Saturday, March 29, 2003. We recently visited the Hayden Planetarium in New York City! Wow, talk about fantastic. The planetarium is unbelievable! It is the best planetarium in the world!
This is the sidewalk view of the Natural History and Science Museum. The giant ball is the actual planetarium.
This is a third floor view of part of the planetarium. After the show you walk out doors that put you here. You get an excellent view of the science museum from this perspective.
This is the Williamette Meteorite that sits on the floor of the science museum. It is probably 8-10 feet tall, 4-6 feet wide at the top and probably 4 feet deep. There is a plaque that sits in front of the meteorite. It reads:
"This is the Williamette Meteroite. The internal structure of the 15.5-ton Williamette meteroite, made of metallic iron, suggests that a complicated chain of events led to its formation. Billions of years ago, an early planet orbiting the Sun was shattered, perhaps in a collision with another proto-planet. The fragment now known as the Williamette Meteroite was probably part of the planet's iron-nickel core. While planets including Earth gradually formed and matured, the fragment orbited the Sun. It was hit a least twice by other planetary fragments, knocking it into a collision course with Earth. Thousands of years ago, this meteroite, travelling some 64,000 kilometers per hour, crashed into Earth's surface. Over many centuries, rainwater interacting with it's iron sulfide deposits produced sulfuric acid, which slowly etched and carved large cavities. Only about 600 of the 25,000 meteorites found on Earth are made of iron. The material was created deep inside stars, which produce energy by fusing lighter elements into heavier ones - for example, hydrogen into helium. The force of nuclear fusion eventually shutters stars much more massive than our Sun, casting fused elements, such as iron, into interstellar space. Over eons, these elements collect inside clouds of gas and dust. Within such an iron-rich interstellar cloud, our Sun formed 4.5 billion years ago, giving rise to comets, asteroids, planets and all life on Earth. So when we study the Williamette meteorite, we are also studying the chemical record of our origins and our place in the universe."
After leaving the star show you are directed down a spiraling walkway that describes the universe from it's beginning to the present. There are pictures that also describe the size of the universe and walk you from the out reaches of space to the infinitesimally small atom. To give you an idea of how huge the actual platnetarium sphere is, the planet Jupiter, which is the ball farthest to the right is probably 20 feet in diameter.
Friday, April 4, 2003 - We just returned from Bloomington, Indiana. We took the 20" telescope to Lake Monroe. I was amazed at how dark the skies were since we were only about 10 miles from the University of Indiana campus. I met a few friends who have done business with our company and who wanted to take a look through a mega-scope. We looked at several spiral galaxies, nebulae, Jupiter, Saturn, a bunch of double stars and then we talked about some of the history of the constellations. It was really cool stuff. We did some late night observing from about 11:30 pm til about 3 in the morning. If you are interested in looking through a mega-scope, you need to send us a line. We'll send you a schedule of upcoming events!!
Wednesday, April 9, 2003. - Wow! What a night. Even though the moon is half full we took the 20" telescope out. I didn't expect to see too much. The night started out with a few glimpses of Jupiter and Saturn. I couldn't get the computer to respond so we decided to take out the Star Charts and have some fun. We started with the big dipper. We panned over to M100, M81 & M82, which are spiral galaxies. Then we looked at the Beehive cluster, which is a beautiful open cluster. Of course the night wouldn't be complete without looking at M42, The Great Orion Nebulae. Afterwards we spent a few minutes looking at The Seven Sisters (Pleiades). I am still amazed at how truly beautiful it is. I also panned around Cassiopeia and found two wonderful open clusters. We also found M97, the Owl Nebulae. Even with 20" of aperature, light pollution takes it's toll. It's funny because we get Detroit to the north and Monroe to the south but we still managed to have a lot of fun tonight. The most exciting view tonight was when Jupiter passed right through M35, which is a beautiful open cluster in Gemini. It looked like Jupiter had 100 moons! It was spectacular. I looked for M41, an open cluster in Canis Major but the moon was too bright. I'm going to find it tomorrow night along with M46 & M47. We are also going to have the scope out around 1:30am after the moon retires for the night. We are going to shoot for M57, the ring nebulae and M13 in Hercules. I keep hearing how great M14 looks in a 20" scope. The jury is out until tomorrow night. I'm also going to take a shot at the snowball nebulae. This is going to be fantastic! You should really join us!
Thursday, April 10, 2003 - Another fantastic night! The evening began prior to sundown. The telescope has so much light gathering power that it hurts to look at the moon at night without the aid of a filter so we looked at it while it was still light out! What a beautiful sight! We also looked at Jupiter. Let's talk Jupiter for a few minutes. Last night a unique event took place. At rare times one of Jupiter's satellites can hide another with it's own shadow! See why. Last night we witnessed Callisto's occult of Io at around 10:35 pm, which lasted a few minutes. We could actually see the two moons casting a shadow on Jupiter's gassy surface. At 2:50 am Io eclipsed Europa. Wow! What a site. It all happens again tonight!
Thursday continued - There was just too much to see last night to even begin to talk about. Although the moon is over half-full we still did our best to search out the best galaxies and nebulae. I am still in awe over M42 in Orion. We spent a lot of time viewing Orion last night. There is also a sextuple star system above the belt that we looked at. We also looked at Gemini's M35 and then we panned over to Castor, which is one of the heads of the Twins. It turns out that it's a tough double star to separate in small and medium sized telescopes. We could see an obvious abnormality of the star at low power, which showed the possibility of two stars. After increasing the power to about 250X we were able to split the double. Talk about beautiful! We also looked at M81, M82, M101 & M94. Great sights. We looked at the Seven Sisters and then on to the Beehive. Jupiter is really sweet in the beehive this time of year. We also got some senior citizens out the party. The didn't want to climb the ladder. Luckily Saturn was low enough on the horizon to look at it on the first step. One of the members said that in 75 years he had never looked through a telescope. His only words for Saturn while viewing? Oh my Gosh...Oohh...Wow! We also looked at M36, M37 & M38 in Auriga. They are all open clusters. They are great sites when there is no moon. They were a little tough last night. We also saw M67 and R Cancri, which is a variable star in Cancer. We looked at M3, a globular cluster and M51, the whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici. We all took a gander at the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius and M41 which is another beautiful open cluster. We looked for the eskimo or clownface nebula but it eluded us. We are going after the Clownface nebulae Friday night! We are also going after Corona Berenices tonight. Hopefully we'll be able to get a gander at M53, M64, M85, M88, M91, M98, M99 & M100. Early Saturday morning we are going to shoot for M13 in Hercules, M57, The Ring Nebulae and the North American Nebulae in Cygnus along with whatever else we come up with. Altogether we were out from about 7:30 last night until just after 3 in the morning. We had people from the club join us at midnight and one even showed up at 1:30 this morning! It's never too late in the night to see wonderful things in the universe! We expect more of the same Friday night. You should join us!
Friday, April 12, 2003. Talk about a bright night. I was really surprised at how bright the moon would be this evening. We had to forego the line-up for the night. We concentrated on Jupiter and the moon. It turns out we spent about 3 hours looking at the moon. We had a guide to moon observation and spent the night taking turns trying to find different craters and the like. I didn't realize how fun it would be. We had 5 people out tonight. Lot's of fun!