Star Night Astronomy Event, Kartchner Caverns SP, Sept. 15, 2012

the mountain in the way okay so enjoy everybody have fun it will completely go off the field that's how fast the chaning on there you go that's Saturn just above it that's what we're looking at so this is Saturn it's a big gas giant it's actually about 880 million miles away right now which is the nearest galaxy to our own galaxy to the Milky Way take about fifteen hundred years to get out like this this knob right here you can see that that focuses this IPC the eyepiece go in and out and so so yeah so if it's blurry to you go ahead and just play with the focus and we take another twenty second exposure of Milky Way Bob what is the scope looking at we're looking at Saturn you can see the Rings have a look right through here you can use your glasses if we take a look up and we look at this star it's actually a double star now that I've pointed it out if you look really hard at about two o'clock you might see a faint little second stars basically choose you all notice on your way in we have some astronomer set up in the parking lot I welcome to the bat-cave campaign we've all sorts of specials a lot of locals are specials are on the board and also up in here be sure to check out our pies they're always amazing and are having a terrible chocolate sauce over every noise it was amazing also a little levity and let it selfie on so the court is easy s enjoyed the tour today thanks at times most of the planets are stars that that appear is evidence of you know archeoastronomy so this is Casa Rinconada so a Chaco we have these key books now kiba's are circular structures that were below the ground they had a roof to him that was about ground level sometimes they projected up above the ground level a little bit you hi I'm Bob gent president of the Huachuca astronomy club from Sierra Vista Arizona I'm also one of the rim astronomers for the Arizona Park State Park System and tonight we're having our we do as semi-annual Star night here at Carson er caverns a great place for dark skies and bright stars so we have a live telescope set up and we also have the astronomers from Verde Valley here and hope you enjoy the evening Greg tell us a little bit about your scope okay this is an 8 inch Newtonian it's built by celestron 8 inch diameter mirror and is f5 meaning the focal length is five times the length of the primary mirror so I put I piece here and I can change eyepieces and change magnification change field of view I can also put a camera here and take pictures this has a computer drive so it's a clock drive Newtonian so I can actually once I get it aligned and point it to an object by dialing it in to the computer setting up right now is an obsession 18 it's an 18 inch Dobsonian type telescope the eyepiece would be here of course the mirrors are closed covered up right now but the primary mirrors in this box at the bottom and right now it's set up to move manually but later tonight I'll have a driving from this dual access drive system called the servo cat so it'll be a go to scope I'll be able to use a remote control and dial in an object on this Argo Navis digital telescope computer and then direct the telescope to wherever it wants whatever I want that's a Odyssey it was made probably at about 1967 it's five-six focal length and it's pretty fast optics but it still works excellent there's no problem create good optics what are some of the things are gonna look at tonight well we're gonna see perhaps if we can we can spot Rita Hayworth floating through the heavens but this has what what this object is here is something I made where if I'm gonna be I just put it on so that it doesn't allow dust or bugs to get in there but this this comes off and it allows us to just look at one part of the mirror which will give you a lot better definition of the craters of the moon and things like that if there is a moon I'm Ted Forte from the Huachuca astronomy club and Sierra Vista and this is just a little sixty millimeter refractor that I've set up with something called a Sun funnel this is really just a plastic funnel like you would get in Harvey this came from Walmart and this rubberized material is rear projection screen there's an eye pace eyepiece at the base of the funnel it just projects this image of the Sun onto this you can see at least the two larger sunspots and some of the smaller ones are just barely visible you have to get the right angle to see it but this is a great way to show us under kids they don't have to find it in the eyepiece you can we put them on a ladder and a bunch of them can see it at once and you can explain what you're looking at great thanks for coming down you're welcome the difference is the size of the aperture hi I'm Kim Rogowski and this is the Cochise college H alpha telescope which we bring to events such as this it shows the sun's upper atmosphere chromis fear of the Sun and Betsy this you tell us about your scope it's just a relatively simple 4-inch if 10 refractor and what sorts of things will you be looking at tonight I'm going to try to check up on some clusters and do a little bit of spectral work with it I want a spectroscope not too long ago oh I think it's fun this is the third time I've been run smaller scopes absolutely exquisite set of optics I'm really amazed I just bought this mounting for it which is a fairly easy L desmos mount very easy to work with great for kids you can turn them loose with a telescope and they just go crazy hi my name is JD Matty I'm with the astronomers of Verde Valley and what setup we have here is dedicated solar viewing equipment the smaller scope on top here the black scope actually is a normal visual telescope with a special mirror or solar filter this telescope allows you to see sunspots and then the small white scope here is a dedicated solar telescope but it sees in the red wavelength or the hydrogen-alpha wavelengths of light which allows you to see by using the special pressurized tuner the solar prominences and solar flares and surface details such as the faculty and speak eul's on the surfaces in Canada 1983 and parts of it are bent and parts of it are warped and screws are missing but it works beautifully I'm David reamer i'm with the astronomical Club astronomy club today you see my little travel scopes this is an 8 inch Schmidt Cassegrain it's set up for a solar viewing so there's a solar filter on the front that bounces off most of the light so there's just a little bit of light comes through so it's safe to of you and above it is another little telescope also set up for solar viewing this one views the Sun in just a very thin band of visible light called hydrogen-alpha so it shows as a little red orb the beauty of that is that it we're actually able to see the upper atmosphere of the Sun so you get to see things like filaments and flaring around the edges and just the beauty dynamics of the Sun that you normally can't see and white light and what sort of objects will be ah tonight all these filters come off so that it's ready for uh for the night sky and we're gonna see we'll see essentially from the core of our galaxy out on one of our galaxy's arms one of the arms of our what we think now is probably a elliptical galaxy and we'll see things like double stars stars planetary nebula diffuse nebula planetary nebula globular clusters open clusters it's almost endless great thanks for coming out thank you hi I'm Richard Bonner I'm with the astronomers of Verde Valley and this type of a telescope is a Schmidt Cassegrain type telescope this is an 8 inch go to type scope with a computer inside and by pressing menu buttons here I can actually automatically slew two different objects like planets or stars or galaxies and that type of thing eight-inch is probably a good starting type scope for a deep sky stuff it gives you enough aperture for the light that you'll need to actually see some of the dimmer objects in our sky like galaxies

Channel: AZStateParks

Views: 16,261

Rating: 4.8064518 out of 5

Keywords: Arizona State Parks, Kartchner Caverns, astronomy, Star Night, State Parks, Telescopes, Benson, Arizona, cave, science, camping, Saturn, Archaeoastronomy, hiking

Id: rAcURjehkJw

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 19 2012