Astronomy

Astronomy

It is Friday, 28th November, the last Astronomy Camp of 2008. Although early in the evening some of the Year 10 students are mentoring teachers from six other schools. These teachers are involved in the Astronomy WA Student Research Program that

Mr William Cooper Observatory Manager Trinity received funding to run in 2008/2009 as part of our contribution to the UN International Year of Astronomy in 2009. Other students are working with James Nerva who is producing a DVD on a night in our observatory. Mitch has had eight onscreen attempts at opening the Observatory door; it’s generally agreed that there is little chance he will ever be an Oscar nominee.

Looking back over the year, 2008 was never going to be the astronomical extravaganza that 2007 was with the spectacle of comet McNaught, the brightest comet since 1965, lighting up the twilight skies of Perth. On 16 August 2008 there was a partial lunar eclipse which began at 3:30am and looked like a smudge on the bottom of the Moon. It was a real test of astronomy enthusiasm to drag oneself out of bed in the wee hours to see this.

It is now 10.00pm and all of the other teachers have gone and the rest of the students have arrived, bringing with them enough food and snacks to feed a small army. Things run smoothly. Marcus has drawn up a log from 11.00pm to 5.00am and students are busily putting their names against timeslots and selecting objects. The Gloucester Park lights are on full beam and the real deep sky objects won’t be visible until the lights dim.

Most Astronomy Camps at Trinity this year have been a battle against the weather. It seems that whenever an overnight Astronomy Camp is organised the gods conspire to cover the sky with a blanket of low dull stratocumulus cloud. In other activities Trinity students were placed third in an all-schools Astronomy competition run by Astronomy WA. With twenty schools participating in this one day event, students were tested on a wide variety of skills from driving a remote operated Martian rover to a quiz about science fiction trivia. Vincent Jusko (Year 12) represented Trinity and Australia at the USA Space Camp and this year we say goodbye to our Year 12 astronomy scholar Tom Drage who gave up so much of his time for the younger students.

Midnight and there is a steady buzz of activity. Andrew is imaging the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant and a tricky object. He is busy working his way through all the filters and binning (a process where the number of pixels is reduced for any given exposure to increase the signal to noise ratio) to see which gives the best detail. Mitch works with a new Year 8 student, Ben, to take a colour image of a globular cluster. They could all be doing this at home over the internet – and most do – but here they get to see the telescope in action and learn from each other. There is general excitement when they see what a fine image Marcus has produced of the Sculptor galaxy.

Three a.m. and the sky is as good as it will get as many Perth lights are now switched off. Some of the younger students have gone to sleep, but most are busy at work. Now it is a battle against time. We are like deep sea divers looking for treasure, but low on air. Later in the week we will admire the salvage we have scooped from this night.

It is now early morning and we all sit upstairs by the Observatory to watch the sun come up. It has been a very successful night. All that remains now is to tidy up. Andrew’s Mum arrives with hot home cooked doughnuts and that conclusively wraps up astronomy at Trinity for 2008.

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