Armed and Ready :)

Last Thursday, me and my 1st year research assistants were preparing for doing my thesis. We had nothing to do for the mean time so we sat down and ate Mr.Chips. Suddenly, we saw Jupiter clear out from the clouds, so we immediately rushed to assemble the department's Celestron 8 (which we call Big Bertha).

When we focused on Jupiter, we were able to notice the Great Red Spot (Whoa!). After Jupiter, we looked around and trailed on to the Orion nebula. I recalled the view of the Trapezium from UP, and wanted to share it to them. Our telescope wasn't able to resolve the image well enough, but still we could distinguish the four baby stars surrounded by a cloud of interstellar gas.

Later that evening, Saturn came out and we all enjoyed looking at its rings (We even forgot about the thesis). Unfortunately, clouds began to cover up our view. So we began doing nothing.

I decided to check on the old telescopes that were in the cabinet (talk about dusty). I looked around for their mounts and found three equatorial mounts, I don't know which mount was for which telescope. Later, I was able to figure out which telescope belonged to which mount. Unfortunately, they were quite rusty and dusty. We set up one of the old telescopes and I thought my assistants how to do tracking.

We were all excited about having all 5 department telescopes functional that my assistants gave the old ones names after big bertha. One was given Berting, the other was called Bertot (i actually called it Milk shake).

Now that all 5 telescopes are ready, we are excited for our next stargazing session! :)