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New Views of the Burrell Schmidt
Posted 31-Mar-2008
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On the night of
March 30, 2009 CWRU astronomy alumnus Steven Janowiecki
(BS Astronomy
2008) took this dramatic
image of the university's Burrell Schmidt telescope out at Kitt Peak,
AZ.
To take this picture, Steven set up the camera on a remote scaffold,
pointed at the observatory dome. The camera was
set to take a three minute long timed exposure; during this time,
Steven walked back inside the observatory (you can
see his flashlight trail to the lower right), and rotated the dome so
that the dome slit -- the opening in the dome
that the telescope looks through -- rotates across the telescope (and
Steven himself!). The net result is a
"cutaway" effect, giving the appearance of no dome in front of the
telescope at all.
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The Burrell Schmidt and Steven Janowiecki. Click on the
image to see a larger view.
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Simultaneously,
the Earth's rotation makes the stars slowly travel across the sky as
the camera exposes, so that
instead of looking like dots, the stars appear as streaks in the sky.
The three stars of Orion's belt are visible
just above the dome; Betelguese shows at the top center of the image;
and the bright star Sirius appears to the far
left. At far right, the moon can be seen low in the sky.
More of Steven's images can be seen at http://astronomy.case.edu/steven/Schmidt/Schmidt.html
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