Daily Image
24-03-2014
Stargazing event organized by the PV
| Submitter: | Lesley Goudbeek / Albert van Duin / Marchel Gerbers |
| Description: | On Wednesday 5th of March, the ASTRON/JIVE employees club (PV) organised a star-gazing event for (retired) employees and their families. Since the celebration of the Landelijke Sterrenkijkdagen (National Stargazing Days) was scheduled for the subsequent weekend, the timing could not have been more perfect. When the Sun had set and the darkness had set in, everyone ventured outside to be greeted by 4 operators and their optical telescopes. Through these, people connected(*) with objects like Jupiter, the Orion nebula, and Earth's lovely natural satellite the Moon. The highlight of the evening was the supernova (exploding star) in the M82 "cigar" galaxy. All the while, operators, astronomers and other cognoscenti shared their deep knowledge of the cosmos with each other and the visitors. The pictures show the M51 "whirlpool nebula", the Pleiades open cluster and reflection nebula, and the galaxy M82 with the supernova (the bright spot towards the top left). Since prolonged exposure to the night air chills the human body, everyone was invited to take a coffee break inside the Dwingeloo radio telescope. Here one could admire the newly restored and refurbished equipment. The CAMRAS team had set up a live audio stream of radio noise emitted by a pulsar many light-years away, received by the radio telescope itself. The intranet site of the PV shows the activities for this year. See: https://intranet.astron.nl/commissies/pv/pv-activiteiten-lopend-jaar/pv-activiteiten-lopend-jaar Special thanks to: Albert van Duin, Paul Boven, Roy Smits and Harm Munk for exerting themselves for this event. (*) It is a curious but well-established fact that actually seeing an astronomical object through a telescope gives a (much) more acute sensation than seeing it as a picture in a book or on a screen. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON / A. van Duin |
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