Astronomy Class!

About 18 students from Hiram College visited the Stephens Memorial Observatory tonight. The visit was part of their intensive three-week Astronomy course. Often, in the past, we have not been able to gather the students together on clear nights and so missed telescopic observation of objects in the night sky. About the best we'd done was a daytime class visit at which time we looked at the Sun.

Tonight, however, after some scary cloudiness during the day, the sky was clear. Oh, there was a thin cloud layer up there but we could see through it. Though seeing was not optimal we had excellent views of the first quarter Moon. Details of lunar surface were splendid to behold and several of the students were quite excited. We viewed Luna through the big telescope at 30X and 133X. Mars was viewed but seeing was unsteady enough that the featureless pink disc was quite unimpressive. We viewed star Castor in Gemini -- that double star system was configured conveniently to allow us to see the two major stars of the system. It was impressive how brilliantly blue the neighboring stars were. Saturn was splendid with occasional glimpses of cloud bands, and the shadow line across the planetary disk. Several (4?) of the ring-world's moons were also seen; Titan was not among them but not particularly prominent. I was unable to find globular cluster M3 in the moonlit haze but easily found M44 the "Beehive Cluster" in Cancer near Mars. Though the viewing was low contrast due to moonlight, everyone found the binocular view and "discovery" of the "invisible" object more exciting than the low-power telescope sighting.

The observatory was open to the class from about 8:30 to 10:30. We plan to open again at 9:30 AM to showcase the Sun to many of the same students who attended tonight. The Sun's face has been free of sunspots recently but one may be forming just in time for the class!