Listen to the Early December Podcast

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~iclarke/hatter/podcasts/astrominute120112.mp3

Listen to the Late November Podcast

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~iclarke/hatter/podcasts/astrominute111512.mp3

Observing Report 11/8

The 7 PM session at the Meade telescope,
Jupiter rising in the background.

Thursday lab was fortunate to have very clear (but cold!) skies for their second observing session. Both 7 and 8 PM groups had a sky tour, looked at Jupiter and moons through a Meade 8" telescope, and then focused on taking an image with the SBIG 402 CCD camera. The 7 PM group also got a look at what Dr. Marschall was doing with the research telescope. Here a some of the results of our labors. The targets were globular cluster M15 and planetary nebula M27.

M15, unfiltered, 24-sec exposure.

M15, combo of 3 16-sec exposures through RGB filters.

M27, combo of 3 18-sec exposures through RGB filters.

Astronomy Software and the Real Sky

Below is a photograph of the sky from the observing platform outside the Gettysburg College Observatory at 8:45 PM on Nov. 8. It shows the observatory building and, from left to right, Capella, Jupiter, and Aldebaran. The Pleiades are above, and Orion is rising, although it is difficult to see it in the glare. Below that are screenshots of the same scene from Starry Night 6 (College) and Stellarium 11.1 (which is free!). The observatory site panorama is one we made ourselves. Both applications have the capacity to simulate light pollution, though that feature is not enabled in these shots.

Photo by Ian Clarke, Panasonic Lumix FZ100, 30 sec exposure processed with UFRaw.

Starry Night College, 6.4.6.

Stellarium 11.1

Observing Report: Nov 5, 2012

Monday lab had a clear but cold second session at the observatory.  (In the video above, you can see darkness fall at the observatory before the lab session at 24x natural speed.) The focus of the session was imaging, though we also had a visual sky tour and a telescopic view of Juipter, which was visible above the eastern horizon by 7:30.

Big Dipper in the NNW, 6:20 PM

Bright objects L-R Capella, Jupiter, Aldebaran. 8:30 PM

We used an SBIG 402 CCD camera to image one deep space object in each session. In the 7:00 session, we took pictures of M57 (the Ring Nebula) and at 8:00 the target was M27 (the Dumbell Nebula). In both sessions we took both unfiltered images and a set of images through RGB filters to later combine into a color image. Here are the results:

M27, unfiltered, 24 sec exposure. Not focused as well as we thought. Color results were  not satisfactory.

M57, unfiltered, 12 sec exposure.

Combinations of three 12 sec exposures through red, blue, and green filters. Best of the night!

Solar Eclipse

Here is an article about the Nov. 13 eclipse visible from part of Austrailia and the Pacific. Includes links to webcasts.

http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/01/14864299-countdown-to-a-total-solar-eclipse

November Sky this Month Shows Coming Up

Come see our first public show with the new LED cove light system! Topics will include bright planets in the morning and evening skies, more meteors, standard time, and the winter stars.

Sunday, 11/4, 4:00 PM Tuesday, 11/6, 12 Noon Tuesday, 11/6, 7:00 PM The Hatter Planetarium is located in Masters 115. All shows are free and all are welcome! Remainder of the Fall 2012 schedule is on our web site.

Waxing Crescent Moon, 10/17

Here is a photo I took of the waxing crescent moon, taken on Oct. 17, 6:53 PM EDT south of Fairfield, PA.  The moon was new on Oct. 15 at 12:02 PM EDT, so this crescent is just short of 59 hours old. Thin as the crescent in this photo may seem, the record for seeing a crescent moon is about 15 hours from new. For comparison, this Astronomy Picture of the Day shows a 34-hour-old moon.

Image by Ian Clarke

AST 101 Observing 10/4

Setting up.

Here are a three photos from the Astro 101 observing session on Thursday, Oct. 4.

Sorry about the focus, but I wanted to include it. Of the two bright reddish objectrs, Mars is on the right and the  star Antares on the left. 7:30 PM EDT.

Cassiopeia and Perseous over the GCO dome. 8:30 PM, 60 sec. exposure.

Mid to Late October Podcast is Up

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~iclarke/hatter/podcasts/astrominute101512.mp3

Big Week at the Hatter Planetarium

Hatter director Ian Clarke, with Brad Rush
 and Scott Huggins of Spitz, Inc.

The week of October 8 was a big one at the Gettysburg College planetarium. On Tuesday afternoon, staff from Spitz (makers of our 1966 dome and star projector) arrived and set up one of their SciDome series of digital projectors. On Wednesday, College administrators and faculty enjoyed an informative day of demonstrations and Q & A on the technology.

On Thursday and Friday, a technician from Spitz replaced our obsolete lumiline cove lighting (check out its "toothy" appearance in the SciDome photo). The new cove lighting is made up of about a thousand red-blue-green LEDs. We can't wait for our next public show (Sunday, Nov. 4, 4:00 PM), but in the meantime, here are some photos.

Date set for New Cove Light Installation

It turns out that the scene in 1,000 to 1: The Cory Weissman Story will be the last hurrah for our yellow and blue lumiline cove lights (pictured right). The system is original to the 1966 construction of the Hatter Planetarium, and the bulbs have not been made for some time. Spitz, Inc., will be installing a modern set of red-blue-green LED cove lights on October 11 and 12. Look for them at our next show!

1000 to 1 Filming

Boom and camera frighteningly
close to our 1966 Spitz A3p.
 No worries; these guys were pros!

I just spent a few hours in the planetarium running some lights and effects for a scene in 1,000 to 1: The Cory Weissman Story, with help from student workers Caitlin and Annie (who were also in the scene as extras). Director Mike Levine seemed like perfect fit for the job and a pleasure to work for. Star David Henrie was there too, though obscured from my view by both planetarium and filmmaking equipment. It was great to talk to the crew and grips who knew what I meant when I talked about our "Lumiline" lighting, speaking of which . . . [see our next post]

Venus Regulus Conjunction

We've talked about the upcoming conjunction of brilliant planet Venus and bright star Regulus in the show, the Times column, and the podcast. The closest approach of the two will be in the early morning hours of Oct 3 (i.e., tonight), but the weather forecast is looking poor at this point. Here is what you'll see if we are lucky, or what we would have seen if it stays cloudy.

The inset represents the view through the eyepiece of a small telescope.

Venus will be about 150x brighter than Regulus, but Regulus is over four million times farther away! The two will stay together in the morning sky the rest of the month, with Venus sinking toward the rising sun and Regulus pulling away. The waning crescent moon will join the scene on mornings around Oct 12.

Images created with Stellarium

New astrominute, Oct 1-15

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~iclarke/hatter/podcasts/astrominute100112.mp3

Observing Session, Sept 24

 Here are a couple photos from a recent Astronomy 101 observing session. The first shows the waxing gibbous moon above campus before students arrived, and the second shows student activity on the observing deck during a thirty second exposure.

Bi-Monthly Astrominute now on WZBT and Blog

We have started a twice-monthly radio segment called the Astrominute. Written by planetarium director Ian Clarke and recorded by student workers Caitlin Hay and Anne Skrabak, it is now airing on the Gettysburg College radio station, 91.1 FM, WZBT . The current times (subject to change!) will be roughly MWF: 7:30 AM; TR: 8:30 AM; Sat: 9:30 AM & 6:30 PM; Sun: 9:30 & 7:30.  It will always play following a station ID. The evening times may be preempted by live DJ broadcasts. New segments will appear around the 1st and 15th of the month. In addition to listening on air, you can stream WZBT online. We will also be posting mp3s of the segments as we create them. Astrominute posts will be tagged "astrominute" and "podcast" for handy searching.
 
Here are the first two segments: 

Sept. 1-14
http://public.gettysburg.edu/~iclarke/hatter/podcasts/astrominute090112.mp3

Sept. 15-30 

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~iclarke/hatter/podcasts/astrominute091512.mp3

Sky this Month Shows Coming Up

Sunday 9/2 at 4:00 PM and Tuesday 9/4 at Noon. Beautiful moon-planet meetings, the autumnal equinox, Mars Curiosity and more at the Hatter Planetarium!

Mars, Saturn, Spica, and the Moon Tonight

Gettysburg, 8-21 at 8:30 PM. Image created with Stellarium.

If it's clear tonight and you can get to a place with an open western horizon, look for this gathering after sunset.

Fall 2012 Schedule

The Fall 2012 schedule of public shows is out! You can see it on the calendar on the web site or download a PDF here. The first show (Sky this Month for September) is Sunday, Sept. 2, at 4:00 PM.

There are two changes from recent years you may want to be aware of.  Due to staff teaching schedules, our Monday noon show is moving to the first Tuesday of the month at noon. We are also introducing a weeknight show! It will be the first Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM. However, since the Astronomy 101 labs use the planetarium at the beginning of September, the first of these will be in October.

We hope to see you at the planetarium this fall!

Venus Transit Report

7:17 PM, transit underway, sun going behind the trees.

The transit of Venus early Tuesday evening was the eighth such event since the invention of the telescope. The first in 1631 was predicted, but so far as we know, not successfully viewed by anyone. In 1639 two people saw the black ball of the planet Venus glide slowly across the face of the brilliant sun. About a hundred saw the transits of 1761 and 1769, by which time efforts were being made to time the event and thus determine the scale of the solar system. In 1874 and 1882, when thousands viewed, the United States spent over $300,000 dollars (not adjusting for inflation) on expeditions to time the transit. Though the scale of the solar system has long been fixed by other means, millions saw the transits of 2004 and 2012 live, at least if you count second-hand viewing by means of media. (Sources: Guy Ottewell's Astronomical Calendar for the  numbers of viewers and a lecture by Laurence Marschall for the expenditure.)

Not looking good.

Here at Gettysburg College, about 150 fortunate souls got to see a transit of Venus first hand. For those who organized the event (Jackie Milingo, Dick Cooper, Mike Hayden, and me), disappointing memories of 2004 were fresh. The transit of that year was a morning happening, already in progress at sunrise. A thick fog hung over Gettysburg, and before it burned off, the transit had ended. No one there saw a thing. The transit this Tuesday occurred at the opposite end of the day, beginning just after 6:00 PM and still not halfway over at the time of local sunset. To narrow our chances a bit further, there is a wooded hill to the west of the observatory, and we knew the sun would dip behind those trees well before the official time of sunset. Clouds dogged us through the day. As the staff arrived to set up, the skies turned mostly sunny, only to be followed by a band of thick clouds that closed in around 5:30, just as dozens were arriving at the observatory. Their time on this pale blue dot would be up before the transits of 2117 and 2125, but the only remedy was to put a NASA webcast on a laptop and hope that it would not turn out to be their only view of the event.

Watching the webcast.

As the transit began, the webcast (difficult to see outdoors and frequently buffering) was all we saw. We noticed nothing on the image at first contact, but after several minutes, we could see a tiny dent in the edge of the sun. By 6:30 the whole of the planet Venus was enclosed by the backdrop of the sun, but still only on the webcast. All those outside the observatory were watching a blue patch of sky in the northwest moving excruciatingly slowly toward the sun, and hoping it would get there before the sun went behind the trees. There was no denying that the crowd was getting a bit tense.

"We've got Venus!"

Lines at the scopes.

The wait did pay off. The clouds pulled away from the sun, partially at first. We tweeted "#VenusTransit success @gettysburg!" from @GCPlanetarium at 6:37 when the faculty members supervising the solar-filter equipped scopes got their first glimpses of the sun with the transit in progress. Lines formed behind every active viewing station, but it soon became clear that that sun would remain in the big patch of blue sky until it set, and there would be no hurry. At the peak of activity, people went from view to view, looking in eyepieces or at projections, holding small children up to do the same, and snapping pictures with cameras and cell phones. I took the last picture from the observing platform at 7:17 through the eyepiece of a telescope (see top of post). It shows the sun, partly covered by unfocused leaves, but the spot that is Venus is still visible above them. Then the crowd almost all drifted away and a we started to pack up. A handful of new people walked up, local listeners of WZBT, the college radio station that had promoted the event. I was about to commiserate with their bad timing when I took a moment to look around and realize the obvious: the athletic practice fields just to our east were still bathed in sunlight. I picked up one of the cased-up Sunspotters and we walked into the sunlit field for their only view, and my last one, of planet Venus against the sun.

Astroscan (red) and projection box.

Cooper with successful video setup.

If you are wondering about the technical side of things. here is what we had set up - all comericially available equipment, some of it quite old. Three 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes (one Celestron and two Meades) with standard solar filters; one Celestron 5 with video eyepiece and monitor; one Edmund Astroscan projecting into a cardboard box (the box shields the faint image); and two Sunspotters, purpose-made solar projection telescopes. As we put it all away, Mike Hayden joked that we should carefully label everything for use in 2117.

7:32 PM, a final look.

Transit Day Update

The day of the transit has arrived! If you are planning to attend the Gettysburg College Observatory event this evening, please read our original post with all the details. We look forawd to seeing you at the observatory!

A check of available weather forecasts this morning shows that conditions will not be ideal: partly cloudy with a chance of a shower or thundershower rolling through at transit time. As things stand, we are planning to go ahead with the event. It only takes a brief appearance of the sun during the transit to make it a success. But please be forewarned that we could get unlucky. If clouds hide the sun from 6:04 PM until it goes behind the trees (about 7:15), we will not see the transit.

In the case you are not able to view the transit live, here is a list of live Venus transit webcasts. We also plan to live-tweet about our local event at @GCPlanetarium.

Alumni Open House

Some photos from our Alumni College open house at the observatory on May 28.

Cooper setting up.

Looking north.

Looking east, includes the shuttle van, and someone with a red headlamp walking by.

Looking west. Mars is on the left, about 1/3 of the frame from the top.

Transit of Venus: Public Observing

[Please also read our Transit Day Update!]

The Gettysburg College Observatory will be hosting a public observing event for the historic transit of Venus, weather permitting, on June 5 from 5:45 PM until the sun sun goes below the trees, about 7:30. Your hosts will include Dr. Jackie Milingo, astronomy professor; Dick Cooper, astronomy lab instructor; Mike Hayden, college network director and amateur astronomer; and me, Ian Clarke, planetarium director and astronomy lab instructor. We plan to set up a variety of equipment to safely observe this rare event (last until 2117). Here are the key details:

WHAT: Public Observing of the Transit of Venus.
The www.transitofvenus.org website and this video will get you started in understanding planetary transits of the sun.

WHEN: June 5, 2012, 5:45 PM to sunset.
The event will be held weather permitting. If it looks like there will be a chance of viewing the sun, we will be there to at least try. In the event of overcast skies with no breaks showing in satellite photos, we will not hold it. You may check this site or @GCPlanetarium twitter for an update the afternoon of the transit.

WHERE: Concrete pad outside the Gettysburg College Observatory.
The Observatory is located near the West Fields on the edge of campus. To get to the there, walk (do not drive) down the gravel road past the West Building (home of The Attic) toward the domed building. Only observatory staff are permitted to park at the observatory itself, so please allow time to park on campus and walk. If you cannot walk the distance but would still like to attend, email Ian Clarke ahead of time to make arrangements.There are no restrooms at the observatory, though there is usually a portable around the nearby athletic fields. This map, adapted from the campus map, shows the location of the observatory:

Finally, here is what the sky should look like from the observing platform at the start of the transit, just after 6:00 PM:

created with stellarium 0.11.1

Starlight

 Arc lamp and its assembly, on its way to Spitz, Inc., for a new lamp after about seven years of service.

The Sky this Month: March

Our monthly skyshows are coming up in a few days! (Sunday, 3/4, at 4 PM and Monday, 3/5, at noon). Subjects will include the opposition of Mars, the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, the vernal equinox, a constellation tour, and astronomy news. Hope to see you at the Hatter Planetarium!

Moon and Planets over Glatfelter Hall

Jupiter (upper L), the waxing crescent moon, and Venus. Evening of Feb. 25.

I had been planning to take this photo for a few weeks, but certainly did not count on the wind!

Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon Feb 22-26

Here's a look at the local evening sky over the next few days, as the waxing crescent moon emerges from the sunset glow and passes Venus and then Jupiter. At just about 24 hours "old" tonight, the moon will be the thinnest of crescents less than 10 degrees above the horizon. Good conditions are a must for seeing the moon this soon after new. The crescent will grow and become easy to see over the next few days as the moon orbits the earth and proceeds through its usual phase cycle. It will be near Venus on the 25th and near Jupiter on the 26th. The moon's track is shown in the images below (moon size exaggerated for clarity). The images were created with Stellarium and combined with the GIMP.


Venus and Jupiter themselves will be only three degrees apart in early March. Hear more about that at our Sky this Month Show for March, 3/1 at 4:00 PM and 3/2 at 12 Noon.

Feb 22-24, 6:00 PM.

Feb 24-26, 7:00 PM.

Observing Report: Thurs, Feb 9

Jupiter and Venus (below) above the GC Observatory dome.

 Thursday lab had a good session at the observatory, if a bit cold (28 F at the end of the second session). Both the 7 and 8 PM groups had a sky tour, including celestial sphere concepts, Jupiter and Venus in the west, and bright stars and major constellations of the season (Ursa Major, Orion and the Winter Oval, Pegasus and more). We used Meade telescopes to observe Venus, Uranus (less than one degree away!), the Orion Nebula, star clusters M37 and M35, and the Andromeda Galaxy. Before the 8 PM session was over, Mars and the waning gibbous moon were rising in the east. Both session finished with a tour of the observatory (CCD carts, research telescope, control room). We're looking forward to going out again later in the semester and hopefully using the CCD cameras to take some telescopic images. All images here by Ian Clarke with a Panasonic FZ-100.

From lower L to upper R: Orion, the Hyades, and the Pleiades.

Uranus (L) and Venus.

Mars and the moon.