Advanced Astronomy Camp

Today was a power day! We woke up early and went on a tour of the LBT. It is much more impressive in the daylight! Afterwards, we stopped at Hospital Flats for sandwich lunch and some gorgeous views. On our way back up to Mount Lemmon, we picked up tamales for dinner, a huge camp favorite! Tonight, the campers will finish up collecting any data they may need for their projects as well as starting to do data reduction on the data they have. Tomorrow, they will present their finished group projects as well as their finished Build a Solar System project in their research teams.

About half way through camp, we were informed by mountain personnel that they had seen a young bear (affectionately named Frank by the campers and counselors) on the premises of the property. We made sure that the campers were safe at all times and that they knew to travel in big groups when moving about the area. We received news this morning, while at the LBT, that the bear had been caught and was being taken to a different, safer, location.

After a late, or early, morning, the campers had an opportunity to share their highs and lows from observing last night. A few expressed confusion over why the stars in the images they took weren't perfectly round ( could be a focusing issue) and wondered how they could fix the issue. There was also the issue of the platform at the 61-inch telescope shutting down while a group was trying to learn about and take spectroscopy data.

So far, camp has been nothing short of fantastic. The skies have been clear and the weather perfect for observing, hope it stays that way *knock on wood*. Observing with the eyepiece on the 61” Kuiper telescope on Mt. Bigelow was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, seeing planets and clusters better than ever before. Operating and taking pictures with a CCD through the 24” and 12” telescopes is fascinating, and I can’t wait to start looking through all the data. We used semi-temperamental phone mounts with two 8” Celestron telescopes and got some decent pictures, given that the phone camera autofocus didn’t totally mess up. Last night we used a spectrometer on the 61” to see what wavelengths of light were being emitted from various objects to determine what elements/compounds they are made of, and other than the usual delay of observations taking too long, we got some good data out of it. Tomorrow we make the daunting trip back to the heat in Tucson to visit the Mirror Lab (and get Eegee’s), then drive even further to the Large Binocular Telescope on Mt. Graham, and use the Submillimeter Telescope to do some radio astronomy. I convinced a few people to see sunrise last night (or really, this morning), and despite the less sleep we would get, it was definitely worth it. (10/10 recommend). There is a growing collection of pictures of people sleeping (campers and staff) in every place imaginable (some still with phone in hand) that I’m sure are going to be used as blackmail sometime in the near future. Other than that, the food has been good, there haven’t been that many moths, and I’m having a good time (but I can’t talk for other people).

Josh, Team Dumbbell, Arizona

Today we celebrated the Summer Solstice by doing some solar observing and activities. The campers received UV beads that change color when exposed to UV light and they were an instant hit! The Campers also spent the afternoon working on their Build a Solar System project as well as telescope proposals. The telescope proposals are how the campers ask for time on the telescopes we have available at camp. They have to bring the counselors a project that they believe is feasible over the course of camp. They must include the objects they wish to look for their project as well as their position in the night sky.

I have seen Jupiter many times in many places; I've seen it shining in the sky in my backyard, I've seen it, and its moons, through my binoculars, and I've even seen it in my own 12-inch telescope. Despite observing Jupiter for years, though, I never managed to witness the shadow of one of Jupiter's moons cast onto Jupiter itself. Then I visited the 61 inch telescope at Mt. Graham! Jupiter and its moons were visible in stunning details, you could the bright whites and dark reds of Jupiter's belts and zones, you could see its four moons on either side of it as golden points of light, and you could of course see the shadow of one of those moons on Jupiter's cloudtops. It was but one of the amazing sights granted to me that night, I got to see Saturn and its huge, golden rings stretching out beside it. I could even make out the Cassini Divison, the gap between Saturn's rings. We got to see other objects such as the Ring Nebula, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, the Dumbbbel Nebula and Mars. The Ring nebula was a happy little fuzzy, cyan ring. I have tried for over a year to find M13, the famous globular cluster in Hercules home to 500,000 stars. I got to see it for the first time last camp, and I got to see it even better the second camp! It was thousands upon thousands of bright stars, shining brightly. The Dumbbell nebula was a faint, light blue dumbell surrounded by dark dust and a scattering of bright stars. You had to look at it with your peripheral vision, but it looked amazing. Mars was a bright, peachy red with a white blue polar ice cap visible at its southern pole. Mars is currently obscured by an enormous dust storm, making the planet look fuzzy. In the telescope nearby the Catalina Sky Survey scanned for asteroids on their mission to save humanity as we oohed and ahed over the telescope. The 61 inch telescope was absolutely enormous; whenever it moved, the entire observatory groaned and you could feel it shaking. You could stand underneath and watch the enormous telescope rotate and the dome swivel and grind while planets and thousands of stars passed through the slit in the dome. It was out of this world!

-Alexis, Team Mars, Arizona

Today is our first official day of camp! We focused more on explaining the various projects that the campers will work on (Build a Solar System, 3D Solar System, and Observing Challenge), learning about how light interacts with objects, as well as learning about the Solar System as a whole. The campers tracked the Sun's path throughout the day , learning cardinal directions as well as what effect the Earth's tilt has on the sun's trajectory. We also split our afternoon up between talking about spectroscopy with one of our counselors, Patrick, and looking at the planetarium with Doctor McCarthy. Below, we had a couple campers from our Research Teams detail their own personal highlights from the day:

My favorite part of today was, without a doubt, our team (Ring Nebula)'s discussion about the fictitious solar system we are to construct. There was very little need for clarification, more so resembling a discussion and proposal rather than a bellicose argument. The conversation was also rather interesting, as I learned quite a bit during the discussion. For instance, I learned that the galactic bulge (the lump at the very center of spiral galaxies) is bombarded with deadly radiation, thus making it unsuitable for life, meaning that we couldn't place our solar system there. After much invigorating discussion and debate, we settled on our planet as orbiting a star cluster above the plane of the Milky Way, it's spiral arms splayed out before it like an ocean of 400 billion stars.

-Jake Stollman, Team Ring Nebulae, Michigan

I have never seen skies quite as beautiful as Arizona's high, high mountaintops, on Mount Lemmon--- neither in rural Connecticut, nor clean Costa Rica, and definitely not the haze above Boston. Hearing the dark adaption song and afterwards viewing more stars than I thought was possible was truly an experience I'll never forget. The background of black had an inlay of the Milky Way, splayed across the sky in such a way that became exponentially easier to detect once Dr. McCarthy picked out the various constellations and asterisms visible for us. Incredibly, it was like seeing in all directions, even though Tucson glowed below the plane of the Air Force barracks and Venus was light years away; in that moment, upon opening my eyes from the dark of the building, Venus wasn't far-- it was simply above the curve of the roof of the observatory, following the curve of the moon. Ursa Minor wasn't a collection of unrelated stars burning, unfamiliar, in space-- it was a shape we located, traced from the Big Dipper. So far, astronomy camp has made me realize that although we are far more insignificant than we could possibly realize, at the same time, we are all so much nearer, and so much closer.

- Megan Ding, Team Mars, Connecticut

We had a wonderful start to camp and enjoyed meeting all of you down in Tucson at the Alumni Building! We have made it safely to the top of Mount Lemmon and enjoyed a wonderful cookout dinner after getting all settled in to the dorms and changed for the night (It’s cold!). We also continued a camp tradition of dark adapting to Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Music of the Night" and talked about how it relates to astronomy. Tonight, we will be doing naked eye observing, using a couple of 8-inch telescopes, and using a 24 inch telescope to see spectacular views of Jupiter and Saturn.

Tonight should be an early bedtime of about midnight. Tomorrow, we will have the campers start uploading their own thoughts and experiences!

Our camp begins on June 19th, when we will meet on the University of Arizona campus, have our kickoff event, and then travel to Mt. Lemmon (pictured above). Looking forward to seeing everyone then! Don't forget to check back daily to see updates on the day's activities!