The Heising-Simon Foundation, by way of the University of Minnesota Foundation, has funded a proposal by Sylke Boyd to organize a small conference in Morris for small campus observatories, with a generous gift of $70,000. The idea for the proposed meeting came from all the work you can read about on this very page. The observatory caretakers are often people who figure things out and learn as they do, and learning from each other's experiences gives us all a boost.
From the proposal:
I propose to organize a 2-day conference/workshop for the upper Midwest, centered on
Small-Campus Observatories as Promoters of Education in Science
- abbreviated as SCOPES.
The conference will provide an opportunity to accomplish the following main objectives:
Establish a regional community for small campus observatories and facilitate collaborations and exchange of knowledge; share experiences in technology, software, outreach, and management.
Build intercultural competence in science relevant for outreach and teaching in astronomy, with a focus on Native American sky watching (leveraging experience and input from the Minnesota Native Skywatchers and the UMN Morris campus)
SCOPES also will provide the following:
Showcase undergraduate and faculty research feasible in small observatories
Bring together a diverse group of scientists, many without background in observational astronomy
Leverage the experiences in the region to strengthen science programs in small colleges
The conference schedule may include:
Opening session with 15-minute segments for each represented campus
Poster session for student posters
Workshop on indigenous sky watching
Evening observing and a session on activities suitable for public outreach
Sessions on:
Telescopes, cameras, smart domes: what works and doesn’t on small campuses
Image analysis and astropy (Python library for astronomy applications)
Outreach to diverse communities: nuts and bolts
Art and astrophotography
Ensuring continuity in observatory expertise: systematic challenges and how to overcome them
Common session:
Finding funding opportunities, connecting to NASA and Minnesota Space Grant
Currently, we target the first week of June for the conference, and hope for representation from about 10 midwestern colleges, between the Dakotas and Michigan, for a total of about 50 participants. As details become worked out, this page will be updated.
November Open Observatory night had 42 signed-in visitors, and probably a few more. There was a nice mix of campus and town folks, and several children. We saw the moon, Jupiter, and Saturn through the telescope, also tried out a few new eyepieces. With 10 or 15 persons in the dome at any time, it was cozy despite the freezing cold outside. The activities in the lab were a good chance to warm up: cloud chamber (shown in picture ), line spectra of different gases, moving electrons with a magnet, crater making, and demonstrations of the lunar orbit and moon phases. We had several repeat visitors, as well as first-time visitors. Good conversations ensued. Some of the younger visitors were quite inquisitive, and taken by all of it. Adult visitors often ask about the technical details of the telescope, as well as about the experiments in the lab. Many expressed gladness about the availability of this experience for all. One of the teenage visitors inquired about more opportunities to be in the observatory. Perhaps, we have a new member of the observatory squad? Ethan Schmitz and Sylke Boyd managed things for this evening.
We discovered a new problem with the telescope. This was the first cold observing night, outside temps flirting with 0 degree Celsius. However, the building temperature is kept at 22 degree Celsius. The closed observatory sits somewhere in-between. But that means, that the telescope undergoes a wild ride of changes: (1) a cool-down after the dome opens, probably 20 minutes, (2) a warm-up as people come in and out and linger, (3) an increase in humidity in the dome from transpiration and warm-air advection from the hallway. It all leads to two things: condensation in the optics and uneven thermal expansion. Both affect the ability to sharpen the view. This problem will become greater as winter progresses. We need to test out a protocol to minimize these effects since they affect usability of the telescope. Perhaps, opening the dome early for acclimation, always closing the hallway door, limiting the number of people at any given time, might help. First line of attack is to learn more: We're getting a little weather station, at least thermometer, hygrometer, and barometer, to track conditions inside the dome.
The Cloud Chamber is a device that contains a saturated atmosphere of ethanol. Passing fast particles ionize the gas and thus provide condensation nuclei for ethanol droplets. The traces of passing particles become visible to the eye. Mostly, we see protons, electrons, and muons, all resulting from ambient radio activity and from air showers (cascades of secondary particles in the atmosphere, generated by cosmic rays). We all are constantly subject to this ambient radiation.
Mrs. House from the Morris Area Highschool is teaching Physical Science for 9th grade. She is bringing her students to visit the observatory and look at the sun. Since she has a total of 87 students, we split the visit between two consecutive days. My sincere thanks go to UMM students Hannah, Nova, Sage, Ethan, Cole, Caden, Josh, Natalie, and Will for the leadership in getting groups around, and supervising activities outside, in lab, and in observatory. The sun was visible and cast a shadow even through a layer of thickening cirrostratus on Monday. Tuesday had more varied sky conditions, and some of the high schoolers did not get to see the sun through the telescope. There were only a few smaller sun spots visible. The lab station was centered around the Northern lights. Gas discharge lamps of hydrogen, helium, and neon demonstrated spectral lines as well as a process similar to the processes that lead to the appearance of the Aurora. We used the e/m apparatus to show how magnetic fields influence the motion of charges. Outside, we had the sun spotter to show and example of how to view sunspots without the telescope. Eclipse glasses were also on hand. The sun trackers are shadow trackers and can serve as a calendar and clock at the same time. We had stickers, sun suckers, Morris folders, and sun trackers to take home.
The October Open House fell during fall break on campus. Most students traveled home for fall break. The open house saw 25 visitors, mostly from the town of Morris and from Alexandria. We welcomed adults and children, alumni, and employees, as well as interested people from town. Special visitor was professor of chemistry Kevin Boyd. He is the caretaker for the observatory at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids Michigan, and supported open night with his expertise. Clouds moved out around 6 p.m. to leave us with a clean sky at dusk. Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) was visible in the evening sky just after sunset, and so we opened already at 7 p.m. in the hope to catch a glimpse. After all, this wanderer will not come back until about 80 000 years later! It was only discovered last year. With a 90.3% full moon we had some views of the terminator on the Moon, in particular the region around craters Anaximander and Herschel. Around 8 p.m., we turned the dome toward the west. Gasps of delight erupted when the comet became clearly visible to the naked eye. Many cell phone pictures were taken. We also trained the telescope on the comet's core. It appeared only as a fuzzy bright spot. Definitely, a better experience unaided. As the evening progressed, we got a glimpse of Saturn. Unfortunately, clouds moved back in and obscured the view to Saturn and Moon. We had a brief later view of the moon, and a short visit with Albireon, a double star system with resolvable components. The forecast called for the first hard freeze of the season. In the Astro Lab, we had prepared discharge lamps for hydrogen, helium, and neon, together with handheld spectrometers. Most of the visitors came for the first time this year, and also enjoyed making craters, and playing with the phases of the moon. A little time in the lab offered a warm-up between telescope views.
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS)
This photo through the dome opening was taken by Nancy Greeley from Alexandria.
Professor of Chemistry Kevin Boyd (Aquinas College Michigan) adjusts focus for the moon viewing.
In theme with October, the moon went into the clouds in style with a lovely corona.
It was a great honor to welcome U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar to our observatory. She was interested in the Kapemni program and the work we do with student research and outreach in the collaboration between the Morris campus and the Minnesota Institute for astrophysics. The sky was overcast from the early-morning rains, but occasionally the sun made a brief appearance and there was a chance to perhaps catch a glimpse through the telescope. The senator had met with our chancellor Janet Erickson, Dean Jordan Cofer, and Vice Chancellor Brian Herman. Then the group came to the 4th floor and visited the observatory, and they also signed the observatory log. The University of Minnesota Morris Communications and Marketing specialist Sue Dieter organized this visit and had proposed to see the observatory. Central to this visit was the NSF-funded Kapemni program. Senator Klobuchar is interested in learning about the effect of funding from the National Science Foundation on the ground. The Kapemni grant has a huge impact not only on individual students, but also on campus and community at large. The grant is due for renewal in February of 2025. The pictures below were taken by Sue Dieter. The respective news article can be found here.
From left to right: Dean Cofer, Chancellor Erickson, Senator Klobuchar, Prof. Boyd, Prof. Harris, Vice Chancellor Herman
Maybe there's a glimpse of the sun?
A conversation about the role of the observatory in education and outreach.
As part of the activities in the Kapemni program, we often invite speakers on interesting topics in astronomy and physics to the Morris Campus. Dr Lindsay Glesener is a heliophysicist who studies the sun, in particular with respect to its X-ray emissions. She is an Associate Professor in the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics in the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota. Lindsay also is part of the group of faculty on the Kapemni Project, a collaborative, NSF-funded initiative between Morris and the Twin Cities to create a pathway for Native American students to enter into the field of astrophysics.
Highlight of her visit was her presentation on "Exploring the mysteries of the sun: Explosions on our nearest star". The lecture was held in the evening in the Science Auditorium. About 45 people from campus and the larger community attended the lecture. We learned about projects to place an X-ray camera with higher resolution into orbital space to capture the behavior of solar flares. The connection between solar activity and Earth's space weather extends beyond the appearance of Aurorae. The intense fluctuations in the magnetic field in earth-near space can influence satellite activity, communications, and in particular the power grid. Imaging the active regions of the sun in different wavelength yields different kinds on information that enhances our understanding of the solar processes. Lindsay reported on her group's research campaign in Alaska earlier this year, using sounding rockets launched into suborbital space during an ongoing solar flare event. Her research group has successfully collected data for a couple of instances of solar flares. The launch videos were impressive to watch. Data evaluation and publication will take some time.
In the afternoon, the observatory was open for the public to look at the solar surface. It was a day of high sunspot activity on the face of the sun. Just the day before, the sun had released a giant X7.1 flare from the large active region on the southern part. One day later, it was topped with an X9 flare. We were not very successful focusing on the sunspots with the telescope. Atmospheric turbulence, vision challenges between bright sunlight and darker view in the eye piece, as well as some inexperience made it harder to spot the sunspot through the telescope. Eclipse glasses and the Sunspotter device on the side still allowed visitors to see the active region. We had at least 25 visitors in the observatory for this event, including people from town - grandparents and children.
Lindsay also visited with the Dean and Division Chair, as well as with students of the Science and Math Division. Many good conversations were had, about the sun, about plans for the continuation of the Kapemni program, and about the nuts and bolts of teaching and learning.
Below, you can find some pictures from the day.
Spot the Sunspot in the observatory
Conversations, food, and presentation
We finally tried out the big 16-inch solar filter, that attaches to the front of the telescope. The material of the filter is the same as used in eclipse glasses: not transparent except for the extremely intense direct solar radiation, and even then the sun appears only as a dark red circle. We managed to find a few sunspots, using the Sunspotter in tandem with the telescope. How do you align a telescope with the sun? Not by looking through it! No - we used the shadow of the finderscope to train the big tube on the sun, and then the view in the view finder (always double-checking for the big filter!) to surf the surface of the sun.
We are welcoming a special guest on campus: Associate Professor Lindsay Glesener from the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics will give a public lecture
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 7 p.m. Science Auditorium on the Morris campus
"Exploring the Mysteries of the Sun: Explosions on our closest Star"
Between 4 and 5:30 pm, we will open the observatory, put the big solar filter on, and invite you to view the sun through the telescope.
Solar filter on the front of the telescope.
Align the shadow of the finderscope through a piece of paper to train the telescope onto the sun.
Find the sunspots or tehe rim of the sun to focus.
The observatory had many visitors. Thirty signed in, but I guess we had about 40 people visiting. Several were repeat visitors, most were students from campus. Viewing conditions were perfect for bright objects, with just a bit of high-altitude smoke dispersed in the atmosphere. The Moon presented as a waxing crescent, allowing us to view the terminator region around Mare Serenitatis and southern craters like Maurolycus and Clairaut. We had a chance to test various eye pieces as well, giving a varied view of the lunar landscape. Nova is a talented optical experimenter, leading to clear views and well-aligned telescope settings. There was a bit of lunar mambo-jumbo to do in the astro lab. Expecting a different audience, we had crater-making, orbital magic, and the models of Mars, Venus, and Moon out on the tables. As the view to the moon deteriorated in the lower atmosphere, we trained the telescope to Saturn. The view was sublime, and not comparable to our camera images from the week before! Visually, one could distinguish the rings, the stripes, and even several of Saturn's satellites (with some patience and targeted search). Many amazed noises were heard in the dome that night. Perhaps, they will become a choral piece, given that professor and composer Nate Froebe was there and taking notes.
We may have to advertise better in town. All visitors were campus visitors. I noted no townies.
We formed the observatory squad, currently consisting of 5 students and one faculty. Five of us came together on this very clear night to train everybody on the use of the observatory and telescope for open nights, and for the use of the camera system for photography and research. Ethan trained Caden, Nova, and Josh on the procedures and tricks for visual observing through an eye piece, as well as on the use of the CMOS camera and filters. Everybody learned about focusing, aligning, and finding the right camera settings. We discussed possible expansions and improvements, and sized up the work that could be done with respect to better imaging, such as mastering image stacking and revisiting telescope collimation. Saturn was up in time for us to try and take images. Cheers erupted when the rings became visible on the computer screen.
If you are interested in joining the Observatory Squad, please get in touch with Sylke Boyd (sboyd@morris.umn.edu).
Thirty-two visitors signed the Telescope Log that evening, and almost certainly there were a few more. It was a lively night on the 4th floor. Most visitors were students, and some staff of the university. We viewed Deneb and later the rising moon. Unfortunately, the andromeda galaxy was obscured by low haze. Clouds moved in fairly quickly around 10:45 pm. However, activities in moon craters and lunar orbit magic entertained those who waited for more telescope turns. Trekky T-Shirts and moon-viewing to Star Wars music made this quite memorable.
View to the observing platform in the dome, with a visitor on a ladder to view Deneb. Photo by liz thomson
The dome opening and the telescope. Some clouds are already moving through. Photo by liz thomson
Two students discussing how the telescope works in the hallway. Photo by liz thomson.
The McNair Program and the Morris ACE office invited for a Showcase of summer student research as part of welcome week on campus. The event was held in Oyate Hall in the afternoon. Twelve posters were presented, ranging in topic from cultural identity in piano music to an analysis of gardening staaarategies in terms of biodiversity. Ethan Schmitz presented a poster about the observatory work over the summer. Some pictures from the event can be seen below.
The Kapemni program is a collaboration between faculty from the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics and the Morris campus. A new website for the Kapemni program introduces several aspects of this program.
The NSF is funding this effort to increase diversity in the science community, in particular physics and astrophysics. Both fields are dominated by people of European and Asian descent. The problem with that lies in a variety of unintended effects on the field. Decisions on observatory locations, for example, are often made based on technical, political, and economical factors. That has lead to conflicts with indigenous communities on whose land these amazing instruments were placed. One prime example is the Keck telescope in Hawaii. Since the decisions on large scientific endeavors often can not be detached from socio-economic factors, it is of importance that as many voices as possible are heard. Representation matters! One tangible example of such targeted effort is the increase of women PhDs in the physical sciences. Women now are earning about 22% of new physics PhDs, up from 10% in 1990. This has a noticeable effect on the culture in the field.
The goal of our partnership is to create a pathway for Native American students to enter into the field of astrophysics. The statistical data from the American Physical Society show that physics Ph.D.s by indigenous people are almost not there, lying between 0 and 2 (out of several thousand over a five-year span).
The Morris campus offers a tuition waiver for Native American students, due to its painful history as a Boarding School. This tuition waiver is more general than the one offered by the University of Minnesota system at large. Hence, Morris's student population includes a fairly large group of Native American students from all backgrounds. Morris is a perfect place to create a pathway into physics and astrophysics for underrepresented groups.
The Kapemni program has laid out the following strategies:
Reach out to new students on campus to encourage engagement in physics and mathematics. The work with the Gateway program, and sessions with the NASS Morris1001 freshmen sections are part of this. Getting the observatory back into operation and use it actively for outreach is another part.
Create cohorts, and support Morris students for one semester on the Twin Cities campus. This is for any student in the physical sciences and computer science who is interested in taking specialized astrophysics classes in the cities. Kapemni will support housing and travel costs, as well as provide a stipend. These students return to Morris for the following semester and serve as "ambassadors" for the next cohort. Amaya Terry' 25 is our first such Kapemni student. She spent the spring'24 semester studying astrophysics, and now is working on a summer research project with Claudia Scarlata.
Provide attractive research opportunities, and support student research. The Kapemni program provides support for research students. For example, Joseph Erdrich and Amaya Terry both were supported by this program through the summer of 2024. Scientists all have started somewhere, needed encouragement, learned the messiness of research work, had the experience of the power of their imagination and mind to move things forward. Student research serves a unique place in education. It is one of the most influential things a student can do during their undergraduate time. It sets confidence, direction, new knowledge, and gratification.
Bring cutting-edge seminars and events in astrophysics to Morris. Part of encouragement arises from meeting the scientists who work in the field. This seminar program has brought us talks by Pat Kelly on gravitational lensing, by Vuk Mandic on gravitational waves, by Jim Rock on indigenous people's sky knowledge. There will be more in the next few months. The visits include meetings with students and faculty in Morris, sometimes shoptalk on various things like the telescope, etc.
Support the physics and astronomy -related infrastructure in Morris. This point is the reason for this news item. One of the goals of the Kapemni program was to revive the Morris telescope for outreach and for student research. I think we are on the right way.
Not a bad end to telescope summer for us at the University of Minnesota Morris Observatory. This is M51 and M51a, the Whirlpool Galaxy interacting with a small dwarf galaxy close to Ursa Major, in constellation Canes Venatici, taken through the UMM telescope with a QHY CMOS camera. This is our first true galaxy image. We need to learn to work the gain properly, and get the timing better. But it also indicates that we got the telescope alignment almost perfectly the other night, the new focuser is great, and the telescope tracks quite nicely. This image is a 60-second exposure with a full-visual filter (no IR or UV). I think we can work with this. Much more experimentation in exposure, gain, focus, and post-processing is needed.
The new Morris students in the Gateway program come to Morris for the summer before college to prepare for the challenges of college life. The Kapemni program is an NSF-funded program that arises from a collaboration to encourage the participation of Native American Students in Astrophysics, established between faculty at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics (MIfA) on the Twin Cities campus, and faculty in the physics and computer science disciplines at Morris. The name of the program, Kapemni, is the Dakota word for "to twist", and is used for the point on the teepee where the poles are connected. The Kapemni symbol connects the earth and sky teepees at the apex - "As above so below". A Kapemni is foremost a symbol of connection of different worlds, perhaps sky and earth, or spirit and real world, or one place and another.
This program sponsored a trip for the Gateway and Stellar students to the Twin Cities, and a visit in the Science Museum. Professor emeritus Jim Rock, University of Minnesota Duluth, guided a planetarium show, a lunch-and-learn event, and a tour through the Maya and "We Stay and We Go" exhibit in the Science Museum. We also visited Mounds Park in St. Paul and learned about the significance of the mounds for astronomical observations. Dinner in the Space Aliens Grill was a fitting closure on the day.
This event had many organizers and supporters:
our own Gateway and Stellar leaders, Clement Loo, Jasmine Grey, and Stellar Leader Liz Johnson
The Kapemni program
Jim Rock, Dakota astronomer and main leader of the day's events
the Science Museum of Minnesota
Vuk Mandic and Sylke Boyd, as the faculty organizers
We also welcomed a special guest: Joel Weisberg, professor emeritus from Carleton College, and one of the fathers of LIGO. Photos from the day can be found below.
With the telescope still in imperfect alignment, Ethan Schmitz and Sylke Boyd set out to train it on the Hercules Globular Cluster. This star congregation of about half a million stars is 22 200 lightyears away, located within the plane of the Milky Way. It is one of dozens known globular clusters, in the Milky Way galaxy, and the most famous one. Individual stars were first resolved in the 1770s, before the use of film. So we hoped to find it. However, even with the help of astrometry.net (an AI-supported astronomical navigation website), it took us about two hours to find M13 within the field of view of the camera. As out first deep-sky object, we were elated and took many pictures.
[QHY268M]
Gain=150
Exposure=45.000s
QHY On-Camera Filter Wheel=RGB G2
TimeStamp=2024-07-25T04:39:53.6942669Z
One can make out that outer stars show more reddish hue, being older and cooler than some of the inner stars. This is still the beginning of the color work.
Late at night, we met with a group of 20 Gateway students to look at the moon through the telescope. Outside observation was overruled due to mosquitoes. We replaced it with some activities in the lab: making moon craters, and learning about the lunar orbit.
Many great questions were asked, about the origin of the moon, the appearance of lunar maria versus cratered regions, the role of the moon for living systems, and much more. Craters appear mostly circular - why? As one of the visitors put it: It's just like the ring-waves on water around an impact.
The pictures shown here were taken by Kari Adams.
Clear skies, and a waxing gibbous moon? Let's do it!
The alignment of the telescope was still off by about 0.5 degrees. That made imaging deep-sky objects difficult since they usually will not even be seen in the guider scope of the SCT, and lie outside of the field of view of the camera. However, the lunar surface is unmistakable, and offered an easy target. You can find some of the images show-cased in the 4th-floor hallway of the science building.
The images are taken with 5-millisecond exposure times and narrow-band filters. Combining images comes with special challenges in exposure and subtle moon movements.
We had visitors from Minnesota State University in Moorhead: physics prof Matt Craig and his research students. Matt is the director of the astronomical observatory in Moorhead. We learned a lot today about astrometry.net, flats and darks, telescope alignment, handling data transfer, the Seestar telescope, and many other nuts and bolts of observatory practicalities. The sharing of experiences with the technical, software, and administrative aspects of campus observatories turned out to be encouraging and enlightening for all.
The visit was supported by the Science and Math Alumni Fund.
On Jun 24, 2024, finally all pieces had arrived to mount the camera to the telescope. It required a custom-fabricated adapter to attach to the backside of the telescope one side, and to the distancer rings and guider camera ring on the other side. The assembly of the chain
adapter - distancer rings - guider camera - filter wheel- CMOS
took some time since some parts needed to be re-ordered and redesigned before perfect fit was achieved. The tasks of the day were now to
(a) mount the rig to the telescope and balance the telescope using counter weights, and
(b) adjust the distancer rings such that the CMOS sensor would be in the focal plane of the telescope.
A systematic test of the changes in size of diffraction disk soon indicated that a 1-mm spacer will put the focus in range for the camera sensor. We focused on the region around Arcturus and manually bracketed in the sharpest image we could find. The field of view for the camera sensor is about 0.3 degrees in angle. We captured stars up to magnitude 14 in this image of 5-second exposure. With more experience in focusing and camera settings, this will likely even improve.
The CMOS camera and SharpCap software allow to adjust every aspect of the sensor operation: gain, exposure time, sensitivity, etc. It will take a lot of systematic testing to find out perfect combinations of settings for different sky objects and conditions.
Using the RGB filters, we took a few series of monochrome filtered images. The next task was to combine the images into a color image on the computer. This is were telescope work turns into Python programming work, and opens the doors for not only "pretty pictures", but also for a plethora of research projects in astronomy. Professor Peter Dolan provided us with a "Python Boot Camp", introducing us to astro.py and the FITS format for astrophotography.
Alas, we will move the development of tools using astro.py to a student project in fall, when we have sufficient experience in working the hardware. The color image below was produced with a rough Python code using opencv.
Thanks to Sue Dieter and Kari Adams, a very nice article about our work was published here. This article was also published by the University of Minnesota Foundation.
For two months in summer 2024, a team of four people worked on the observatory with the goals of
Repairing the telescope which had suffered from problems in its Right-Ascension gear box.
Building competency in using the telescope in outreach and research, and creating documentation in its safe use
Installing a new CMOS camera and filter wheel, including guider camera, for astrophotography and research.
This group consisted of physics students Ethan Schmitz and Joseph Erdrich, both going into their junior year in fall 24, and professors Sylke Boyd (Phys) and Peter Dolan (CSci).
This work was supported by the Kapemni Program, the Morris Academic Partnership, the Science and Math Alumni Fund, and the Physics Discipline.
The pictures below highlight some of the more technical work on the telescope during that time.
Physics faculty Laura Chajet and Sylke Boyd invited to a small lecture on the history of eclipses, as well as an eclipse party with various games and devices. Despite the rain, the eclipse party was well-attended. The sun did not poke through the clouds. However, who wouldn't like mm's? If you stand outside the science building, holding an mm in front of your eye to just cover the dome of the observatory, you have created the following size relation:
eye ball : mm : dome = Earth : Moon : Sun
in distance as well as size. Eat the mm, and do more measurements, ok?
Dr. Laura Chajet invited, organized, and hosted a group of 36 high school students from Wheaton Highschool in November. She offered a lecture and activities related to the search for exoplanets, and organized the physics club to give tours of the observatory. The telescope was not in operation at that time.
Two exciting back-to-back events took place on Wednesday, November 8. The events are sponsored by the Kapemni program, a collaboration between the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics and the Morris physics discipline. Vuk Mandic, our speaker later in the evening, is the leader of this program.
4:30 – 6:30 pm
Dakota and other Indigenous Sky-Earth Kapemni and Eclipse Relationships
Story-telling and workshop
by Jim Rock, Dakota, Professor emeritus in astronomy, University of Minnesota Duluth
Science Atrium and Sci2190
7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Observing the Universe with Gravitational Waves
Public Lecture
Vuk Mandic, Knight Professor in astrophysics, UNiversity of Minnesota Twin Cities