my name is mwd

I’ve been going to the public lectures on a Wednesday evening at the astro dept for a while now. The idea is a half hour lecturer on some general astronomy topic, a cup of tea (it’s all very civilised), and then a trip out to the 12" refracting telescope (the one in the picture on the above link) to see the wonders of the sky. However, every Wednesday night since last September (apparently) it’s been cloduy, so we’ve not been able to do that.

To make do, I’ve been learning to spot various things in the sky (as I wrote a while back I think), and amougst other things, I was quite pleased to be able to identify my first planet. I can now look upon the night sky and tell you where saturn is. this may sound dull, but I found it cool to be able to go from thinking that all the shiny things above me where stars, to knowing which one wasn’t.

Anyway, today it was cloudy again, but alas, just as we were all heading home after our cuppa, the clouds cleared, and we got to use the telescope! After a brief tour of the sky by one of the astro types that run it (using what has to be an insanely powerful laser pointer), we got to look through the scope at two objects. Firstly a comet, named Comet Machholz, which was quite faint, and looked like a ball of dust at this point. Secondly, and much to my great excitement, we got to look a saturn! For the first time I got to see a planet with my own eye. In the 12" telescope you get a good bright image of Saturn, with its rings very clearly visable. I was very impressed! Makes me more obsessed to try and get my own equipment at some point (though, like the G5 PowerMac, this is on hold until I know who’s signing my April pay cheque :).