The weather finally broke

After two very cloudy and stormy nights, we finally had some nice weather for our workshop participants last night. Above is a picture of Saturn I took with my point-and-click camera at the start of the night.

I felt bad that we closed down a little early. It looked like some thunderstorms were coming in, and with 20 people standing outside on top of a mountain, I just didn't feel comfortable. But the storms skirted us, and the sky became crystal clear again. But by that time, our teachers had left.

Still, they got three hours of observing, and the weather is looking promising (though still quite iffy) for tonight.

Day 2 of our science teacher workshop

Participant Jesse Whitaker explores the properties of light.

Here with another special report from the McDonald Observatory "Age of the Milky Way" teacher continuing education workshop is participant Dan Maloney:

Day 2 Summary – Yesterday was another very informative day for the teacher workshop. The group was led by our mentor teacher Jody through several classroom activities. The first was on the life cycle of different stars, and the second was on light spectrum analysis. For the life cycle of stars students blow up different colored balloons to learn what they eventually “explode” into. Students will definitely be surprised by how the death of a star occurs. For the light spectrum activity students examine how different colors of the spectrum change under various conditions. Both activities foster inquiry based learning and are suitable for a wide range of science and astronomy classrooms.

For the second night we have been not able to get in any observing time due to the weather but we are very optimistic that the weather will clear before the end of the workshop. Despite the weather we have been busy learning about white dwarfs and the group has started our preliminary analysis on white dwarfs using the imaging software program called ImageJ.

The group was also treated to a tour of the 82 inch Otto Struve telescope, which was built in 1938. The telescope is engineering masterpiece that is fully functional and serves astronomer in a wide variety of astronomical research. Today we will be touring the Hobby-Eberly telescope. I can’t wait.

Cloud happens

Tonight has not been a fun night at the telescope. At sunset, it was completely cloudy, but the cloud forecasts from the Clear Sky Chart claimed it would clear by 1am, so we hunkered down. Within an hour, the skies overhead cleared, so we opened the dome and started our observations.

However, the clear spot was what is known as a "sucker hole," meaning you are a sucker to think you can get good data. After about 45 minutes, the hole closed, and the skies have been mostly cloudy ever since, always teasing to clear, but never good enough to start working.

In another half hour, I'm giving up if it is not clear. Our observations need several hours to be worthwhile, and it is four hours to dawn now. I could be trying to work, but sometimes no data is better than bad data. Hopefully tomorrow will be better!

"You may wish to consider closing the dome."

Today was my class's fourth night at McDonald Observatory. Most of the students are now on a night schedule, so they barely woke up in time for our 4pm field trip to see the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, the largest telescope in the continental United States. After that field trip, Casey Deen (pictured above) mugged for a few pictures as we prepared the telescopes for the night.

Our night started well, though we did see thunderstorms on the distant horizon. About 1 in the morning, we stopped due to clouds, but we kept the telescope pointed at the sky in case the clouds blew over. After 20 minutes or so, the telephone rang. Professor David Lambert, Director of the McDonald Observatory, was calling from a neighboring telescope. Professor Lambert very calmly and politely said, "You may wish to consider closing the dome." So, I sent the students to close the dome just as the skies opened and it began to rain. And then we all had a good laugh about the very cordial tone of Professor Lambert in the face of impending disaster.

It continued to storm and rain all night, and at 4am, after several games of Scrabble, we called it a night. And so here I sit, writing and trying to stay up just a little longer and keep on the night schedule. So now you know what astronomers do when it rains -- wait up as late as possible to see if it is going to clear off. And, if not, we stay up later just to stay on our schedule.