Astronomy Day 2007

April 21, 2007: Astronomy Day -- I finished installation of the clock drive (hanging the drive weights) Friday afternoon and tested it during a private observing session that night at Stephens Memorial Observatory. Opened on Saturday (April 21) at 6:00 PM for open house hours as advertised, but nobody showed up. The observing session, however, was quite another matter! The cool spring air was nicely transparent offering our 51 guests (between about 8:30 and 11:00 PM) very good views of Saturn and several of its moons at a time when the shadow of the ring system falling upon the planetary body gave the image "a 3D effect," as one visitor exclaimed. Someone else exclaimed that it "looks like a picture." Viewers of all ages (myself included) also glimpsed atmospheric banding and, at 255X, the Cassini Division! The Moon impressed as well many saying they had never seen anything like it. The images, by the way, were quite exquisite. And the clock drive runs flawlessly and tracks very well though I can see it operates with some speed differences depending upon what direction it is tracking. Following the Moon, low in the west, the telescope held its aim for a long time. Not unexpectedly, several of the men were fascinated by the spinning governor and gears of the clock -- one man stood there for minutes watching it! The visitors were roughly half students and half non-students and members of both groups either went out and came back with family or friends or excitedly phoned them telling them to come visit. A very common question was, when are you doing this again! Apparently students learned of the public night from an all-campus email. The public got word from a newspaper article. It was a fine night for all involved.

Reinstalled Cooley clock drive

Spent the evening at Stephens Memorial Observatory (SMO) tonight and finally got the mechanical clock drive reinstalled. I still must hang the drive weights and test the system (especially running speed) but I believe the hard part is done. To celebrate I took a look at Saturn. That was a little difficult because it was very high in the sky. I wound up kneeling on the floor to observe. Skies were clear but not the most transparent. Still the view was very good at around 100X. There was a hint of banding in the body of the planet and I could make out the shadow of the planetary sphere falling across the ring plane. Too uncomfortable to view for long, though! The Moon had risen so I used the brilliant --BRILLIANT-- full disk to better align the finder scope. It will probably take two hands to do that job right, but aim is better than it was. I had two visitors: a man with his son who saw lights on and decided to see the telescope. They arrived just after I did so they got no observing and apologized for dropping in and distracting me from my work. Hey, it is great to have such interest in the reawakening of SMO! Closed up the dome at 9:45 PM and headed for home. The sky went from clear to overcast during my trip home so I guess things timed out just fine.