Test station in WA

Test station in WA
Originally uploaded by Rob Millenaar.

Many weeks have passed since my last post. The session at Dawodang in South China was successfully completed and I brought back a rich store of memories and photo's to back them up.

The equipment was flown back to The Netherlands, was made ready for the next session and sent off to Western Australia: the next leg of the journey that brings me to four continents within one year.

As I'm writing this I have been here at Mileura station in the Western Australian outback. What I would call a desert, being used to the green lushness of Holland, actually is arid shrubland. The flat terrain here is made of red soil dotted with bushes and small, gnarly trees. It is quite a contrast to where the measurement station was set up in China, but rather alike the landscape that I learned to appreciate in The South African Karoo. Standing on top of the scarce escarpments you can see for miles and miles; the 'desert' seems endless. It would seem that an empty region like this would provide the quiet environment in which a new radio telescope might flourish. I am here to back this feeling up with hard data. In the past two and the next three weeks the equipment will collect the much needed data. In the meantime I will soak in the impressions that the outback has to offer.

Rob