The lovely Nevada Space Grant we were awarded is coming to a close. I haven't had much to update about these past couple weeks because we've been doing the boring tasks of writing, writing, writing. We've been compiling all of our information into a book of knowledge. We're printing out everything that is polished and ready to go. We're touching up, revamping, and formatting documents that need extra work. We're about to print out the step-by-step procedures for the hand-controlled scopes and John and I will paste them to some stock paper and laminate them. They will then hang from their respective telescopes. We only have a few more hours left on the clock so we've been trying to cram as much work as possible into every passing moment.
Perhaps when everything is completely ready to be 'published,' so to speak, I'll upload some of our documentation onto this blog site. We'll see how it goes! I'll keep you posted on the final moments of TeleDocs. :)
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
UC Berkeley and Cal Day (with pics!)
Last weekend, the group was able to take a field trip to the University of California at Berkeley. We had many aims in mind:
1. Hear a lecture by Dr. Chung-Pei Ma on dark matter in the universe for the IYA program.
2. Check out the Cal Day activities on the Berkeley campus.
3. Explore the Space Science Laboratory.
4. And if we had time we wanted to see the Lawrence Hall of Science.
We started the day off early and arrived on campus around 9am. It was Cal Day at Berkeley which meant that everything on campus was open to the public and a multitude of lectures, demonstrations, hands on experiments, and activities were there to be explored. Our group split into two factions, those who wanted to investigate the engineering activities and those who decided to explore the astronomy and physics buildings.
(Berkeley's Centerpiece: The Clock Tower)
Dan and I spent the entire morning in the physics and astronomy buildings. We were able to talk with some graduate students about the structure of the universe, black holes, interferometry, the Allen array, and lots of other fun space stuff. They had a live feed to the Allen array and were able to show us an image of the Andromeda galaxy in neutral hydrogen (21 cm line or 1420 kHz). They also showed us a simulation of some large scale galactic structure throughout the universe which was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen! Afterwards, Dan and I wandered up to the top floor of the astronomy building to listen in on a tour of the radio astronomy lab. We went out onto the roof of the building and met their radio telescopes and radio horn. The view was fabulous! Dan also had a chance to speak with one of the Assistant Astronomy Professors, a Mr. Geoffrey Bower. He teaches the radio astronomy lab at Berkeley and said he'd be happy to field some questions concerning our SRT. Hopefully, he'll have some ideas on how we can finally get OUR radio telescope working! Yay for networking!
(Top: the radio horn. ) (Bottom: Berkeley's telescopes!!)
(One of the radio scopes..... and the other one.)
At noon we all met up again for the IYA lecture: The Dark Side of the Universe. Chung-Pei discussed the evidence we have in support of the theory of dark matter as well as some ideas on what may comprise this mysterious form of matter. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the theories surrounding dark matter, a quick recap:
Dark matter is a type of matter that cannot be detected by normal means because it does not interact with electromagnetic waves. Scientists postulate its existance to explain why stars in spiral galaxies don't follow Newton's equation for gravity. According to this well-tested theory, the further away a star is from the core of the galaxy in which it resides, the slower the star's rotational velocity should be. But this is not what astronomers have observed. Instead the stars on the outer fringes of galaxies seem to be going the same speed as the stars near the core. These speeds are accounted for if there is alot more mass in the galaxy than we can see. And this "invisible" mass has been nicknamed dark matter. There are other pieces of evidence that suggest there is far more mass in the universe than we can see. To learn more, visit NASA's site dedicated to dark matter:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dark_matter.html.
Afte the lecture we all wandered around the campus more and I was able to see some neat things in the engineering building. A pair of graduate students had built a psuedo-helicopter with four motors that was entirely autonomous and could fly itself with a GPS tracker. We also saw the trebuchet that some students had built and watched as it was tested against a catapult to see which could toss a water balloon the farthest.
(The quadra helicopter.) (The trebuchet.)
We decided it was time to head up to the Space Science Laboratory so we hopped on the inter-campus bus and made our way up there, passing the Botanical Gardens on the way (which we didn't have enough time to visit, unfortunately). At the SSL we jumped in on a tour in progress where the guide was explaining how the THEMIS operation worked and how the 5 satellites communicate with the ground to better understand the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Dan and I wandered out behind the building to take a look at the gigantic transmitter itself. It was HUGE!
(One of the THEMIS transmitters.)
By the time we got back down to the main campus, most of the demonstrations and activities had closed so we decided to call it a day and headed back home. It was a wonderful and enlightening experience. After that visit I am absolutely in LOVE with that campus and I'm going to try my hardest to get accepted to UC Berkeley for my graduate program!
1. Hear a lecture by Dr. Chung-Pei Ma on dark matter in the universe for the IYA program.
2. Check out the Cal Day activities on the Berkeley campus.
3. Explore the Space Science Laboratory.
4. And if we had time we wanted to see the Lawrence Hall of Science.
We started the day off early and arrived on campus around 9am. It was Cal Day at Berkeley which meant that everything on campus was open to the public and a multitude of lectures, demonstrations, hands on experiments, and activities were there to be explored. Our group split into two factions, those who wanted to investigate the engineering activities and those who decided to explore the astronomy and physics buildings.
(Berkeley's Centerpiece: The Clock Tower)
Dan and I spent the entire morning in the physics and astronomy buildings. We were able to talk with some graduate students about the structure of the universe, black holes, interferometry, the Allen array, and lots of other fun space stuff. They had a live feed to the Allen array and were able to show us an image of the Andromeda galaxy in neutral hydrogen (21 cm line or 1420 kHz). They also showed us a simulation of some large scale galactic structure throughout the universe which was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen! Afterwards, Dan and I wandered up to the top floor of the astronomy building to listen in on a tour of the radio astronomy lab. We went out onto the roof of the building and met their radio telescopes and radio horn. The view was fabulous! Dan also had a chance to speak with one of the Assistant Astronomy Professors, a Mr. Geoffrey Bower. He teaches the radio astronomy lab at Berkeley and said he'd be happy to field some questions concerning our SRT. Hopefully, he'll have some ideas on how we can finally get OUR radio telescope working! Yay for networking!
(Top: the radio horn. ) (Bottom: Berkeley's telescopes!!)
(One of the radio scopes..... and the other one.)
At noon we all met up again for the IYA lecture: The Dark Side of the Universe. Chung-Pei discussed the evidence we have in support of the theory of dark matter as well as some ideas on what may comprise this mysterious form of matter. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the theories surrounding dark matter, a quick recap:
Dark matter is a type of matter that cannot be detected by normal means because it does not interact with electromagnetic waves. Scientists postulate its existance to explain why stars in spiral galaxies don't follow Newton's equation for gravity. According to this well-tested theory, the further away a star is from the core of the galaxy in which it resides, the slower the star's rotational velocity should be. But this is not what astronomers have observed. Instead the stars on the outer fringes of galaxies seem to be going the same speed as the stars near the core. These speeds are accounted for if there is alot more mass in the galaxy than we can see. And this "invisible" mass has been nicknamed dark matter. There are other pieces of evidence that suggest there is far more mass in the universe than we can see. To learn more, visit NASA's site dedicated to dark matter:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dark_matter.html.
Afte the lecture we all wandered around the campus more and I was able to see some neat things in the engineering building. A pair of graduate students had built a psuedo-helicopter with four motors that was entirely autonomous and could fly itself with a GPS tracker. We also saw the trebuchet that some students had built and watched as it was tested against a catapult to see which could toss a water balloon the farthest.
(The quadra helicopter.) (The trebuchet.)
We decided it was time to head up to the Space Science Laboratory so we hopped on the inter-campus bus and made our way up there, passing the Botanical Gardens on the way (which we didn't have enough time to visit, unfortunately). At the SSL we jumped in on a tour in progress where the guide was explaining how the THEMIS operation worked and how the 5 satellites communicate with the ground to better understand the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Dan and I wandered out behind the building to take a look at the gigantic transmitter itself. It was HUGE!
(One of the THEMIS transmitters.)
By the time we got back down to the main campus, most of the demonstrations and activities had closed so we decided to call it a day and headed back home. It was a wonderful and enlightening experience. After that visit I am absolutely in LOVE with that campus and I'm going to try my hardest to get accepted to UC Berkeley for my graduate program!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Great News! (And pictures)
Last weekend we finally got the automatic focuser to focus the robodome scope for us! It's still a little buggy so we're not done yet but just imagine our excitement when our crazy contraption actually worked (even if only for a short while)! Here you can see John attaching the vacuum belt which will turn the focuser itself. The "RoboFocus" is attached to the Coronado sun scope with a hose clamp. Ingenious, no? Unfortunately, the belt keeps slipping off the robo-focus as well as the focuser on the scope. We need to come up with some sort of method to stabilize the belt and keep it from slipping around. With that complete, we can finally be as lazy as we want and no one will have to run up to the dome to adjust anything - EVER.I also have some other pictures for you all. Robert wanted us to start photo-documented our activities because, let's face it, my explanations, as good as they may be, are still rather lacking. Besides, who doesn't like visual aids?
Here we have some pictures of our beloved robodome. You can see John next to our Coronado sun scope. The other is just my adorable attempt at an artsy shot of the robodome and the beautiful Nevada sky. (But do you SEE all those clouds? This is what we've had to deal with for weeks now! We can't view anything in the sky with all those pretty clouds in the way!)
Here we have the prize of our observatory: The three large scale telescopes. The one in the middle is the one we work with most often. It is the 14' Celestron. You can't see it, but the 14' has a smaller 8' scope attached to it, complete with our spectragraph. The furthest scope is the 16' Takahashi. The closest scope in this photograph is 10' Takahashi.
And here is the Jack C. Davis Observatory from an angle that most people never see. This image was taken from the Robo-dome on the hill behind the observatory. You can see the supports for the dome when we open it at night to expose our lovely scopes to the sky.If you want more images, that can be accomplished. I chose to publish the few that I felt were the best. John is contemplating setting up a photos section on the WNAS website. If he does, there will certainly be many more photos to come!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Finally Fixing the Focuser for FUN!
I love alliteration!
The sun is out, the sky is clear and you know what that means. We open the Robodome and aim it at our favorite star. There are some impressive prominences today and the hint of a potential sunspot even! We wanted to have the Robodome set up and reading for viewing because today the Jack C. Davis Observatory is celebrating IYA's 100 Hours of Astronomy. We're hoping some extra guests show up this afternoon and into the evening so they can see what our beautiful sun looks like at this very moment.
We also made some headway with that auto focuser that we were hoping to install. It's admittedly a jerry-rigged contraption. We were able to hold the autofocuser onto the barrel of the scope with an adjustable hose clamp. Between the auto-focuser and the barrel we wedged a rubber vacuum belt so that neither the hose clamp nor the auto-focuser damages the barrel. With another vacuum belt we were hoping to apply the rotation of the auto-focuser to the focuser on the scope but it's still not taught enough to provide rotation. We decided to cut another belt to wrap around the auto-focuser and Robert has gone off seeking some super-adhesive to bond the ends together. Once we finish this project I'll take some pictures so that you can have some inkling as to what I'm talking about.
We weren't able to get much done last Wednesday- tragedy struck. Dan had a pretty horrible bike accident and broke his collar bone (don't worry, he's okay) and wasn't able to make it up to the obvservatory that night. Furthermore, I was coming down with some sort of bug and had to leave early. John and Alice stuck it through, however. John spent some time updating the website while Alice worked on a side project we'd started long ago. We had made a short history of astronomy that would be included in the packet of pamphlets we've been creating. Robert liked the idea and wanted us to expand on it so Alice is bulking up our short history to include more key figures and prominent developments in the history of astronomy.
The sun is out, the sky is clear and you know what that means. We open the Robodome and aim it at our favorite star. There are some impressive prominences today and the hint of a potential sunspot even! We wanted to have the Robodome set up and reading for viewing because today the Jack C. Davis Observatory is celebrating IYA's 100 Hours of Astronomy. We're hoping some extra guests show up this afternoon and into the evening so they can see what our beautiful sun looks like at this very moment.
We also made some headway with that auto focuser that we were hoping to install. It's admittedly a jerry-rigged contraption. We were able to hold the autofocuser onto the barrel of the scope with an adjustable hose clamp. Between the auto-focuser and the barrel we wedged a rubber vacuum belt so that neither the hose clamp nor the auto-focuser damages the barrel. With another vacuum belt we were hoping to apply the rotation of the auto-focuser to the focuser on the scope but it's still not taught enough to provide rotation. We decided to cut another belt to wrap around the auto-focuser and Robert has gone off seeking some super-adhesive to bond the ends together. Once we finish this project I'll take some pictures so that you can have some inkling as to what I'm talking about.
We weren't able to get much done last Wednesday- tragedy struck. Dan had a pretty horrible bike accident and broke his collar bone (don't worry, he's okay) and wasn't able to make it up to the obvservatory that night. Furthermore, I was coming down with some sort of bug and had to leave early. John and Alice stuck it through, however. John spent some time updating the website while Alice worked on a side project we'd started long ago. We had made a short history of astronomy that would be included in the packet of pamphlets we've been creating. Robert liked the idea and wanted us to expand on it so Alice is bulking up our short history to include more key figures and prominent developments in the history of astronomy.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Hot outside, cold indoors!
11' celestron, 8' celestron
Today we had a real treat! Multiple of them, actually. Firstly, the sky was gorgeous! A pristine blue and not a cloud in sight greeted me this afternoon. Of course, we immediately opened the Robodome and booted up the scope. Today we recorded footage of our beautiful sun instead of only taking quick snapshots. There is alot of solar activity going on up there! A great many prominences, some in groups, spanning large portions of the sun's circumference. When we adjusted the image to check for sunspots we found two small round portions of the sun that were drastically lighter than the surrounding surface. Robert thinks they may be coronal discharges. Sweet! (Still no sunspots, for those interested in knowing. Boo!)
The second treat this afternoon came in the form of a really neat demonstration. We had some left over liquid nitrogen from the demonstrations that Robert did last week so we decided to bring the last of it up to the observatory and play with the cloud chamber. A cloud chamber is used for detecting particles of ionized radiation. We threw some alcohol in the cloud chamber, added a samle of lead 207, and supercooled it with the remaining liquid nitrogen. While it wasn't the most amazing show of alpha tracks, it was still pretty dazzling. Yay for fantastically fun demonstrations!
Last Wednesday Robert and Alice recorded two more videos - instructions for setting up the 11' Celestron and the 8' Celestron. I think Robert plans on doing a couple more so I'll keep you posted on which ones are forever enshrined in digital format. Dan and I worked on more write ups - there is so much information to spectroscopy that we're finding it challenging to incorporate everything in a comprehensible fashion. Never fear, faithful readers - when we're finished up here every process and instrument will seem transparent to you! At least, that's the goal.. Cross your fingers. ;)
Today we had a real treat! Multiple of them, actually. Firstly, the sky was gorgeous! A pristine blue and not a cloud in sight greeted me this afternoon. Of course, we immediately opened the Robodome and booted up the scope. Today we recorded footage of our beautiful sun instead of only taking quick snapshots. There is alot of solar activity going on up there! A great many prominences, some in groups, spanning large portions of the sun's circumference. When we adjusted the image to check for sunspots we found two small round portions of the sun that were drastically lighter than the surrounding surface. Robert thinks they may be coronal discharges. Sweet! (Still no sunspots, for those interested in knowing. Boo!)
The second treat this afternoon came in the form of a really neat demonstration. We had some left over liquid nitrogen from the demonstrations that Robert did last week so we decided to bring the last of it up to the observatory and play with the cloud chamber. A cloud chamber is used for detecting particles of ionized radiation. We threw some alcohol in the cloud chamber, added a samle of lead 207, and supercooled it with the remaining liquid nitrogen. While it wasn't the most amazing show of alpha tracks, it was still pretty dazzling. Yay for fantastically fun demonstrations!
Last Wednesday Robert and Alice recorded two more videos - instructions for setting up the 11' Celestron and the 8' Celestron. I think Robert plans on doing a couple more so I'll keep you posted on which ones are forever enshrined in digital format. Dan and I worked on more write ups - there is so much information to spectroscopy that we're finding it challenging to incorporate everything in a comprehensible fashion. Never fear, faithful readers - when we're finished up here every process and instrument will seem transparent to you! At least, that's the goal.. Cross your fingers. ;)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Apparently we all love spectroscopy around here!
We've had a few setbacks the past two weeks and as such have not been able to get as much done as we would have liked. Weather and other extenuating circumstances have prevented us from meeting at our usual times. Even today, Dan is unable to be with us due to personal obligations.
We did accomplish some things in spite of all that, however. We were able to test out some peripherals for the telescopes using a laptop computer. For a test run, we took out the 11'' Celestron and attached the laptop as well as a small spectrometer. After some trial and error we eventually had to give up. It was exceedingly difficult to correctly align the light from the star onto the small surface area of the spectrometer in order to aquire any sort of data. Even worse, the spectrometer was too small to pick up light from the distant stars and is more suitable to brighter emission sources.
We had hoped to be able to use this little spectrometer in addition with the more user friendly telescopes as a futher aid to the average lay-person in order to give them a more in depth approach to what the stars are capable of telling us. Perhaps we'll still yet find some interesting aparatus that we can incorporate if not a spectrometer.
We then found a special eyepiece containing a diffraction grating which we were able to attach to the Celestron. With some adjusting and focusing we were able to see a few absorption lines. They were rather brilliant and the feeling was almost monumental. Instead of looking through the telescope's eyepiece to see the star itself, the viewer was greeted with a small rainbow. This spectra in turn was sliced vertically with dark bands and these were the star's absorption lines. To see in 'real time' some of the absorption lines of a star was fantastic and awesome.
Though that eyepiece is definitely not capable of practical data collection, it is certainly a wonderful tool to demonstrate to others the basics of spectroscopy.
In other news: I've nearly completed the physical (as opposed to merely textual) mini instruction manuals for the telescopes. Once we had the set-up instructions to Robert's liking, we printed them out and I've been steadfastly working on cutting and afixing them to a stiff backing. The goal is to then laminate these cards so as to hang them directly from their designated scopes for ease of access to any of the telescopes available here at the observatory.
We did accomplish some things in spite of all that, however. We were able to test out some peripherals for the telescopes using a laptop computer. For a test run, we took out the 11'' Celestron and attached the laptop as well as a small spectrometer. After some trial and error we eventually had to give up. It was exceedingly difficult to correctly align the light from the star onto the small surface area of the spectrometer in order to aquire any sort of data. Even worse, the spectrometer was too small to pick up light from the distant stars and is more suitable to brighter emission sources.
We had hoped to be able to use this little spectrometer in addition with the more user friendly telescopes as a futher aid to the average lay-person in order to give them a more in depth approach to what the stars are capable of telling us. Perhaps we'll still yet find some interesting aparatus that we can incorporate if not a spectrometer.
We then found a special eyepiece containing a diffraction grating which we were able to attach to the Celestron. With some adjusting and focusing we were able to see a few absorption lines. They were rather brilliant and the feeling was almost monumental. Instead of looking through the telescope's eyepiece to see the star itself, the viewer was greeted with a small rainbow. This spectra in turn was sliced vertically with dark bands and these were the star's absorption lines. To see in 'real time' some of the absorption lines of a star was fantastic and awesome.
Though that eyepiece is definitely not capable of practical data collection, it is certainly a wonderful tool to demonstrate to others the basics of spectroscopy.
In other news: I've nearly completed the physical (as opposed to merely textual) mini instruction manuals for the telescopes. Once we had the set-up instructions to Robert's liking, we printed them out and I've been steadfastly working on cutting and afixing them to a stiff backing. The goal is to then laminate these cards so as to hang them directly from their designated scopes for ease of access to any of the telescopes available here at the observatory.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Sun in Our Sights!
FINALLY!!! Praise Science!
We have clear skies today so we've taken pictures of our glorious sun - at long last! We also tried to attach a color CCD camera to the robodome scope but we were disappointed with the images received. They were horribly pixelated and completely unusable. We weren't sure if the little Meade CCD could even handle solar images but we thought we'd give it a shot. Since that didn't work, we returned our trusty old AstroVid Camera to its proper place.
And more great news - Alice finally came to work today! I was wondering when she'd be ready to join the team again! We're all very happy to have her aboard. This afternoon, she and Robert made a demonstration video about how to set up the little 4' NexStar telescope. It looks like we're going to attempt to create a quick video on the set up of each of the telescopes that we documented last fall. Fun!
Alright, I know you've all been waiting. I won't bore you any further.
SUN PICTURES!!!
1. Check out all the prominences!! Big ones, small ones... All of them bigger than Earth!
2. We adjust the shutter speed and look! Granules!!!!
3. Now in false color yellow-orange!
4. Aren't these just spectacular?! Quite a prominent show today! *har har*
That's all for today!
We have clear skies today so we've taken pictures of our glorious sun - at long last! We also tried to attach a color CCD camera to the robodome scope but we were disappointed with the images received. They were horribly pixelated and completely unusable. We weren't sure if the little Meade CCD could even handle solar images but we thought we'd give it a shot. Since that didn't work, we returned our trusty old AstroVid Camera to its proper place.
And more great news - Alice finally came to work today! I was wondering when she'd be ready to join the team again! We're all very happy to have her aboard. This afternoon, she and Robert made a demonstration video about how to set up the little 4' NexStar telescope. It looks like we're going to attempt to create a quick video on the set up of each of the telescopes that we documented last fall. Fun!
Alright, I know you've all been waiting. I won't bore you any further.
SUN PICTURES!!!
1. Check out all the prominences!! Big ones, small ones... All of them bigger than Earth!
2. We adjust the shutter speed and look! Granules!!!!
3. Now in false color yellow-orange!
4. Aren't these just spectacular?! Quite a prominent show today! *har har*
That's all for today!
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