Monday 29 April 2013

Herstmonceux and Long Man

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'.
13 04 29 Herstmonceux - TP0011 - Solar
Which has a mighty fine receiver on top.
13 04 29 Herstmonceux - TP0011 - Solar
And an SLR for a backdrop.
13 04 29 Herstmonceux - TP0011 - Solar
Next we have 'Transit Meridian'.
13 04 29 Herstmonceux - TP6562 - Transit Meridian
No longer monitoring anything and looking somewhat sad for itself.
13 04 29 Herstmonceux - TP6562 - Transit Meridian
And finally we have just plain and simple 'Herstmonceux' which is sitting in front of a magnificent old observatory.
13 04 29 Herstmonceux - TP3747 - Herstmonceux
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.
13 04 29 Wilmington - Long Man
And then on the top Wilmington trig.  Newer than the chalk man and to most people far less interesting.
13 04 29 Wilmington - TP6953 - Wilmington Hill
It was pretty windy up there but the views were wonderful.
13 04 29 Wilmington - TP6953 - Wilmington Hill
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:

Dad said...

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.

Ruth said...

Satellite Laser Ranging (ah, the ongoing confusion of TLAs!).

Vicki said...

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).