The excursion will happen on Wednesday, November 27th, 2024, which is the third day of the conference. The excursion will allow the participants to visit many of NARIT's facilities and infrastructures, along with a visiting the Southeast Asia's largest astronomical telescope both in optical and radio frequencies.
Participants to the conference will have an option to choose among one of the following excursions:
TNO Excursions:
Participants in this group spend their morning explore NARIT's facilities at Astropark. Then, after a quick lunch break they embark on a 2 hours drive to Thailand's highest peak, Doi Inthanon National Park. Doi Inthanon National Park is home to diverse fauna and flora, and giant waterfalls that call this cloud forest home. Participants will make a refreshing stop at Wachirathan Waterfall where the water condensed onto the cloud forest above coalesce through this exposed rock.
Wachirathan waterfal & Twin Pagodas (Not part of the tour), Doi Inthanon National Park
Also located on this peak is the largest optical eye in the sky, the Thai National Observatory.
Thai National Telescope (TNT) 2.4 meters
Peaking through the cloud forest at night as the cloud rolls downhill are the two largest optical telescopes in Southeast Asia: the 2.4m and 1.0m telescopes atop the TNO. Participants will get an exclusive tour to this facilities before making their trip down and back to Chiang Mai by the end of day.
***Note that Doi Inthanon is a national park area which comes at an additional entrance fee of 300 THB. If you register for this excursion a cash fee of 300 THB will need to be collected at the conference venue before the excursion.***
TNRO Excursions:
Thai National Radio Telescope (TNRT), 40 meters in diameter
Participants in this excursion will spend the morning touring NARIT’s largest research infrastructure: the Thai National Radio Observatory (TNRO). The TNRO is located about an hour from Astropark in Huai Hong Khrai Royal Development Study Center. Surrounded by mountains which acted as natural barriers to human interference, this site is where the largest telescope in Southeast Asia is located. Standing at 40 meters across amidst, the TNRO is the newest addition to NARIT’s research infrastructure, only having been fully operational earlier this year. Participants in this excursion are greeted with an in-depth look at the facilities and behind the scenes of what is required to operate this monstrous piece of equipment.
After TNRO tour is concluded, participants in this group are brought back to Astropark. After a quick lunchbreak, the portion of the tour to NARIT’s facilities begin. Some of this includes the control center over the Thai Robotic Telescope network, spacecraft monitoring station, engineering and fabrication laboratories, clean room for development of new optics, radio receivers, spacecraft assembly, a mirror coating machine for upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array project, High-Performance Computing, and many more.
If you would like to ensure you get to attend the excursion of your choice, we highly encourage you to register to your excursion of choice now at this google form: https://forms.gle/nYEvuRDc3AyW65nu9
