Last night was pretty fantastic. My friend KTCaperton happens to go to Wesleyan where she’s working towards an astronomy masters degree. Last night she gave J.Marzullo and myself a tour of the facilities there and then let us use one of the telescopes to comb the skies.
The telescope we used was a 16 inch reflector: this size telescope is officially big. It was even located in one of those telescope domes that has the rotating top and the giant window that opens to the sky. it was extremely impressive. It was computerized too, so you’d enter in what you wanted to see and it would move itself to point towards it. We were having a bit of trouble getting that feature to work, but overall it was still an excellent time.
What’s it feel like to stand inside an observatory pointing a giant piece of metal and mirrors into the sky, even though you have very little idea as to what you’re looking at?
super-awesome.