Astronomy Cafe – March 25, 2024

Video transcript of meeting

• MMT Observatory – Kali Salmas, Queue Observer
  • Mount Hopkins, 55km south of Tucson, Arizona
  • Originally had six 1.8m mirrors, 4.5m collecting area
  • Now a single 6.5m mirror with 3 secondaries: f/5, f/9, f/15 (adaptive)
  • Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory facility on the mountain
  • Instrumentation
    • Binospec – wide-field opitcal spectrograph
    • Hectochelle/Hectospec – 300 fibre optic spectroscope, robotically reconfigured
    • MMIRS – Infrared spectroscopy, nitrogen cooled
  • Magellan and MMT share instrument designs
  • Operating Staff
    • Telescope Operator – 3
    • Queue Observer – 3
  • Data acquisition
    • Weather, tracking, seeing, turbulence, lenticular cloud formation
    • 7.5-12 hours observing time
    • Moon phase
  • Target Considerations
    • Both manual and automated queue scheduler
    • Sensor being used
    • Magnitude range: 11-26
    • Moon phase
  • Setup on Target – telescope operator and queue observer work together
  • Taking Data – calibration frames, guide stars, check data, add notes, move to next target
  • Q&A
• Astro-tourism in Northern Arizona – Dave Payne
  • Flagstaff area
  • Barringer Crater – Largest meteorite at 150′ across
  • Lowell Observatory
    • Many domes
    • Original observatory built in 1894
    • Historic 24″ Refractor
    • Privately financed by Percival Lowell to map Mars
    • History of discoveries and innovations by other astronomers at the site
    • Clyde Tombaugh – discovered Pluto with a 12″ telescope
    • 5m Discovery telescope – currently being used, has 5 instruments
• Recurrent T Coronae Borealis – David Lee david@victoria.rasc.ca
  • Should increase in brightness from Mag 10 to 2 by September
  • NASA Blog T Coronae Borealis
  • Recurrent Nova T CrB AAVSO Webinar
• Chris Gainor
  • Chandra X-ray space telescope may go dark due to impending budget cuts – 25 years of work done. Save Chandra
  • David Lane, past president of RASC has died. He was the author of Earth Centred Universe planetarium software, operated a popular robotic telescope from his home in Nova Scotia, and was on staff at St. Mary’s University until his retirement.

There is no Astronomy Cafe on April 1 due to Easter holiday. The April 8 meeting will be online only, since many members will be away to observe the Total Solar Eclipse from the path of Totality.