Miami University Astronomy Club

WHAT DO WE DO?

Weekly Stargazing/Movie Watching

Every Thursday night when the sky is clear we meet in 116 Culler at 9:45pm, then go up to the roof to do some observing. (Meetings are cancelled if it's during exams, during holidays, or the sky is cloudy). ANYONE is welcome to show up to stargaze--bring your friends!

We have several great telescopes, including a 10" Cassegranian called the Meade LX200.

What You'll See

What you will see when we go stargazing depends on the time of year, whether or not a cloud happens to be blocking a patch of sky, and so forth. Here are a few of the awesome sights we have seen through telescopes in the past:

The Orion Nebula
Mars
Saturn (including ring divisions, moons)
Jupiter (and moons)
The Moon (craters, etc.)
Ring Nebula
Betelgeuse (red giant star)
Sunspots
Mercury transitting the Sun
Alien spacecraft (kidding!)

Here are some naked-eye objects (some can only be identified in very good seeing conditions)

Milky Way
Andromeda Galaxy
Globular clusters

If you haven't seen all of the above either through a telescope or with your naked eye, you are missing out!

Impromptu Meetings

Occasionally on nights when it happens to be clear out, we'll send out an email on the astronomy club listserv inviting anyone interested to come out for an impromptu observing session.

Outings/Trips

We also go on trips to observatories, planetariums, and state parks where there is little light pollution (the naked-eye night sky is amazing in areas with little or no light pollution!) (Outings are at least once a semester).

Future projects include:

Taking some of the more portable telescopes out a few miles from campus. This way, there will be less light pollution and we can avoid the vibrations that occur on the roof of Culler.

Astrophotography

Getting the 12" telescope back into commission, possibly moving it somewhere off the roof of Culler

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