CAMBRIDGE

Home > Cambridge > Telescope

Rob Baldock
Sam Davyson
Nick Flynn
Laura Bryant
On 4th March 2010 Rob kindly took Sam, Nick and Laura to Northlumberland Telescope at the Institute of Astronomy. What followed was a really incredible evening of star gazing with the highlight being seeing Saturn's rings. We also put away loads of food and did starjumps (so fitting!) to keep warm.

Precursors

Walking round college. Outside Hostel
Rob is a member of CUAS giving him access rights to the telescope along with up to four guests. The idea of using these rights had been mooted about as early as Michaelmas '09. However given the nature of observing decisions need to be made on the spur of the moment - i.e. a clear night when everyone is free should be taken advantage of! Rob first suggested the idea around 6.30 pm and plans began to fall into place for a 10 pm start. Unfortunately Andrew was missing at Varsity rugby and Sophie had pressing dissertation obligations. So we gathered as a four: Rob, Sam, Nick and Laura. Assembling in the library before racing around college to collect together bikes.

Cycling in initially diamond formation we moved to a square as we passed Marks and Spencers. We stopped at Sainsburys on the way to buy snacks for our long stay at the observatory. The menu was hobnobs, hot cross buns and fruit juice.


The Journey

We cycled on to Churchill stopping at the Porters Lodge to pick up the observatory key. Unfortunately it was out suggesting that someone was already using the telescope. We cycled through Churchill - crossing new territory for some members - and into the woods. Here for effect bike lights were extinguished and dismounting was encouraged. Laura and Nick stayed on their bikes navigating through the eery darkness. This allowed Sam and Rob to rush ahead and hide to surprise the other two when they appeared. The commotion and shreiking caused by this incident attracted an additional member to our group - another keen amateur astronomer - Ollie - who found us at the telescope.


The Telescope

Inside the building everything is red.
The hole in the roof where we see the stars.
Laura moves the roof using the ropes.
The telescope is over 150 years old. As it's no longer used for research purposes it's open and available for keen amateur astronomers. The telescope is a whole building. Well strictly speaking maybe not, but it feels like the whole building is part of one machine. It's a circular room with a the telescope and a viewing chair in the middle. Ropes hang from the sides of the room which are used to rotate the roof round and to open up the roof to see the sky. The telescope fully rotates and can moved up and down. The viewing chair is also on wheels so you can push it round to a suitable spot to view whichever bit of sky you want.

As the Earth rotates on its axis the angle bit of space that the telescope points at is continually changing. Uncorrected this would make it impossible to look at one planet for any length of time at all. To fix this the telescope has an automatic mechanism for rotating the angle of the telescope to offset the Earth's rotation. Rob demonstrated to us how to activate it.


Star Gazing

Sam on the viewing chair.
Laura viewing Mars.
Nick sees Saturn.
Planets aren't stars. And although we were looking exclusively at planets we were still looking in the direction of the stars... hence 'Star Gazing'.

We looked at Mars at first. It appeared as essentially a small white disc. Much smaller than you see the moon in the sky with the naked eye. A slight reddish tinge was visible to expert eyes. Still great to see something so far away in much more detail than usual. The considerable excitement of seeing Mars was totally eclipsed when the telescope was reoriented for Saturn to be in the spotlight.

We were able to see the rings of Saturn. This was very special.


Keeping Warm

Sam, Laura and Ollie warm up.
To see the sky the roof has to be open. This unfortunately made the temperature within the telecope virtually as cold as it was outside. With the night being a lovely clear one (ideal for seeing the stars) it was also very cold. It was essentially to do star jumps and similar exercises to stay warm. We balanced exercising with putting away plenty of food (discos, cookies, hobnobs etc).

Sadly our efforts were not enough for Nick who suffered from a rather frozen toe. But we didn't know quite how bad it was until afterwards...


The Aftermath

Extremely welcome hot chocolate.
When we'd had enough viewing for one session - after about 20-40 mins two and half hours - Laura really stepped up to provide superb post-telescope warm up in Fitzwilliam. We had hot chocolate and some incredibly sugary juice. We also saw Nick's toe which was literally bright white. The iPhone was able to diagnose it as Raynaud's phenomenon. Although the suggested treatments were not particularly helpful e.g. wear socks, stop smoking.

Finally we threw a football about a bit in Laura's room to expend any extra energy we had.

Then we cycled back to town. All over by 3 am. What a night.


More Coverage

Nick's Flickr Photoset
Beyond Cambridge blog post