This is the real telescope that the professionals use at Canopus
Here is fair use Web photo of the jewel box
Canopus Observatory
One of the member sheds with fancy telescopes
Fair use web photo of Messier 62
I went up to Canopus Observatory for a Astronomy Society Meeting. The drive up is always pretty, and there is the benefit of seeing a lot of Wallabies. The drive down in complete darkness is scary for the same reason, I want to get out of my Jeep and shoo all the wildlife away before driving down the road.
I have only been up on a few observation nights, but I aspire to go regularly. I am fairly sure that everyone there went much further in Math then I ever did. I also get nervous and overexcited which causes me to misspeak, commonly I say 'visible universe' when I mean to say 'visible galaxy'. The Southern Hemisphere really does rock over the North. Besides the obvious differences between light pollution and for that matter regular pollution, there are many more naked eye observations here. Some are more spectacular than others, here Orion looks like a saucepan. Because of the inverted perspective I see the Orion Nebula not located in the sword but now in the handle of the saucepan.
Through fancy telescopes (fancy is as technical as I can get with telescopes so far, I hear snippets such as 'light collection' not magnification, talk about 'angular resolution'). So far, I have seen The Jewel Box, which is an open cluster of stars they are various colors and really do look like jewels. Last night we looked at Andromeda which is a bit on the fuzzy side, but it is 2.5 million light years away and I find that impressive. Sirius, which through the telescope is clearly two stars, not one bright one, and Messier 62 which to me looks like a firework.
I am trying to learn how to pick out even five markers, there is no North Star (or Polaris as they call it here) to help located the celestial pole here, no Big Dipper, and as I said all familiar constellations are inverted. Plus the sky is so CROWDED! In Winter I can see the Milky Way come up right in front of my porch. I can watch falling stars and satellites. Many of the stars sparkle with colors, atmospheric action to most and magical to me.
Now if I could just get Zok up to the roof.
I have only been up on a few observation nights, but I aspire to go regularly. I am fairly sure that everyone there went much further in Math then I ever did. I also get nervous and overexcited which causes me to misspeak, commonly I say 'visible universe' when I mean to say 'visible galaxy'. The Southern Hemisphere really does rock over the North. Besides the obvious differences between light pollution and for that matter regular pollution, there are many more naked eye observations here. Some are more spectacular than others, here Orion looks like a saucepan. Because of the inverted perspective I see the Orion Nebula not located in the sword but now in the handle of the saucepan.
Through fancy telescopes (fancy is as technical as I can get with telescopes so far, I hear snippets such as 'light collection' not magnification, talk about 'angular resolution'). So far, I have seen The Jewel Box, which is an open cluster of stars they are various colors and really do look like jewels. Last night we looked at Andromeda which is a bit on the fuzzy side, but it is 2.5 million light years away and I find that impressive. Sirius, which through the telescope is clearly two stars, not one bright one, and Messier 62 which to me looks like a firework.
I am trying to learn how to pick out even five markers, there is no North Star (or Polaris as they call it here) to help located the celestial pole here, no Big Dipper, and as I said all familiar constellations are inverted. Plus the sky is so CROWDED! In Winter I can see the Milky Way come up right in front of my porch. I can watch falling stars and satellites. Many of the stars sparkle with colors, atmospheric action to most and magical to me.
Now if I could just get Zok up to the roof.
1 comment:
oh wow i am jealous. i would love to go there with you sometime. i too am still terrible at math and get a little sicked out when i think about universes and galaxies, but love it at the same time. do you ever look here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
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