Author: lrosenthal

We have a few more pictures and anecdotes to share from our trip to Kitt Peak. After a productive Thursday night of observing, we drove to the 2.5 – m telescope  around 2 AM to meet John Thorstensen, a Haverford alumnus who is a professor at Dartmouth. On Friday morning, we drove into Tucson for lunch and a trip to the Tucson Desert Museum. I highly recommend visiting this museum; much of it is outdoors, and it hosts a myriad of local animals and plant life.

 

Here we are at the Tucson Desert Museum,

And here is one of the friends we made there. After touring the desert and returning to Kitt Peak for another night of observing, we toured the 4 – m telescope. We walked out of the control room and into the dome just as a group of tourists came up the stairs; they thought we were resident scientists!

A few people in the tour group asked for Jonathan’s autograph; this was definitely a highlight of the trip.

We miss Kitt Peak already. Expect more posts soon about our observing experiences and the undergrad astronomy experience.

NSF AST-1151462, the Boughn-Gollub-Partridge Fund, the KINSC, and the Green Fund provide support for our student trips to observatories.

Yesterday, five Haverford astronomers arrived at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, with a few observing objectives. We flew into Tuscon during Tuesday, and drove to Kitt Peak yesterday after grabbing groceries for the week.

Here we (Matteo Miazzo, Chris Garling, Lee Rosenthal, and Alison Marqusee, minus Jonathan, who took the photo) are at the entrance to KPNO. The mountains in Arizona are awe inspiring, as are the telescopes.

The Mayall 4 – meter telescope dominates this picture, but we have views like this one most everywhere on the mountain. This week, we are observing on the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope. Haverford belongs to the WIYN consortium, a group of schools that share time on a 3.5 – meter and a 0.9 – meter telescope. We are hoping to observe the Persei twin globular clusters and maybe a few other Galactic objects of interest. We set up the 0.9 – meter last night, and although we had to close up early due to technical difficulties we learned plenty about how to operate the telescope.

Alison was the first to fill the liquid nitrogen dewer for the S2KB camera last night, and we look forward to taking data tonight!

We explored the 4 – meter telescope this morning, and got to see the 500 – ton dome rotate about this behemoth of a machine.

We will be here until Sunday morning, and will keep the blog updated with our astronomical adventures!

NSF AST-1151462, the Boughn-Gollub-Partridge Fund, the KINSC, and the Green Fund provide support for our student trips to observatories.

Last Friday, Haverford’s astronomy outreach program hosted our last event of the semester at the Strawbridge Observatory, in coordination with the Philadelphia Science Festival. Intermittent rain kept us from opening the telescopes, but we had a whole host of activities set up for our visitors, of which there were plenty. I (Lee) was downstairs running a spectroscopy demonstration and explaining how astronomers can learn about stars by looking at their spectra. Also downstairs were Estella, Sarah, and Eric, who made air-propelled rockets with straw and paper; we had plenty of fun learning about pressure physics while trying to hit makeshift targets with our rockets.

Upstairs, Andrea and Rui helped our guests make paper shuttle crafts and have plenty of other fun with arts and crafts. Lyn and Catherine ran an astronomy trivia session, and Meg showcased our fantastic new outreach T-shirts and some popular science books for our visitors to browse through. (You can email Beth Willman at bwillman@haverford.edu if you want an outreach T-shirt!)

  

Alison and Chris worked in the library, and did a great job of explaining eclipses using a baseball, a soccer ball, and a bare lamp. Arjun, Sarah S., and Eric had the delicious job of making ice cream for our guests, using liquid nitrogen and all the sweet ingredients we could get our hands on. They showcased the awesome properties of supercool gases by concocting entire batches of ice cream within minutes, and freezing an assortment of random objects; watching Arjun and Sarah fence with frozen roses was one highlight of the night.

  

Thanks so much to all of our visitors for joining us on Friday night, and to all of our volunteers for contributing to a great semester of science, education, and fun! Special thanks to Beth Willman, the faculty supervisor of the astronomy outreach program, and to Mariah Baker, our senior student supervisor and the mastermind behind all of our events. Thanks for orchestrating a fantastically successful semester and making sure that our events ran smoothly. We look forward to resuming our outreach program in the fall!

NSF AST-1151462 provides support for our public outreach programs.

Last night, Haverford hosted another successful outreach event at the Strawbridge observatory. Andrea set up an ingenious arts & crafts project; each participant used a small battery, two LED lights, some string, and some clay to make their own pulsar! (A pulsar is a superdense, rapidly spinning remnant of a dead star.)

 

Some people were pretty creative with their pulsar production…

 

We also brought out tried-and-true activities, such as crafting Saturn’s rings and inflating a balloon-based universe. Afterwards, Eric gave a fantastic talk on pulsars, and why they can be so puzzling to astronomers. I bet some of our visitors left the observatory feeling inspired to learn more.

 

Thankfully, the sky was perfectly clear last night, so we opened up both the 16-inch and the 12-inch telescopes for observation. A couple of volunteers pointed the telescopes at a couple of visible objects in the sky, and gave each of our visitors a chance to observe. I’ve never seen Jupiter and its four largest moons as clearly as I did last night.

Thanks to all of our volunteers for helping out, and to all of our visitors for showing up. Our next event will be on April 25th, in coordination with the Philadelphia Science Festival. Expect it to be our most educational and exciting one yet!

NSF AST-1151462 provides support for our public outreach programs.

 

Hey astronomers,

The Haverford observing team is happy to report another successful event at the Strawbridge Observatory! Last Saturday, we opened our doors and our telescopes to the public. We had an excellent view of Jupiter and its four largest moons, thanks to some excellent luck with the weather. Andrea planned a fantastic arts & crafts event in which our visitors created their own sculptures of Saturn, rings and all. Meanwhile, Eric and Arjun showcased a selection of great educational videos about Jupiter and the rest of the Solar System, made by public outreach legends such as Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan. We welcomed plenty of visitors, who just kept on coming throughout the event, so thanks to everyone who showed up! We can’t wait for the next event, which is scheduled for the evening of Saturday, March 22nd.

NSF AST-1151462 provides support for our public outreach program.

P.S. The reboot of Carl Sagan’s legendary show ‘Cosmos’, now hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, premiered last night, and the first episode will be airing again tonight. I’d highly recommend checking it out, it should provide an awe-inspiring tour of the universe.

Last Thursday, the public observing team hosted a successful event with the theme of black holes and galaxies. Andrea, Mariah and Erica provided a great set of arts & crafts and trivia facts for all those who attended; we brought out galaxy catalogues for our attendees to look through and draw inspiration from, and a word search all about black holes. I gave a short talk about how stars die and how black holes are born, and was blown away by the amazing questions all the kids asked. Special thanks to the local boy scout troop for adding to our incredible turnout! Our next event will be the Thursday evening of Halloween; we’ll be opening up the telescopes, weather permitting, and troubleshooting an episode of The Simpsons!

NSF AST-1151462 provides support for our public outreach program.

Hey all! Unfortunately, the weather last Thursday put a damper on our plans for public observing. The good news is that Dave Goldberg, a cosmologist and popular science author, still made it to campus for a whole day of lecturing and a public talk. Dave has just published a new book titled The Universe in The Rearview Mirror, which is all about the idea of symmetry and why it is integral to most branches of physics. I’ll borrow a word he used a lot on campus and say that the book is ‘awesome’! It is both comprehensible and mind-blowing, and I highly recommend it to anyone with any level of interest in physics. Dave sat in on a couple of astro classes during the day, teaching an engaging lecture on clusters and gravitational lensing in the upper-level galactic astronomy course. He then gave a public talk about the idea of symmetry in physics, outlining some key principles and covering a wide range of topics and examples. Pictures from the talk will follow soon, and once again I recommend his book to anyone interested in physics on any level!

Lee Rosenthal, ’15