What Eric & I Saw at the Night Discovery Program at Kitt Peak Observatory

After learning how to read planispheres, our group went outside.  All the photos on this blog post are from the list Lucas and Carmen posted on the Kitt Peak blog, which were taken at a higher resolution.

The Milky Way...

Earth is located on
one of the Galaxy's
spiraling arms.
.

We located Cassiopeia.

Polaris, the North Star

The Zodiacal Light is the faint, warm glow

marking the plane of our Solar System.

Eric saw a satellite.  I didn't.

Binoculars revealed more of the night sky.  Cassiopeia and  the Zodiacal Light were more visible. The Milky Way had faint, glowing stars in its "mist."

The Pleiades (Seven Sisters)

 "popped out."

There's more than seven bright

stars in the constellation.

Double-Double (Lyra) looks 

like two stars when viewed 

with binoculars.

A telescope shows the two

sets of double stars.

The Andromeda Galaxy is

 a beautiful disk.

Carmen took our group to the Visitor Center's observatory.

When viewed with a small
telescope Almach made up of
a blue star & a yellow star.






The blue star is actually three stars so close together that together, they appear to be a single star.

The Orion Nebula

That green object is

Uranus.

The explosion that created the

Crab Nebula was observed

Chinese astronomers

 in 1054 AD.

Blue Snowball is a

planetary nebula.

All too soon the Night Discovery Program came to an end.  Eric and I learned about astronomical research at Kitt Peak Observatory and the night sky.  

Our group walked along the wide white stripe on the road to our cars.  We slowly drove to down the mountain to mile marker 11 and Lucas removed the red cloths that covered our headlights.  We start our two hour drive back St. David.