IYA 2009: Galileoscope

As I mentioned in the my last post, my thesis adviser has been in charge of the Galileoscope project. They just got the site up and running and are now taking orders! Please visit www.galileoscope.org to read more about IYA and Galileo and to order a telescope for yourself, for underprivledged children, as a teaching tool, or in bulk to distribute at an astronomy event, star party, etc.

International Year of Astronomy (IYA) 2009

This is an exciting year for the astronomy community. It is the 400th anniversary of the year when Galileo first pointed a telescope to the sky. The IYA team has planned a whole slew of events year round, for young and old alike. The goal is to teach people more about astronomy and to raise awareness about the night sky and the world we live in. My thesis adviser is the person in charge of designing, manufacturing, setting up the business plan for, and finding funding for the Galileoscope project which aims to provide low cost, decent telescopes that can be built and used by anyone. I have smaller ambitions, but I hope I can make some small impact at least.

For my part in this world wide IYA festival, I will be giving my usual planetarium shows to boyscouts, children, and college students in our astronomy and discovery courses. I am also planning to do a few star shows when it gets warmer. Perhaps I will throw a small graduation party for myself and drag all my telescopes out for a special star show. I also want to finish that draft of my get-rid-of-your-light-pollution-producing-lights proposal aimed at my college and a draft aimed at any town I may be moving to for grad school.

If you are an astronomer, amateur or professional, what are your plans for IYA 2009?

If you are not familiar with astronomy, but would like to learn more: look for a local astronomy club, star party, planetarium, or class. Pull out those old binoculars and look up! Every clear night, make it a point to look up for a few minutes. Let your eyes adjust and look at the stars and the patterns they make. Maybe take note of where the moon is and what phase it’s in.

Check out my links to the right. There you will find the U.S. site for IYA 2009.

My Telescopes

In 5th grade, I got excited about astronomy and decided that I wanted a telescope. I didn’t want just any telescope, no chinsy big box store refractor for me! I wanted the biggest and best telescope purchasable. I remember flipping through the ads in Astronomy Magazine and sending away for an Orion Telescopes catalog. I pined over the large Cassagrains and remote controlled Meades every day, thinking about all of the vivid galaxies and planets and comets I would see. Fortunately, one of my mom’s friends is an amateur astronomer and was able to guide me in my selection of a more cost effective and user friendly telescope. So, for my 6th grade Christmas present, I received my first telescope: an Orion Shorttube 4.5″ Newtonian Reflector.

After some initial frustration at not being able to see any galaxies or little green men on mars, I resigned my beloved Shorttube to its bag under my bed, occasionally taking it out to look at the moon. For years she sat there unloved, a guilty reminder.

In college, I finally learned how to locate objects in the night sky. Armed with this new knowledge, a planesphere, a red flashlight, and some old Bushnell binoculars, I became very familiar with the sky. I only wish there had been someone to teach me these things before I lost interest in my telescope so many years ago!

To anyone new to astronomy and observing who is looking to buy a telescope: buy some binoculars first, get a planesphere, and learn your constellations, bright nebulae, star clusters, etc. Then when you are familiar enough with the sky, visit this site for more information about what telescope is right for you (based on things like budget, where you live, and what you want to look at): My First Scope. Also, make sure you check out your local astronomy club (they are everywhere!). The members are usually excited to help, to talk about astronomy, and can teach you how to properly use your telescope.

A few years ago, I took a telescope making class. In four weeks I ground and polished my own 6″ mirror, and I built a simple alt-az mount and tube for it. Below is a picture of the finished product (also a Newtonian Reflector).

Yes, I painted stars and vines and leaves and crap all over it… I am little miss nature girl after all. This has been a VERY wonderful telescope however. I always enjoy looking at planets with this one… Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in particular. Because of the simple alt-az mount, it is also a nice scope to take out when I am showing things to friends and family. They can just easily and carefully use their own hands to move the scope to keep a planet in view.

Thanks to a very generous friend, I just welcomed a new telescope into my collection. It is a very nice 6″ Meade Newtonian Reflector on an equatorial mount which I saved from a life of collecting dust and grease in a garage. I have not yet had a chance to play with this one yet, but I would like to get my equatorial tracking motor working again and invest in a cheap ccd setup, so I can take some exposures. I might remount my hand polished mirror in this scope, since my mirror has better precision and a better coating. When I can afford it, I want to invest in a nice ccd camera and some r, g, b, moon, and solar filters.

Ohh! I forgot to mention that I just got a new high power green laser for Christmas! It has been a fun toy and a wonderful teaching tool.

Soon, I hope to get accepted to grad school, preferably out west where there is little light pollution/tresspass to ruin the night sky. In the meantime, I have to contend with the light cone of Chicago and the clouds of Wisconsin. At least they let me give star shows in the planetarium from time to time! Anyway, that’s my introduction to my telescopes. I hope that you too can appreciate all that the night sky has to offer!

Observational Astrophysics Trip 2009

This January, I again had the opportunity to travel to Tucson, Arizona to do some astrophysics research. We had 3 nights on the 61″ Kuiper telescope (Steward Observatory and University of Arizona). Our primary objective was to look at a few planetary nebulae, yet haze prevented us from doing so one evening. So, I was given the opportunity to pick a few objects to image with the telescope.

For more information, visit our blog: Carthage Observational Astrophysics. There you will find my contributions to the blog as well as astrophotography processed by those of us on the trip.

The image below is one which I took of the reflection nebula around the star Merope in the Pleiades (Subaru, Seven Sisters) star cluster.

NGC 1435 Merope Nebula