3rd day

Secrets of New Mexico

Yesterday after driving some 800kms we arrived in Roswell New Mexico. Before visiting the only tourist attraction of the village, we started our day in a classic diner with pancakes and some scrambled eggs.

Pancakes for breakfast

The village is proud about its UFO museum, which is exhibiting artifacts of the incident happened here in June / July 1947, when an airborne object crashed on a farm. Some people say that it was a surveillance balloon of the U.S. government only. Some say that even autopsies of aliens were carried out at the Roswell base afterwards. See some of the pics here and decide yourself...

They are among us

Autopsie Live

Some 1,5 hours drive to the east from Roswell we visited The White Sands national Monument. It comprises a 710-km² (275-mi²) field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals. It is the largest gypsum dune field in the world.

  The area is neighboring the White Sands Missile Range, which served as a test area for the first atomic blast "Trinity" in 1945. The test range is still in operation for smaller bombs and missiles, therefore they sometimes have to close the park and the surrounding area.

Deep in the sand

 An other1.5 hours drive to the north we visited at the end of the day the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), which is a radio astronomy observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin, some 50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro, New Mexico. Astronomers using the VLA for key observations of black holes. If you would compare the magnitude to an optical telescope, you would be able to read a newspaper in NewYork from here.

The observatory consists of 27 independent antennas, each of which has a dish diameter of 25 meters (82 feet) and weighs 209 tons .You might recall the set from a movie Contact by Jodie Foster or from the Terminator Salvation. Click here: Terminator 

Jodie Foster acting in Contact

At the time we were there, everything was still and quiet. We have a very active day behind totaling some 500kms. Tomorrow we will have a connecting day in Albuquerque and spend it with shopping:)

For more pics click here