A group of astronomy students got some hands-on time with a telescope during a four-day field trip to Kitt Peak National Observatory, near Tucson.
Students in Steve Boughn and Beth Willman's observational astronomy class got some serious hands-on time with a telescope during a Fall break field trip to Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in Arizona. This is the fourth time the astronomers have traveled to Kitt Peak with students, giving them the opportunity to operate the equipment and make observations.
The trip was was funded through the Louis Green Fund, the Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center and the National Science Foundation, and the students kept a running report on their experience with posts and photos in the Astronoblog.“I had an amazing time, and the students were highly impressive in their diligence in data acquisition, analysis, and troubleshooting,” wrote Willman in her own post to the blog.“We were very busy both nights, whether obtaining time-series observations of a Milky Way globular cluster for science, [or] observing beautiful nebulae and galaxies for fun … One highlight for me was seeing both Venus and Jupiter bright in the sunrise sky at 6 a.m.”
