In this week’s What’s Up? Webcast the Sky-Watcher USA will Webcast sit down with the director of Lowell Observatory, Dr. Jeff Hall and take a close look at the history of Lowell Observatory, where it is going, its outreach efforts and more.
The Sky-Watcher What’s Up? Webcast is a live webcast held every Friday from 10am to 11am Pacific on the Sky-Watcher USA YouTube channel. Each week they discuss new astronomical topic including gear, visual and imaging techniques, interviews and more.
During the webcast they will discuss the Lowell Observatory Giovale Open Deck Observatory complex which features one of the finest collections of telescopes available for public observing in the world.
The complex consists of a 4,300-square-foot, elevated plaza along with a roll-off building housing a suite of six advanced telescopes. These are used for direct observing through eyepieces, as well as projecting images and spectra onto monitors. To make sure everyone can enjoy the views provided by the facility, three of the telescopes with eyepieces can also be lowered and raised for ADA accessibility.
The Lowell Observatory offers six advanced telescopes installations which will collectively give visitors a viewing experience that will surpass even the most ambitious astronomy gear dreams for the seasoned amateur astronomer. From rich star fields and planets full of color, to nebulae and galaxies that reveal obvious structure, the famously dark skies of Flagstaff are abundant in celestial treasures available through these instruments.
Check out this eye-popping lineup!
– A 5.5-inch TEC wide-field refractor for sweeping eyepiece views of rich star fields.
– An 8-inch Moonraker Victorian refractor for steampunk close-up eyepiece views of the Moon, planets and dense globular star clusters.
– A 32-inch Starstructure Dobsonian reflector, powered by a gargantuan quartz mirror made by Lockwood Custom Optics, for splendid eyepiece views of nebulae and galaxies that reveal detailed structure.
– A 16-inch Meade ACF catadioptric reflector for high-powered eyepiece views of planets, star clusters and nebulae.
– A 17-inch PlaneWave CDK catadioptric reflector equipped with a Shelyak spectrograph to reveal the elemental components of a star field in real time.
– A 14-inch PlaneWave CDK catadioptric reflector equipped with a MallinCam CCD camera to show more details than your eyes can see alone.
What’s Up? webcasts are free by tuning into the Sky-Watcher USA YouTube channel. Can’t watch it live? That’s OK, all webcasts can be watched whenever you like by visiting the YouTube channel.
For example, as part of the library of previous What’s Up? Webcasts you will find an episode where they sat down with master optician Michael Lockwood of Lockwood Custom Optics to talk about telescope optics and just how far they can be taken Mike started the company in 2006 to supply quality optics to amateur and professional astronomers, telescope builders, scientists, researchers, and industry. He can provide mirrors up to ~32″ in diameter from high-quality, precision annealed, monolithic borosilicate glass up to 2.1″ in thickness can produce slightly thinner borosilicate mirrors up to just over 40″ in diameter.
And if you are stuck at home looking for something to do or want to learn more about the latest in astronomy equipment, techniques and more then check out the past What’s Up? webcasts.
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