Posted on Thursday, April 23, 2015
Yesterday my colleague had a chance to use our Coronado SolarMax II telescope for the first time on her own. It had been thought that maybe I should introduce the telescope to her beforehand so she'd have a better idea of how and why it works. However I was in a hurry to leave work early and hoped that as an astronomy student she'll be fine.
However yesterday, on my day off I get several calls, where she's inquiring about the telescope and to top it off a very excited colleague calls me saying "this is so cool - there are two rings, I've never seen an image like this before with this telescope. I wish I could take a picture. Can you come here? Please, please, PLEASE hurry here!"
So I, having checked the latest image of the photosphere and whether there are any sunspots, I think - okay, maybe there's something interesting going on, and she's just not explaining it right. If it's rings, it's likely to have something to do with the telescope - right?
So I leave home, racing to work not having had time to even have breakfast yet. The telescope is all set up outside, as I'd asked her to leave it the way it was, and another colleague is keeping an eye on it. And then he shows me a picture of what they were so excited about - they had been observing without the eyepiece and were able to see a little bit of the inside structure of the telescope together with a tiny sun. Nothing extraordinary. But I wouldn't have thought they'd forget to use an eyepiece :)
However yesterday, on my day off I get several calls, where she's inquiring about the telescope and to top it off a very excited colleague calls me saying "this is so cool - there are two rings, I've never seen an image like this before with this telescope. I wish I could take a picture. Can you come here? Please, please, PLEASE hurry here!"
So I, having checked the latest image of the photosphere and whether there are any sunspots, I think - okay, maybe there's something interesting going on, and she's just not explaining it right. If it's rings, it's likely to have something to do with the telescope - right?
So I leave home, racing to work not having had time to even have breakfast yet. The telescope is all set up outside, as I'd asked her to leave it the way it was, and another colleague is keeping an eye on it. And then he shows me a picture of what they were so excited about - they had been observing without the eyepiece and were able to see a little bit of the inside structure of the telescope together with a tiny sun. Nothing extraordinary. But I wouldn't have thought they'd forget to use an eyepiece :)