AST195 PROJECT: SOME BASIC OBSERVING EQUIPMENT

This is a very simple, very easy, but very important project for doing night-time observations.

If you want to observe anything other than the moon, you need your eyes to become and stay adapted to the dark. The human eye adapts to the dark in two ways -- it opens the pupil wider, and it produces chemicals that enhance light sensitivity. The pupil widens quickly, but the chemicals take a while (as much as half an hour) to make, and they are destroyed by light. If you use a flashlight to take notes or make drawings, you will hurt your dark adaptation every time you turn the light on, and it will be hard to see much through the telescope.

However, the dark adaptation of your eye is not destroyed by red light. So, to take notes in the dark without ruining your vision, you need something to make notes on (a clipboard), and a red flashlight. All the cool astronomers have a red flashlight and a clipboard, you know!

So, your assignment is to get a red light and clipboard, and show them to your professor (by video, of course) for inspection. The light must be sturdy -- you don't want the red part falling off in the dark. A common means of making a sturdy red flashlight is to take an ordinary flashlight and paint the lens with red (not pink) nail polish or with a red Sharpie or other permanent marker. However, there are plenty of other methods as well. But the light that comes out of it must be truly red.

You also need some help in finding things in the dark. So the next thing to do is to get some equipment for your phone. I recommend downloading a star-finder app for your phone, such as Google Sky (freely available but perhaps not the best -- the really fancy ones have “augmented reality” in which the app shows the sky as seen by the camera on your phone, and then adds identifying information to it). Some are free; those that are not free are generally inexpensive. Choose one that works on your phone and your budget. You can also declare that you are going to be “old school” and just use the finder charts that I provide. That is OK, but here is one place where a little tech is a nice thing.

And one final item regarding observing equipment: In AST 195 all students have the same telescope, which raises the possibility of students getting their equipment mixed up with that belonging to someone else (even on-line students). I encourage you to label all your equipment. However, it is a requirement of this project for you to indelibly label the two largest pieces of equipment -- the telescope tube and the tripod. For example, use a pointed metal object to scratch your initials into the tube and into the tripod at the locations shown in the photos on the next page (I used a paper clip to do this, see below—it does no harm to the scope). Thus you also need to mark your tube and tripod, and show this to your professor via video.

· The video must start with you facing the camera and saying “This is Jane/Joe in Astronomy 195 lab, and this is my video for the Basic Observing Equipment project”.

· The video must show your red light (turn it on and shine it on a piece of white paper in a dark-ish room).

· The video must show your clipboard.

· The video must show your labelled tube and tripod.

· And lastly, tell me what star finder app you chose, and what you think of it. If you are opting for the “old school” method, just say that.

If you have all this, and the light is truly RED (not pink, not speckled, not orange), then you get an easy 100% on this project.

TUBE -- mark your initials just to the right of the Meade logo, as shown.

TRIPOD -- mark your initials on the main support, as shown.