Starry Night

We were able to get on the radio telescope again this morning. It's a lot of fun. We also heard a lot from Dr. Steve Levin. He's a scientist with JPL and really knows his stuff! He'll be working with the Juno program with NASA. Juno is the only NASA mission that isn't an acronym.
After class, we all went to an Italian restaurant for dinner and then went to the Victor Valley College Planetarium. The planetarium director set the telescope so that we each could see Jupiter (and four of the moons!), Neptune, Uranus, the Andromeda galaxy, Barnard's star, Double Double (a binary star where the two stars actually orbit each other), M13 galaxy, and several other starry wonders. It was amazing! He also takes pictures by attaching his digital camera to the telescope lens and setting shutter speed. He then stacks the images he takes in Photo Shop to make the pictures. He had so many incredible pictures, including the horsehead nebula. I'd only seen that nebula in a Hubble image. We also think we saw the ISS going across the night sky.
Tomorrow, we learn about QVS (quasars), Spitzer, LCROSS, and Uranus.
This entire workshop has been absolutely incredible. Some of the stuff has been way over my head, but I'm sure it will all come together eventually. It's a lot of fun and it's not like anything I've done before. It'll really be fun for students, too.