Sara Melissa Aldana

Professor Finkelstein

Astronomy 301

November 3rd 2018

Astronomical Observation

For my astronomical observation project I decided to go on a Friday the 2nd to

the telescope located on Painter Hall. This was the first time I visited a telescope and

had the opportunity to see outside of the planet. It was fascinating to realize that what I

was seeing was out of my sight somewhere in the galaxy. That night we had the chance

to see two planets: mars and saturn.

When I arrived at 8:15pm the telescope was being set up to see Mars. According

to the coordinates marked on the walls, in order to see mars the telescope was pointing

South East. ​Even though it was hard to see in the telescope, mars looked similar to how

it looks when seeing it with naked eye, like a red/yellow bright dot. Mars was located on

the lower left part of the image in the telescope. What was possible to see through the

telescope was its gibbous face, due to the Earth's interference with the light from the

sun. When asked the TA in charge of the telescope that evening about more details

about mars that night he pointed out that it had raised in the sky a little after 3pm and it

was expected to set some time before 2 am. Mars was located on the sky at a altitude

of about 43 degrees and a direction south of about 176 degrees.

After seeing Mars we had the chance to see Saturn right before it set on the

horizon at about 8:40pm. The telescope now was set to look towards the south west.
Again, even though Saturn was quite small on the telescope image, it was very

impressive to see Saturn and its ring, an image I will always remember. On the

telescope Saturn looked a little tilted towards the left. The TA said Saturn raised much

earlier than Mars, at about noon and it was expected to set before 10pm. Saturn was

located at an altitude of about 15 degrees and a direction south west of 231 degrees.

I asked the TA why the images were not as colorful and he explained that the

images that we usually see are with better cameras or edited to bring out certain colors.

He said that it is possible to put filters on the telescope in order to bring out and block

certain lights and have a more contrast in the image.

When looking around I noticed two big disks with measurements attached to the

telescope. I asked to the TA and he told those are the celestial coordinates. The small

one was the right ascension (polar axis), and the big one the declination (to polaris).

Doing a little research about this I found out the right ascension is usually counted in

hours and that the stars and galaxies have almost fixed positions, compared to the

planets and sun that move among the distants stars so that their coordinates change

throughout the year.

Finally I asked the TA what was the history of that telescope and he told me it

was built in 1902 for a rich men in Georgia. When he passed away his children decided

to sell the telescope back to the company and it was then when UT bought and it was

installed on campus on 1932. The company that made the telescope is Warner &

Swasey which was an American manufacturer of special machinery, machine tools and

instruments located and founded in Cleveland in 1880.