Current News and Events

This fall semester is the first time we will have two new courses that involve the observatory. In addition, the general science course in Astronomy is taught this fall as well, this time by SB. The courses are:

Phys1006 Observatory I: Public outreach

Engagement in campus and community outreach using the University of Minnesota Morris Astronomical Observatory. Course builds skills in basic telescope operation, astronomical sky watching, design and guidance of scientific outreach to campus and community. Students will participate in Open Nights and other outreach events at the observatory. Meeting times may vary due to variable observing conditions. A minimum in-person participation of one hour per week is expected, typically in the evening, with an additional 30 hours of student workload throughout the semester. 

Phys3006 Observatory II: Astrophotography

Course builds skills in basic telescope operation as well as aspects of astrophotography using advanced camera equipment. Skills in image acquisition and processing for astronomical objects are being developed. Engagement in observatory events is expected. Meeting times may vary due to variable observing conditions, but a minimum in person participation of two hours per week is expected, typically in the evening, with an additional workload of 60 hours throughout the semester. 

Phys1054 Introduction to Astronomy

Course covers the fundamentals of sky observation, including fall constellations and historical development; orbits, gravitation, and seasons; radiation, spectra, and astronomical instrumentation; objects in the solar system; including planets, asteroids, comets, and more; the sun as a star in the Milky Way. Nighttime viewing sessions are required. 

Since the week between August 25 and 29 offered clear skies and beautiful warm weather, it was witness to three nights of astronomical observation. 

Monday: The two Observatory courses met for the first time to discuss requirements and get a first tutorial on preparing the observatory for visual observing. This means that eye pieces, focusing, and aligning by finder scope were discussed. Ethan Schmitz is an experienced observer, and taught everybody else on the practical aspects of visual observing. We viewed Deneb and tried M13 Hercules Globular Cluster (unsuccessfully, needed an alignment). Due to nautical dusk and possibly the arrival of high cirrostratus, we were not able to see other deep-sky objects that night.

Wednesday: The astrophotography group met to discuss the challenges before us. Ethan instructed everybody on how to use the CMOS camera in conjunction with the SharpCap software. Will performed his first alignment. Everybody helped in setting up the dome and telescope, and cleaning up afterward. The course will be akin to an experimental class. We need to master not only the telescope, alignment and focusing procedures, the software, the use of filters and camera settings, and how to most efficiently collect data, but also image processing and combining colors and contrasts. Perhaps, somehow we will succeed in producing an image of a deep-sky object?  One new problem emerged in this session: We never had a chance to test both, EAF and CMOS, on the telescope during the summer. It turns out that the EAF interferes mechanically with the position of the filter wheel. It is a solvable problem - but yet another hurdle. With patience and persistence, and perhaps a reversal to the old focuser, we might be able to work past this problem. Nevertheless, we took some snapshots and stacks of M3 Globular Cluster and of M81 Bode's Galaxy.

Thursday: The astronomy class had a Star Party at the Horse Arena on campus. Seven students came to see to the waxing crescent moon through the 8-inch SCT and the big binoculars. We had some lawn chairs and blankets, several smaller biinoculars, and a treasure hunt on what to look for in the sky that night. Aside from the moon, there were the main constellations of summer, like Lyra (Harp), Cygnus (Swan), and Aquila (Eagle), with the summer triangle stars Vega, Deneb, and Atair, and the circumpolar constellations. We watched Cassiopeia rise, guessed the Milky Way, had a thunder-lightning show far on the southeastern horizon, and mostly really enjoyed watching the stars come out as astronomical twilight set in. The location by Alumni Drive was not ideal since car lights were blinding. It also was warm enough for lots of mosquitoes to join the fun. Jocelyn and Sam from Observatory 1 helped transporting, setting up, and taking down the various things for this gathering.

Overall, this was an extremely busy week at night. I am sure this will be balanced by weeks with no observings later in the semester. SB decided to design Level1 and Level 2 Telescope Operator Badges that allow the bearer to work the observatory without immediate  faculty supervision.  They are awarded after a practical test - like a driver license for the observatory. 

The McNair Program and the ACE  office organized a summer research showcase on the day before classes. The showcase took place in the Student Center on the UMMcampus, and was attended by students and faculty of the university. Mahathir Mostafa presented a poster on the summer work in the observatory. He spoke to many people and answered many questions. It was a good event, and I am very grateful to Mahathir for his work, time, and enthusiasm for the image processing project.

Like last year, the Kapemni group of scientists from the Twin Cities, Morris, and Duluth took a group of about 20 Gateway students to the Twin Cities. Dakota astronomer and professor emeritus from University of Minnesota Duluth, Jim Rock, guided us through a planetarium show, a presentation, and a tour of Indian Mounds Park in the Twin Cities area. The day was ended with dinner at the Space Alien Grill. It was an unforgettable experience for all, even in this chaotic summer marred by challenges in funding, weather, family crises, and worldwide political turmoil. The pictures can tell some of the tale.

The Right Ascension drive of the LX200 had stopped tracking, and had become very noisy. SB used a cell phone endoscope to find that the long-lost spring had become dislodged from its hidey hole during an alignment, and was now blocking the RA movement. The spring was moved. The new springs (from last year) are all in their correct positions. New lubricant was applied, and the telescope tracked and moved well again. A warm, humid, but deeply clear sky beckoned, and so it was time to test the home-made Bahtinov mask with the camera attached. I will describe the process here. 

The second star during the alignment was Antares, appearing now on the computer screen, transmitted by the CMOS. I moved the focus close, and then placed the mask on the front of the telescope. Antares is a very bright star, so a exposure of about 2 seconds and gain around 6, with the UV-IR filter (4) was the first focusing attempt. The first four images below show this process.

Then, the telescope moved to Arcturus, another very bright star. I looked for a weaker star in the vicinity. All of them were still out of focus. So I repeated the procedure with a weaker star. This requires to increase the gain on the camera until the three diffraction lines become visible. The remaining focus adjustments are best handled by the fine focuser.

This  process is faster, and more successful than anything we tried before. The next target was M3, a globular cluster of half a million stars 33 000 light years above the Milky Way. With good alignment and focus, the cluster appeared immediately in the camera view. Images shown below.

For a year now, we struggled to focus the telescope properly when taking photographs. The answer to this challenge was found by Russian amateur astrophotographer Pavel Bahtinov in 2005. A mask with three field of a periodic pattern of gaps, oriented in three different directions and placed over the aperture of the telescope will create diffraction lines around each star.  Adjusting the focuser of the telescope (a.k.a. moving the primary mirror) will shift one of the lines left or right of the intersection of the other two. When  all three lines intersect in exactly the same point, the telescope is in perfect focus. This is widely used for CCD and CMOS cameras. One can use this method in visual observation as well, however, due to differences in individual eyes and vision there is no single perfect focus for all.

Anyway - we just learned this at the SCOPES conference. While SB has ordered such a mask for the 16-inch telescope, impatience combined with shear curiosity lead to a trip to the Dollar store, and voila, a Bahtinov mask made from foam board, bamboo skewers, gel tape, and some card board was created and tested. It works wonderfully, and solves one of our biggest problems with our imaging system: we can now find the focus reliably!

Now, if only the weather would stop being so interesting, and an astrophotography night opened up!

We had over 40 participants from 21 different institutions visiting our campus. Five sessions, three featured talks, a poster session, and a show-and-tell of smaller telescopes on the campus mall transpired. A new community has formed, composed of people who work with small-campus observatories. Faculty, grad students, and undergrad students mingled and discussed things. On small campuses, there often is turnover in staff, and telescope expertise may get lost. More often than not, the persons who are taking care of the facilities are not astronomers or have the expertise to begin with. We were physicists, chemists, meteorologists, engineers, and astronomers at the conference. In addition, in concert with the Kapemni collaboration between the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics and the Morris campus, we had an emphasis on raising cultural competency among us. Observatories are wonderful for reaching large fractions of the population. Stars and cosmos are so interesting to so many people. The indigenous peoples who lived in this land, have accumulated astronomical knowledge that can be found, for example, in the ruins in Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest, where the ancestors of the Pueblo constructed amazing expanded architecture aligned with solar and lunar movement. The Dakota and Ojibwe tribes of the Midwest have used the stars and sky to navigate and keep time. Their astronomical knowledge and the associated rituals are often not known to us observatory people, but when we teach, and when we speak to visitors, we really should be able to convey some of the history of the land. Hopefully, the featured talks by Van Romero on Chaco Canyon, and by Aanakwadikwe Winonah on the role of the Anishinaabe language in conveying and constructing scientific knowledge, together with a set of books on indigenous astronomy have sown seeds that help raise cultural competency. We also learned enormous amounts about the very nuts and bolts that keep a small observatory together, productive, accessible, and develop it into a great teaching and research facility.

This was a great group of people. Interactions were warm, welcoming, supportive, and seriously, we will need to do this again. The group thinks that every two years would be a good interval for this conference.

There are many who deserve thanks for unwavering support, and for all the things that had to happen for this conference to even function:

• Erin Christensen and the University of Minnesota Foundation for all the help in securing funds from the Heising-Simons Foundation

• Dave  Israel-Swenson, Jade Simonton, and Simon Franco for helping me to keep on track and staying on target

• the Residential Life office and Dining Services for housing and feeding all these people

• Lawrence Goodwin and Carter Voorde for making the technology work

• the students sent by the Student Activities Office for setting up and taking down equipment and tables

• Liz Athey, Ann  Kolden, and Peh Ng for supporting with administrative things

• Peh Ng for allowing us to use the facilities in the science building and on campus

• Sue Dieter and Kari Adams for getting the  word out to campus and community, and taking good pictures

• the organizing committee for all the wisdom and discussions on programming: Rachel Humphrey from SCSU, Jessica Rogers from UM Duluth, Matthew Craig from MSUM, and Kevin Boyd from Aquinas College.

• to everyone for sharing in the excitement

Below are a few pictures from the conference. More info, the program, etc. can be found at https://z.umn.edu/SCOPES-Web 

It is exam week at the University of Minnesota Morris. Our last open night for the academic years fell on Study Day. Students are getting ready for their final exams, and faculty are beginning to relax a little. We had 20 visitors, a good mix of faculty, students, and people from the community. Darkness comes late now. Dusk goes on until around 10 pm. We started earlier, though, with the first visitors arriving aorund 8:30 pm. At that point, the sky is still blue and bright. But with a 65% gibbous moon, there is something to see. We had a wonderful view of the craters, montes, and maria along the terminator. The moon is easier to view during dusk since the contrasts between bright and dark are a little softer in the Rayleigh glow of Earth's atmosphere.  Later, Jupiter with three of its moons was on display. With the moon filter still in place, and dusk still ongoing, some were able to see both, the stripes and the Galilean moons.  Mars had a position right on the edge of the Beehive Cluster today which allowed contrasting the appearance of a bright planet with several cluster stars. It demonstrates the difference. A planet presents as a disk while stars truly just appear as pins. 

We switched gears. Darkness had come, Josh and Sylke gave the telescope an alignment. The we found the globular cluster M3 without any trouble. It appeared as a nebulous smudge of circular symmetry in the field of view. If the eye was shaded one could even resolve individual stars. This was the first time we actually saw M3. The cluster is 33400 lightyears away and contains hundreds of thousands of stars. It was an impressive sight!

We also saw Bode's Galaxy. Unfortunately, we were not able to see its spiral arms but the galactic core, 12 million lightyears away, showed as a nebulous object. Perhaps we should try again using the camera. There also is a lot of light pollution present within the observatory dome, from the parking lot, from under the door, etc. For such deep-sky objects, this is tough to overcome.

The sky had a little cirrostratus, but it was clear enough to enjoy the views of Jupiter and Mars.  About 40 people came to the Open Night. Some were students from Mandeep Gill's Phys1054 Astronomy course, some were other students from campus and fans of the observatory, and a large fraction were families from the surrounding community. A mixed group of youngsters came, and enjoyed learning about spectra and aurorae in the astro lab. Of course, making craters in the sand box always beats everything else! 

Dusk lasts longer now, and Jupiter and Mars were the first targets. Mizar and Alcor in Ursa Major are a multiple-star system, 83 light years away. Both, Mizar and Alcor are double-star systems themselves, first described by Galileo in 1617. We were able to see Mizar resolved into two components. I am not sure if Alcor also showed both. Menkalinen (Beta Aurigae) is a binary star system that will be the brightest star (after the sun) in Earth's sky in about one million years. The plane of rotation lies in our line of sight, so the motion of the two A-class subgiant components can only be distinguished by photometric measurements.  Hot, and blue-white, the period of revolution is 3.96 days. We also trained the telescope on Izar (Epsilon Bootis), a visual double star system with different-colored components. One is late-stage K start with orange color, the other is an white-blue A2 star. Lovely to visit with them, and a nice illustration of star colors!  We found the Beehive Cluster (Presaepe) in the constellation cancer. This open cluster of stars holds about 1000 stars, and is one of the closest clusters to Earth , the center about 600 lightyears away. Ptolemy described it, being able to observe it with unaided eye in his dark skies in 170-100 A.D. Since 2012, at least two planetary systems have been discovered for stars in the Beehive. Can you imagine being on such a planet, how bright the stars in the sky would be?

The cirrus obscured much of the constellations closer to the horizon, so after one more stop at Mars, observing night closed.

Earlier in the day, campus was abuzz with the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Ethan presented a poster on the observatory work, Sage showed a poster on her work developing a software algorithm for photometric specifications of stars in images taken by the TURBO telescope. That is a project under the leadership of professor Patrick Kelly at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics on the Twin Cities campus.

Forty visitors came to the observatory tonight, including many children and people from town, but also faculty and students from campus. We were ready with a plan to view planets and the Orion Nebula. Venus showed off as a 10% crescent. It's location is now very close to the line between sun and earth, and thus to its closest approach to earth in this pass. The moon had reached a 44% waxing crescent, rising around noon, culminating at sunset. Jupiter showed its moons. We looked at Orion Nebula in the sword of Orion. Mars looked nice an red, and when out of focus looks like the eye of Sauron. It really did help to have a plan with details on eye pieces, code numbers, and filters. Due to the fairly cold temperatures, an hour in the dome was quite enough. The very clear night after the storm was only interrupted by a passing veil of cirrostratus, shrouding the moon into a colorful corona. It was a fairly successful night, and people seemed to enjoy the views, the talking, as well as the little experiments in the lab. Josh, Sage, and SB were taking care of things.

February Open House had to be delayed two times because it was just too cold. The temperatures even just a week ago played at -30 F. But today was finally good. After a long day that brought deeply covered skies, drizzle, and a temperature hike above +50 F, it almost seemed that opening the observatory might be folly. But just in time, the clouds moved out and revealed beautiful views to a star-studded sky. We had about 3 dozen visitors, including students, staff, and people from town and region.  Many students from the current Astronomy class also came to visit. We viewed a crescent Venus, Jupiter with some of its Galilean moons, and Mars. Finally, the telescope turned toward the Orion Nebula. One could clearly see the dust clouds between the young stars. It was a good night, and calmer than expected. 

The temperatures sored to 45 F during the last week of January. With new eye pieces to try out, a new ankle mirror, a new power cord, and the energy of the long break in observing, we went to see six of the eight planets. Well - technically we saw seven, but for some reason we never count the Earth. The images were taken through the eye piece with a cell phone, and can not convey the crispness, colors, and details that the human eye can pick up. It is pretty special to have six planets in the night sky at once. At any given moment, we see about half of the plane of the solar system, giving each single planet a chance of 0.5 to be in view. This is a rough number since the tilt of the Earth axis favors the view into the ecliptic plane in winter nights. To see six planets then would occur at a probability of  about 2% of all nights. All new equipment worked wonderfully. It also became clear that we need set of neutral density filters to dim the light of Venus and Jupiter as to not blind the eye. For the next Open House, all will be ready. Observers were Sage B.-N. and Sylke B.

Unfortunately, this was the last day of the January thaw. February came in like a polar bear, with weeks of night time temperatures below -10F. We can not operate the observatory at such low temperatures. Very cold nights pose problems with ...

1.  ... focusing due to frost forming on lenses (similar to glasses), in particular with people breathing close to the eye piece.

2. ... with thermal expansion. There will be a temperature differential between outside and inside, exposing the telescope to fluctuations in temperature. Thermal expansion and contraction is enough to change the sharpness of the image.

3. ...  the tracking mechanism. It becomes sluggish since the lubricant is very viscous (similar to how your car might sound bad when starting in very cold temps).  

4. ... people. We do not do so well below -10F, in particular if touching metal and not moving that much in such cold conditions.

5. ... potentially  the dome itself, due to ice build up and cold.

So please be patient. Spring will come around, and so will the next open house. Check the observing schedule regularly. Open nights are also announced in the ummpost email server, as well as on Facebook as public events by Sylke Boyd.