Jupiter And Its Moons As Seen In a Tiny Telescope
For my astronomy class I conduct a lab which is streamed from my observatory/office this is what we saw
Teaching pays the bills for an academic scientist even research is done to serve educating students. For my astronomy classes I have for years tried to get them real experiences of observation. For my classes at Elmhurst University I have done this via online streaming from my home office/observatory/dance studio. Last night I took some observations of Jupiter. Here is what I saw.
Here is how I did it. In this first video on the first day, I did struggle with getting everything set up and aligned. One issue was that the GPS did not lock on correctly. Plus, I couldn’t get the telescope set up and aligned in a timely fashion before clouds rolled in. This almost makes me want to pay for one of those auto-aligning tools.
In this second video I did get the images above using my Samsung Note 20 as a astronomical camera. Your cell phone camera is likely the best digital camera you can ask for. It is your best webcam with the right app. Your best video camera. A dedicated webcam or astro cam for the telescope would offer a bit more ease of use but not a better image.
This is some of the down and dirty of what astronomy can be.
Such is why for research I prefer theoretical astrophysics. I can do that warm in bed with a nice cup of Earl Grey tea and paper and pencil.
What I expect students to learn from this is …. I can’t finish this thought since if I do, I am liable to get a number of lab reports which are a close copy of whatever I say. At a minimum even if they miss the big points of this, they at least get the experience of observation when they use their cell phone camera to observe.
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