnificent old observatory.
So that was 3 trigs bagged by 0915. I suspect I will never trump that.
Later on in the day I headed to Wilmington. On the side of the ridge is the Long Man of Wilmington.
And then on the top Wilmington trig. Newer than the chalk man and to most people far less interesting.
It was pretty windy up there but the views were wonderful.
Back to Herstmonceux tonight. Hopefully if the skies are clear we get to play with lasers. How much fun can one possibly have?
I've yet to work out the raison d'etre for there being 3 here although the names are a bit of a clue.
First we have 'Solar'.
Which has a mighty fine receiver on top.
And an SLR for a backdrop.
Next we have 'Transit Meridian'.
No longer monitoring anything and looking somewhat sad for itself.
And finally we have just plain and simple 'Herstmonceux' which is sitting in front of a magnificent old observatory.
So that was 3 trigs bagged by 0915. I suspect I will never trump that.
Later on in the day I headed to Wilmington. On the side of the ridge is the Long Man of Wilmington.
And then on the top Wilmington trig. Newer than the chalk man and to most people far less interesting.
It was pretty windy up there but the views were wonderful.
Back to Herstmonceux tonight. Hopefully if the skies are clear we get to play with lasers. How much fun can one possibly have?
3 comments:
What's an SLR? I know those letters in two contexts, a 'Single Lens Reflex'[Camera], or a Self loading rifle. As neither is valid in this case, what is your version? Dad.
Satellite Laser Ranging (ah, the ongoing confusion of TLAs!).
If I might explain a tad further :) In SLR we track Earth observation satellites using a pulsed laser to obtain orbital accuracies for this select group of satellites to a precision of around 5-10mm. This formulates the basis for lots of the science you hear about often, such as ice-cap melting, ocean level rise etc. :)
Also the trig points are named Solar - due to the fact that the SLR building initally housed a solar telescope. Transit Meridian - as it would have been next to the Transit circle telescope (no longer there at all).
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