Star Gazing!

Moon!

On September 27, 2012 Mr.Chung so awesomely invited a few astronomers to come and visit our Earth and Space class.  There were around five telescopes set up for our class to enjoy.  Most of the telescopes were focused on the moon, and one of the astronomers told me that he's seen a telescope so powerful he was able to see the shadow of a few of the moon landers.  However with the telescopes that night we were able to see the craters on moon!

When I first heard about star gazing I imagined a group of astronomers with huge telescopes slowly finding the planets and stars by hand.  I was extremely shocked to learn that all the modern telescopes have GPS tracking systems and that they all automatically even out their tripod legs to adjust to the uneven floor.  Not only so, they all have computers built into them that memorizes how the night sky should look every day.  After that all you need to do it select what planet, star or galaxy you want to find and it automatically finds it for you!  After that you can press play and a computer will recite to you the information on such phenomenons. One of the astronomers was explaining the story of Andromeda to me while he had a powerful laser that could trace each constellation for me to see, after that he gave me his tumblr so I could read up on his articles :P  All in all it was an educational and fun night!