Telescopes are light collectors. Ideally, they will collect the light from the sky (stars, planets, etc.). However, if you use them near man-made light then they collect that light instead, which makes viewing things in the heavens difficult. Since I live in the middle of a major city, we had to find a darker spot to do our viewing. Luckily, my parents live outside the city!
Some friends joined us for our observations on a dark dirt road near my parents' house. It was cold, which is also a good thing for getting better viewing conditions, but the kids were not thrilled with the cold. Ha Ha Our little desert rats don't know what cold is!
Unfortunately, it was new moon, so we couldn't look at the moon, but we saw many stars and found Jupiter and three of its moons. Very exciting! I found a picture online that looks very much like what we saw through the telescope.
The dark and light bands called belts and zones are different types of gases that move around the planet in opposite directions. We were able to clearly see the different shades through the telescope.
My lecture professor's husband is the other Astronomy lecture professor. He is the one who checked out the telescope to me. I had Megan with me when I picked it up. As I signed my life away for this expensive (new!) telescope, he jokingly said that if anything happens to the telescope, or I don't bring it back, he and his wife would get to keep Megan.
We joked about that all weekend, especially when the kids were rough-housing around the telescope. "Be careful or we'll have to send Megan to live with my teacher!" I guess I need to be more careful about saying stuff like that because Monday morning Megan reminded me to take back the telescope and then asked, "You wouldn't really send me to live with them, would you?"
Clarcy and Emily
Jacob and Heather
(Pictures were taken AFTER we were done. Heather did wear a jacket earlier.)
Abby and Megan
(I sure hope Abby didn't throw out her back!)
The girls with Grandpa and Grandma K
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