Montana Learning Center

 This entry doesn't have any sketches. It is actually about an event my wife and I attended the evening of 21 July at the Montana Learning Center, located on Canyon Ferry Lake, east of Helena. They have an outreach program called "Under The Big Sky" with monthly presentations and viewing using their large telescopes. They have the two largest public access telescopes in the state. Their main astronomy page is here.

This image shows the two large Roll Off Roof observatories. The actual site is much larger, including classrooms, dorms, etc.

 This picture was taken from where we were sitting for the presentaion.

The main page is slightly out of date. Instead of the remote robotic telescope, they now have a 24" Ritchy-Chretain on site.

 

This sits on a Software Bisque mount, and he controls it using "The Sky" software. Tscope in the background is a Takahashi set up for solar imaging. 

This is the 25" Newtonian on a Dobsonian style mount. Unfortunately I don't remember the make.

The program started at 21:30 MDT. It was a presentation by a Crow story teller, Shawn Backbone. He talked about the tribes relationships with the sky, how it governed their lives and movements. There were actually certain people in "the old days" whose primary function was the study of the sky, to better understand it and connect it to seasons and forcast what should be happening. One of the stories concerned what we call the big dipper. To them it was "The Seven Bears". Each bear spirit represents a specific personality attribute.

After the speaker there was open viewing through the large scopes. The Helena Astronomical Society also had a 10" Meade SCT that they have set on a permanent pier that they used for public viewing. 

I got to see both M57 and M27 in both scopes. The lines were initially long, but everyone was patient and was not rushed. (they limit attendance to 100 and were sold out, but may have been a few no shows). Both nebula were definitely brighter and more detailed than in my 8" SCT. The sky was a Bortle 2 for seeing.

 

We stuck around until most of the people had left. I had asked earlier if it might be possible to see M101, so myself and one other person were able to do that in the RC. I was hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of the new supernova. Even in this scope  M101 was  fairly faint. With averted vision I could occasionally make out hints of the spiral arms, but am not real sure if I saw the nova or not. This is definitely a target I won't see well in my scope.

The program director, Ryan Hannahoe was extremely helpful and accommodating. His assistant, Colton, who was running the 25" Newtonian, was great at explaining thing to people and answering questions. There were people there with all levels of experience, from "thought this might be interesting" to an astronomy grad student from Ireland with his family.

We finally left about 00:30.

Ryan also runs the Montana Starry Sky Survey. They put sky quality measuring kits out into libraries to be checked out, and results reported back to compile the survey. Sincde I work part time at our library, I spoke with him about getting us a kit. That is happening as I type this in August!

One last thought:

After reading my updates up to July 1, my friend Doug has decided astronomy is a big version of "Where's Waldo?"

I think he is essentially right!