Dear Planeteers, Thanks for joining last night's star party on the roof of Peyton hall. The sky cleared up around 8:30pm, and we had a great time. Here is what we did: We went through the basic northern constellations, such as Ursa Minor (Small Dipper), Ursa Major (Big Dipper), Lyra (with the star Vega), Cygnus (the swan, with Deneb), Aquila (the eagle, with Altair), Pegasus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Sagittarius. I pointed out some bright stars: Arcturus, Polaris, Vega-Deneb-Altair (great summer triangle), Kochab, Alcor-Mizar, Capella, among many others. We discussed our own motion: Earth's rotation, Earth's orbit, the Sun's motion in the Galaxy, the galactic rotation, and our path toward the Andromeda Galaxy. We pointed out the Galactic Center toward Sagittarius, right behind the math tower. We talked about the colors and distances of stars. Using the 14" diameter Dobsonian/Newtonian reflector, we observed Alcor-Mizar, the famous binary (well, sextuple). This is at 82.8 light years (ly) from us (I mistakenly quoted 60): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizar_and_Alcor We observed Messier 13 (M13), the globular cluster in Hercules. It was well resolved by the telescope, and we saw hundreds of faint stars in a globular formation. This is at 22,000 ly from us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_13 We observed M57, the ring nebula, which is a planetary nebula; material that was blown off by a dying star. For more information, check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_Nebula We used a nebular (called OIII) filter, and the view was much better. We chatted about narrow-band filters and contrast. Another planetary nebula we observed through high magnification was the Dumbbell Nebula, or M27: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbbell_Nebula Curiously, this was the object displayed by the astronomy picture of the day, on the same day!: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140914.html We also observed another globular cluster (in addition to M13), namely Messier 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_2 We observed M11, or the Wild Duck Cluster, which is an open cluster in the summer Milky Way. This cluster is relatively young (only 220 million years, which is about one revolution for the Sun around the center of the Galaxy), and it is 6200 ly away. These stars all formed together from a collapsing gas cloud. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Duck_Cluster A similar pair of open clusters is Chi and h Persei: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Cluster , which is in between Perseus and Cassiopeia. This is one benchmark object to observe for our groups. Curiously, these clusters are not in Messier's catalogue, but, instead, they are in the New General Catalogue (NGC), and bear the designations of NGC 869/NGC 884. We saw Andromeda Galaxy and one of its companion galaxies, called M32: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy We noted that up till 1925, it was thought that Andromeda is a small gas cloud that belongs to our galaxy. It was only after Edwin Hubble identified Cepheid stars in it when it become widely accepted that it is an 'island universe'. The photons we saw through the telescope have been on their way toward Peyton hall for 2 million years. Encouraged by this, we moved on to observe M81 and M81, two near-by galaxies outside our local group. M81 is a nice grand spiral galaxy, whereas M82 is a cigar shaped star burst galaxy. Students were allowed to move the telescope with the computer control between these two objects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_81 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_82 I quoted that they are 10 million ly away, but I now realize that the correct distance is 12 Mly. Sorry for the inaccuracy. After these remote objects, we moved back to our 'backyard', and observed Uranus, which was easy to distinguish from background stars, as it had a nice yellow-green color and a small disk. We used magnifications up to 400x. After a little struggle we also found Neptune, which looked pale green in the eyepiece (but not blue). It was marginally more extended than a stellar object. We saw its moon, Triton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_%28moon%29 We used a pair of binoculars to observe the Pleiades, which is another open cluster. I expect that by the end of this course all of you will know where to find the Pleiades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades In general, we learned how to perform visual observations, e.g. - never touch the eyepiece - do not talk while looking in a telescope - both eyes open, one covered with your hands - no drinks/food in your other hand - no iphones and ipads that are all super-bright and damage your night vision. I thank everyone for joining, including our dedicated OAs, and also those who stayed around till the very end and helped wrapping up things! Best regards, Gaspar Bakos