Over a long holiday weekend, I decided to go do something a little different. I hadn’t been out of the country yet this year so I decided to take my Honda Pacific Coast motorcycle to British Columbia for the weekend. Canada is just a few hours away from Oregon yet this is the first time I’ve ever taken a vehicle to the Great White North. Why did I never do this before?!
The first stop after I went over the border was at the National Research Council Canada’s Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory. I really like checking out different interesting sites used for astronomy and other space-related things.
This is a really interesting little facility. It is much smaller than the Goldstone Deep Space Network facilities but no less impressive. Rather than only talking to spacecraft, this facility does many different types of research.
This big thing is the CHIME telescope. It is mapping hydrogen in the universe.
This is part of a tunable long baseline antenna setup.
All of these poles are from a 22 MHz telescope that has been offline for many years. It helped map the universe at one point in the past.
The main operations building and the big dish.
Looking down at another telescope array.
One of the two solar trackers at the facility.
Back out with my motorcycle getting ready to go.
This is a really cool facility and well worth the visit.