Category: observing

Photo by Ian Clarke

Monday lab had a good session last night, though a little cold. After a visual tour of the sky (dominated by the almost-full moon), we used a Meade telescope to observe Venus, Jupiter, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy and the moon. A look at the dome room and control room of the observatory building wrapped up the evening. The image on the right, taken at 6:38 PM, shows Jupiter (above), Venus (below), and the observing deck illuminated by moonlight. Look for Venus and Jupiter to draw closer together over the next few weeks, eventually passing about three degrees from each other on March 12.

 We got the CCD cameras out at our second session. Here are photos of M13 (globular cluster) and M27 (planetary nebula):

And finally, another shot of the Int’l Space Station. It’s the short trail; longer trail is an airplane.

Here are some photos taken on and around the observing deck at our session Monday night. The first two show the International Space Station, which passed over just before our first session. First shot is of the ISS appearing and moving up in the southwest, the next is shows it at max altitude and brightness (mag -3.3). Both are 15 sec exposures. The last shows Jupiter rising over the GC Observatory. It’s a 30 sec exposure on an ordinary tripod with no tracking, so if you zoom in you can see that Jupiter and the stars moved during 30 seconds of the earth’s rotation! Note the Pleiades just to the right of the observatory dome.