Venus setting, in the handle
of Sagittarius' "teapot."
Here is a combined report for observing session 2 for the Monday and Thursday AST101 labs. We were delayed by bad weather but eventually got out on November 14 and 18. On both evenings, we concentrating on digital imaging. First we tried some afocal photography, which amounts to holding a camera up to the eyepiece of a telescope and snapping a photo. It can work well, even with a cell phone, for bright objects like the moon or a planet.
L to R moon pics by Sarah Scott, Rorie Lentz, Megan Haugh, and Ali Cooke.
Sarah's photo was the College photo of the day on 11/26!
We also took some time lapse image sequences of the sky using a Canon point-and-shoot camera running the Canon Hack Development Kit. Here is one of the better results, a video compiled from images of the northern sky taken each minute for about two hours.
Finally, we took images through a Meade 8" telescope using and SBIG 402 CCD camera. The best results are below:
Sunday, Dec. 1 at 4:00 PM
Tuesday, Dec. 3 at Noon
Tuesday, Dec. 3 at 7 PM
We’ll check in on Comet ISON. Will we be able to see it from Gettysburg?? We should have an idea by showtime! We will explore the other highlights of December skies, including those you don't need to get up in the wee hours to see. And we will observe and explain the December solstice. Last show of Fall 2013. (We hope to have the Spring schedule available for distribution at the show.)
Comet ISON makes its long-awaited swing around the sun on Thanksgiving Day. In the first days of December it will emerge into the predawn skies as -- as what? A glory easily visible to the unaided eye? A fuzzy spot barely visible in binoculars? We still don't know. Local viewers, here is what to do:
Come to the Hatter Planetarium's "Sky this Month" shows on Sunday 12/1 at 4 PM or Tuesday 12/3 at Noon and 7 PM.
Check it out for yourself.
You can accomplish that last one by grabbing some binoculars and getting out about an hour before sunrise (i.e., about 6:15). Find a place with a flat horizon to the south-southeast. Scan the horizon using the image below as a guide. It will get fainter as the days go by, so get out at the first opportunity for the best view. Send local reports or images to iclarke (at) gettysburg.edu or tweet them to @GCPlanetarium.
A few astronomy students and I gathered at the Gettysburg College Observatory Tuesday evening in hopes of seeing a rocket launch some 200 miles away at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility. After a 45 minute delay, the Minotaur I rocket launched at 8:15, carrying a payload of satellites. We were able to see it about a minute after launch and then for the next two minutes as it arced out over the Atlantic. The launch was seen by locals outside Gettysburg and in Carroll Valley as well, among others I am sure.
