Blake Planetarium Receives Grant from itelescope.net

With a generous research grant awarded from iTelescope.net, a research project utilizing remote robotic telescopes for astronomy education called "Discovering our Milky Way Galaxy" will be a collaboration between the W. Russell Blake Planetarium, Insight Observatory, iTelescope.net and a group of students in grades 6-8. The planetarium will place a large printout of the Milky Way Galaxy, the way we see it from Earth, on the outside wall of the planetarium. The printout of the Milky Way will cover the view from both hemispheres. The students will be paired in groups of two and each group will be assigned a deep-sky object in or near the visible arm of the visible Milky Way. 

Northern Arm of Milky Way Galaxy imaged from iTelescope.net's New Mexico Skies location

They will be in charge of imaging this object and writing a paragraph about it. When the images are returned, Michael Petrasko and Muir Evenden, Co-Project Directors from Insight Observatory will assist them with processing the images. The final pictures of the students' deep-sky objects will be placed along with the image of the Milky Way on the outside of the planetarium for all of the school and visitors to see and learn from.

The research project is slated to take place in October 2013. Planetarium Instructor, Monica Ares, will have the students come to the planetarium for an overview of the project and to look at the Milky Way on the dome. They will pair up and use iPads to fill out a form through Insight Observatory's website with their image request, exposure time, and telescope location. The form will also require a paragraph about the object. The students will return a week later to process their images in the computer lab. The photos will then be printed and overlaid on the image of the Milky Way along the outside of the planetarium.

The goal of the project is for students and teachers to understand not only what lies beyond our own night sky but also how we use the clues of distant objects to help us understand our own galaxy. Since we cannot take a picture of our entire Milky Way galaxy, we can study the images we capture of distant galaxies, both edge-on, and front-facing to better understand the part of the Milky Way that we can see in our sky. We can also study nebulae both within our galaxy and those that we see in distant galaxies to help us understand the life cycle of our stars and our ever-changing universe. We hope to create a permanent display of both the Galaxy Project and the Milky Way Project using digital posters on the outside of the planetarium.

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The Galaxy Project - What Lies Beyond Our Stars

Ms. Campbell's 6th grade class at Plymouth Community Intermediate School in Plymouth, Massachusetts was part of an exciting collaboration with the W. Russell Blake Planetarium and the Insight Observatory to image objects beyond the visible stars in our night sky. The students were given access to high-powered remote robotic telescopes for astronomy education located in New Mexico and Spain facilitated by Insight Observatory. Each group was asked to image an item in deep space found near the patch of sky containing the constellations of Ursa Major, Leo, Coma Berenices, Canes Venatici, and Virgo.

Display of Galaxies Imaged by PCIS Students

The images that the students took of galaxies, a globular cluster, and a planetary nebula are breathtaking!  A large printout of the night sky along with the students' images is on display near the entrance of the planetarium. This hands-on experience not only taught the students a great deal about remote imaging with a telescope, but it also enabled them to grasp the profoundness of the images they captured.

Special thanks to Monica Ares, Planetarium Program Instructor, Michael Petrasko, Insight Observatory Project Developer and Kellianne Campbell, 6th Grade Teacher at PCIS. Together they designed this amazing opportunity for our students that they hope will grow in the years to come. Below are a few of the images the students acquired by using a 17" telescope remotely in Mayhill, New Mexico with all image exposure times at 5 minutes. You can view all of the images the students acquired on Insight Observatory's Image Gallery page.

M51 - Image by Mark R. & Peter H.

The Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as NGC 5194) is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. Recently it is currently estimated to be 15 and 35 million light-years from our own Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy and its companion (NGC 5195) are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may even be seen with binoculars under dark skies and good seeing conditions. The Whirlpool Galaxy is also a popular target for professional astronomers, who study it to further understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions.  

M97 - Image by Bianca T. & Cassidy B.

The Owl Nebula (also known as Messier 97 NGC 3587) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. M97 is regarded as one of the more complex of the planetaries. The 16th magnitude central star has about 0.7 solar mass and the nebula itself about 0.15 solar mass. The nebula formed roughly 6,000 years ago. The nebula gets its name from the appearance of owl-like "eyes" when viewed through a large 200mm telescope under dark sky conditions with the aid of a so-called "nebula filter." The eyes are also (albeit, not so easily) visible in photographs of the nebula.

NGC 4565 - Image by Olivia F. & Nachelle S.

NGC 4565 (also known as the Needle Galaxy or Caldwell 38) is an edge-on spiral galaxy about 30 to 50 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. The 10th magnitude galaxy sits perpendicular to our own Milky Way galaxy and is almost directly above the North Galactic Pole (in the same way Polaris is located above the North Pole). It is known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile. First spotted in 1785 by Sir William Herschel (1738–1822), this is one of the most famous examples of an edge-on spiral galaxy. "Visible through a small telescope, some sky enthusiasts consider NGC 4565 to be a prominent celestial masterpiece Messier missed."

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One Shot Color of Carina Nebula

The southern hemisphere is full of "deep-sky wonders" as much as the northern hemisphere. Having access to remote robotic telescopes in locations such as New South Wales, Australia, allows us, northern hemisphere observers, to image and research a whole new frontier. Here is an image of NGC 3372, The "Carina Nebula" captured by Michael Petrasko on the evening of April 26, 2013 (local time NSW). This image was taken with a full moon in the sky at the time. It's clearly evident that there is no "washout" from the light of the moon whatsoever.

NGC 3372 - Carina Nebula imaged by Michael Petrasko

The Carina Nebula (also known as the Great Nebula in Carina, the Eta Carina Nebula, or NGC 3372, as well as "Grand Nebula") is a large bright nebula that surrounds several open clusters of stars. Eta Carinae and HD 93129A, two of the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy, are among them. The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light-years from Earth. It appears in the constellation of Carina and is located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm.

The Carina Nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies. Although it is some four times as large and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is much less well known, due to its location far in the Southern Hemisphere. It was discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751–52 from the Cape of Good Hope.

The image is a 15-minute exposure taken with an SBIG ST2000XMC One-Shot Color CCD camera through a Takahashi SKY90 3" (90mm) Apochromatic Refractor (pictured left) provided by iTelescope.net. Processing was done with SBIG CCDOps software and Adobe Photoshop CS6. 3x5 images were stacked with 3 synthetic luminance images created from each color image for noise reduction.

A one-shot color CCD camera can provide interesting images (if processed properly with synthetic luminance images) just as well, if not better, than high-end monochrome CCD cameras that use Red, Green, and Blue color filters.

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