A Modern Fortress!

A place with a view

As part of our trip to the Pyrénées our host very kindly took us to see the Pic du Midi observatory.  Since he worked there we were in the privileged position of having a much better tour of the place than members of the general public.

We drove up into the mountains and parked in a small town of Bagnères de Bigorre where we were greeted by several Llamas wandering around the car park.  Being a ski resort there were many ski lifts and cable cars around. We went to a cable car building and caught the first of two cable cars to the top.

Getting close to the Pic du Midi was quite a sight, buildings nestled right on the peak of the tallest mountain in the area.  The very first building there, now part of the cafe, took eight years to build! Everything was bought up manually and they only had three months of the year to work as it was too cold at other times. The view from the top was pretty spectacular too.

The Coronagraph

At the top we had a good look around the outside of the site and then went into the deep recesses of the buildings to see all the equipment that was hidden from view. The first thing we went to see was the Chronagraph, a special telescope for studying the Sun’s corona.  A Coronagraph simulates an eclipse of the Sun with a disk over the centre of the Sun of just the right size to allow the corona to be seen.

Coronagraph Controls

We were allowed to sit at the control console and using the mouse we were able to point the Coronagraph precisely at the Sun and to take some photos of the corona. It was a little tricky to keep the Coronagraph pointed properly as the Sun was moving all the time (relative to us!) so we had to keep adjusting our aim. Once we had it precisely centred, we switched from pointing mode to observation mode and took several pictures using different instruments mounted on the gimbles.

Look! It's the Sun!

Here we are looking at the picture we had taken.

Next we went to see the large telescope, a 2m telescope known as the Bernard Lyot Telescope, named after the inventor of the Coronagraph. It was housed in a large dome at one side of the site. We had to descend a few levels to get into the building and then took the lift up to the telescope level and found ourselves in a large, dark dome which was freezing cold. The temperature has to be maintained at a few degrees below the air outside. This is to stop perturbations of the air rising when the telescope is in use and distorting the picture. There was not a lot to see inside the dome, partly because it was so dark and partly because it was controlled from elsewhere; no one actually looks through it, it has cameras for doing that.

The telescope dome was followed by a look at the control room and then back to the visitors’ area and a visit to the museum there. We had a thoroughly enjoyable visit and and have put more of our photos of the trip in our Pic du Midi gallery.

Here are some useful links:

• Live webcams from Pic du Midi (a bit dark at night in Europe!)
• Recent images of the Sun
• Recent movies of the Sun
• Observations Query Summary
• Solar Survey Archive

Kevin

Categories: Travel
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