Standing in Line at Powell

This guide is still a work in progress, as all things are. If you have any input on things that you would like to see, please feel free to reach out.

Stuff to watch out for while you wait

• Meteors - You know, shooting stars. Even outside of meteor showers, it's not unusual to see one.
• Satelites - these look like stars moving at a steady pace across the sky. If it's blinking it's a plane, if it's not it's a satelite.
• Star Tours - by our very own observatory staff and club members. The quickest way to learn the quickest way to find the north star.

How to Look Through the Scope

TL;DR: There is a ladder in there. You'll go up and look through a lens in the side of the telescope to see what we are looking at. Make sure to take your time, especially for faint things.

The telescopes you may be used to seeing, either on TV or given as gifts, may look a lot like the one shown on the bottom half of this diagram. You have a lens at the front that gathers and focuses the light to another lens at the end, the eyepiece, that magnifies that image. For the Russinger telescope, the eyepiece is placed in the side of the scope and two mirrors reflect the light from the bottom and out of the top side. Hence the name for this general type of scope: the reflector.

• Since the eyepiece is toward the top of the scope we use a ladder to get up and look through. It's like one of those Home Depot stair ladders.
• Take your time and try to notice things

What to expect when you look

• If it's not the moon or a planet, the stuff you are looking at will probably be a lot fainter than the pictures you are used to seeing from Hubble and James Webb. This is because those pictures are taken using long exposures. We do this during our presentation when we show the images on screen. The camera is kept open for long periods (I think ours is about 5-30 seconds) and then those images are stacked on top of more exposures of the same thing to make the object more visible.
• Satellites - they'll look like a star moving quickly through the view.

Stuff we normally look at

Why red lights?

Just like a telescope having a larger opening for light helps us see faint things better, making sure your eyes have as big of an opening as possible helps you see faint things better, or in less nerdy words "night vision". Red light is supposed to reduce your night vision by less compared to other light. This doesn't mean that looking into a bright red light won't still close those pupils, so I would consider reading this with your brightness all the way down. Don't worry, it's dark out here, you'll be able to see it.

Check out the LCT and member scopes

LCT stands for Louisburg Community Telescope.

• if you showed up after we started and missed something this is a great way to still see that thing
• some objects are hard for the big scope to get to. the LCT can typically fill in these gaps

Fun Facts and Questions

• T Coronae Borealis
  • This is that star that is supposed to go nova soon. Feel free to ask a member to point out corona Borealis to you!
• If you had an all-expense paid trip to anywhere in the galaxy, where would you go?
• If you could build your own planet to live on, what would it look like? How big would it be? How many moons? Does it have rings? What color is its star?

Stuff that you should come back to see, and when

• Saturn
  • will probably start to be back in an observable position by mid-September. Coming back in October is probably a good bet. We should still be able to see Saturn's rings this year, though they will probably be quite thin due to the next thing on the list.
• Saturn Ring Plane Crossing - 2025
• Jupiter
  • maybe late this year, but it's a bit elusive this summer during our public night times. Hopefully it'll be better next year.

Observing Tips by Object

The Moon

• Craters, obviously
• Mountain ranges
• rills
• Shimmering at the edge of the moon (this is atmospheric disturbance)
• if it's not a full moon: notice how the most interesting part is where the line of the shadow is (astronomers call it the terminator). This is why the best time to observe the moon is during all of the days when it's not full. That shadow makes it so you can pick out details that aren't visible when everything is lit.
• if it's a full moon: notice how much light the moon puts off? look at the sky around the moon and then further away from the moon, see how it washes a bunch of stars out?

Standing in Line at Powell by Jake Meinershagen is licensed under CC BY 4.0