Hello again, Cutler checking in again from CU. I am here to work with LASP, the laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics run CU’s largest telescope at the Sommers-Bausch Observatory on Campus. Due to weather conditions in Boulder and the recent fire smoke around the midwest, I was actually unable to work at all this week because of the visibility in the night sky. This is just one of the downsides when it comes to astrophotography! However, last Sunday night after I published my last blog, I did go into get fully certified to run the telescope once and for all!
Along with a few other grad students, the two managers of the observatory ran us through all of the procedures regarding taking photos with the telescope. For example one of the first things we did, was opening up the observatory sky panel to show the night sky. The entire observatory dome actually rotates on railroad tracks that were built in 1950 when the observatory was originally created. Other procedures included focusing the telescope onto the stars in the sky so our object would be in focus in our photos. Another was running the computers in the control room where we can tell the telescope where to point and what to take photos of. Due to having to take photos of the stars etc. at night, our shifts will only be starting at 9 PM and can go until 4 PM. That particular night, I got off at 1:30 PM!
Now that I am certified to run the telescope(which I can not only run by myself, procedure states two people must always be in the control room when it is running), I just have to wait until the could condition get better so I can use the last week of my internship to observe the night sky! Since I wasn’t working this week at all, I got a chance to catch up on SAT prep and really explore Boulder more. The photos below are from the famous flagstaff mountain lookouts:
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