0302-AstronomyReport

Astronomy Report

03/02/2016

Arthur Lillo

Sky Conditions:

Partly Cloudy

Wind Conditions:

Slight

Observation Start Time:

4:15 A.M.

Observation End Time:

5 A.M.

Summary:

Today we decided to wake up quite early in the morning to enjoy a new

view of the winter sky: around 4 A.M., Mars, Saturn and the Moon rise

on the horizon, and the Milky Way shows us its center (partly hidden

behind dark gas clouds).

We were able to see through the newly fixed telescope the spectacular

rings of Saturn, it was marvelous! We could also spot the yellow glow

of Titan in the vicinity. Not far away (from our point of view), we

explored the Moon’s chaotic surface, with the terminator revealing the

craters’ deepness. As we watched our satellite, we evaluated the

probability of a hidden Nazi colony on the far side of the Moon (I

don’t know what gave us this idea, maybe the movie Iron Sky that we

watched the night before…). Anyway, Nazi or not, the Moon was really

beautiful tonight. Next planet we observed: Mars. Wait… we are

supposed to be on it right now, this bright orange circle in the sky

must be a collective hallucination given by the beans of the dinner!

Or someone launched a giant mirror into space. Perhaps the Nazis, who

knows…?

When moving the telescope around, I spotted through the eyepiece a

slowly-moving dot: thanks to the software Stellarium, I came to the

conclusion that I have seen Okean-3, a Russian satellite launched in

1991 for oceanographic observation.

After the closing of the observatory, we tried to find the center of

the Milky Way, but the Moon was too close to it in the sky and too

shiny, so we could not distinguish the dark gas clouds. That was our

only deception of tonight. We plan to try again the night between

Friday and Saturday, our last night on Mars.

Objects viewed:

Saturn and Titan, the Moon, Mars, Milky Way

Problems encountered:

We have had difficulties closing the dome’s shutter. Although we had

turned off the black box during our observation to save the battery,

the shutter seemed not to have enough power to move. We had to turn

the box off and on many times to make the shutter move, about 5cm each

time. I had similar difficulties during a previous night but at the

time I did not report them: indeed, I knew that I had let the box

turned on during the whole observation. Now, we have an unsolved

issue.