Category Archives: news

Astrophotography Coming Soon

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Our Introductory Astronomy (Physics 251) students were observing the Moon during their laboratory session last night which included a telescope viewing. Many of them took photos of the telescope’s Moon view by holding their phone-cameras up to the eyepiece. As you can see in the photo below, with a steady hand a nice photo can be obtained.

MoonByAlexStavert

The waxing crescent Moon as seen through the UPEI telescope on October 10, 2013. (Photo by Alex Stavert)

We’re hoping to offer some astrophotography opportunities (that won’t require such steady hands!) at some of our future public viewings. We’ve just received an Orion SteadyPix Deluxe Camera Mount to fit over our new telescope’s eyepiece.

The camera attachment post on the lateral bar will screw into the base of most cameras, allowing the camera to rest in front of the telescope eyepiece. We’ve tried fitting the device onto our telescope today and now need to test it out with some cameras before it’s ready to make its public debut.

CameraMount.jpgSo, with any luck, you’ll soon see a notice on this site for a bring-your-own-camera public viewing.

Upcoming viewings for August 2013 to March 2014

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An issue we’ve had with our Saturday viewings is there seems to be many occasions when the weather is overcast/raining/storming/etcetera on Saturday while Sunday is clear.  We recognize that Saturday evening would still be a better night for many people, especially those with children still in elementary school, so we’re enacting a scheduling format change.

The new policy, starting in September, will be to schedule viewings on the SECOND Saturday of the month (instead of the 3rd) and then to have Sunday evening as a “rain-date” if the Saturday is cancelled.  We could still have overcast skies both evenings, but there’s a greater chance that one of the viewings will run.  We will focus on setting up viewings in September – April and then only run viewings in the summer if there is a particular event or a group-organized viewing.

The August viewing with be slightly anomalous as due to a scheduling issue, we are offering it on August 24th instead of August 17th.

Viewings August 2013 to April 2014 (Dates in red corrected August 21, 2013)

Month, Year Saturday Sunday(only possible if Saturday cancelled) Start to End Time
August, 2013 24 N/A 8:30-10:30pm
September, 2013 14 15 7:45-9:45pm
October, 2013 12 13 7:00-9:00pm
November, 2013 9 10 7:00-9:00pm
January, 2014 11 12 7:00-9:00pm
February, 2014 8 9 7:00-9:00pm
March, 2014 8 9 7:45-9:45pm

 

Farewell and Hello

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The UPEI Physics is saying “Farewell”, potentially forever, to our Meade 14″ RCX 400. It’s always had electronic issues during cold weather, but now it’s having electronics issues with it’s focusing.  As the people who attended our last monthly viewing can attest, a telescope that’s meant to be focus controlled electronically is very hard to use when that’s not working.

RCX400

We’ll be taking apart the telescope to see if we can fix it. It’s not supported by Meade anymore (legacy product).  If it can be fixed, we’ll bring it back up to the dome.

In the meantime, we’d like to say “Hello” to our new Meade LX80 Multi-Mount with 8″ f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.  Received as a kind donation from Pat Sinnott, it’s smaller so we’ll have more room to maneuver in the dome, has a manual focus.  As it’s more portable, we’ll have the potential to take it out in the field or set up daytime solar viewings when we get the necessary safety filters. With the right optics, we should be able to see almost everything we saw with our 14″ RCX400 and potentially be able to add more features such as astrophotography. It’s set up right now and we’re doing preliminary testing. We hope to have it up and running by our July 20th Saturday viewing.

We’re also saying “Hello” to our new WordPress hosted website.  We’ve got some ideas on promoting astronomy in general and astronomy at UPEI.  In cooperation with the Charlottetown RASC (Royal Astronomical Society of Canada), we’re planning changes for our public viewing structure for the fall of 2013.  More news posted as it’s confirmed. We hope you enjoy the new site and that we are able to showcase the UPEI astronomy events.