Visiting the STAHR observatory

\(\quad\)This Friday night, Steve Johnson and I went to the STAHR (STudent Astronomers at Harvard-Radcliffe) Loomis-Michael Observatory Open House on the \(10^{th}\) floor of the Science Center. STAHR is the student organization that has stewardship over the public telescope and offers certification classes that allow students to gain swipe access to the telescope.

\(\quad\)Steve and I showed up at 7 pm and were the first of surprisingly few visitors to arrive. To get to the Loomis-Michael Observatory, we took the Science Center elevator up to the 8th floor (where the Astronomy Lab, where TALC is held, is located). We then climbed two flights of stairs to get to enter the observatory. We then entered a cozy, domed room decorated with murals of various constellations with a giant telescope as the centerpiece. 

\(\quad\)While the telescope isn't very modern, it is still very impressive. The telescope was originally built in the 1950's and given to a boy for his \(16^{th}\) birthday. It was donated to Harvard in the 70's when the Science Center was being constructed. Since its donation coincided with the designing of the new center, it was given its own custom space on the roof and was cemented into place. It's been in the same place ever since. The majority of the telescope consists of its original components and many of its electronics have stopped working and, thus, has to be manually positioned. The telescope features a main scope, a spotter scope, a powerful laser pointer to aid in positioning, and, most impressively, a central motor that moves the telescope ever so slightly in order to offset the natural rotation of the Earth in order to keep the image steady and constant in the scope.

\(\quad\)Before we could use the telescope, the roof had to retract to reveal the clear sky above. The  retractable roof is rectangular meridian only around 4 feet in width. In order to see more of the night sky, the dome rotates to position the slit in the desired location. When the roof retracted, it started getting chilly inside the dome. Luckily, STAHR provided complimentary hot chocolate to keep us warm. The first celestial body we observed was the Orion Nebula located in the middle of Orion's club. This star nursery is incredibly young. We were able to see a good clustering stars as well as a white milky band of cosmic dust and gas. Next, the telescope was focused on Jupiter, which to naked eye appears to be an incredibly bright star. The telescope let us clearly see not only Jupiter but 4 of its moons (Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede) all in the same frame!

\(\quad\)Next, we took a quick break and went down to the deck on the \(8^{th}\) floor to check out the terrace that overlooks Annenberg and the Science Center Plaza. We were able to see some of the best views of Cambridge and Boston, as well as the spotlights that were going off around Farkas Hall that night.

\(\quad\) We finished off our night of stargazing with a look at the Pleiades. The telescope operator pointed the scope in the wrong direction so I pointed out the location of the Pleiades and he then focused it on the constellation. The telescope allowed us to see deeper into the star cluster and see many stars that aren't visible with the naked eye. The Pleiades are also relatively young, with an age of about 60-80 million years. By comparison, our sun, Sol, is about 4.6 billion years old.

\(\quad\) The STAHR Open House was a lot of fun and it was great to check out the telescope. Steve and I are applying to take telescope training classes. Hopefully we'll get in and will be able to use the telescope!