Pune, India

Pune, India, July 28, 2008 (radio telescope) Today we went out to the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics. We started out at the central office in downtown Pune for a one hour question and answer with a professor. We then drove 2 hours out to the radio telescopes to visit them. It was way out in the country. It was a great opportunity to see the beauty of rural India. We saw all kinds of scenes from large goats walking down the road headed to market dodging traffic, oxen with painted horns pulling carts, trucks on the road passing so that we have numerous almost head on collisions, to woman in beautiful sari’s working the fields. The monsoons have set in so it is warm, cloudy and rainy. Trucks are loaded with tomatoes headed to market. As we near a town with a produce buyer, the trucks are lined up in long lines trying to get their produce to market in unrefrigerated trucks. A big complaint of the rural farmer is the roads are so poor and the network to get the produce to market is so hard that much spoils. There is evidence of that everywhere as tossed produce can be seen on the sides of the road. The telescope was interesting as they are similar to the VERY Large Array in the US. People in rural India don’t see American often so people want to take pictures with us. That happens often in rural areas, especially for the woman.