Wednesday,
March 13, 2002
So
now it's the third night of the trip, and things are really moving along.
People are much more familiar with the equipment and are getting some
really good pictures. I finally got a picture of the Great Nebula in Orion
(M42) and tried to take some pictures of the Rosette Nebula; but it turns
out that the Nebula is too large to image in any of the telescopes that
they have here. However, Mr. Rice remembered that they had had one guest
who had brought special equipment with him and spent a week imaging the
nebula, so he gave me the picture that that astronomer had taken. It was
really beautiful!
I headed in at 11, since none of the objects I wanted to image would be up for a few hours, but the winds picked up so much that they had to close the telescopes. The winds are still pretty high. Up on the mountain this morning the wind was so strong I was nearly blown over. Hopefully it'll die down by this evening. Since I got so much sleep I was going to try the Messier Marathon. And then at about 4, I should be able to get a good picture of the Dumbell Nebula.
Betsy
'02
(photo of the Orion Nebula taken by Betsy)