The Campus Station
The campus observatory is located
on the roof of the David Rittenhouse Laboratory, on the corner
of 33rd St. and Walnut St. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Our
major pieces of equipment are an 8" diameter f/18 Clark
refractor, a 10" diameter f/6.3 Meade reflector and an 8" celestron on an az/el mount. We also have binoculars for general viewing including one large
20x125 pair.
The observatory is mostly used for teaching basic undergraduate astronomy courses.
Even though we are in the center of a large city we can use CCD pictures to measure things
such as Hertsprung-Russell diagrams
for nearby open clusters or find the distance to planets.
For those that are up to a challenge, image processing techniques can be used to
get pictures of faint objects such as Pluto (no it is not a planet).
The reason you have to resort to image processing is the same reason I have
started to recommend that those who want to see the sky through a telescope
try either the Franklin Institute or the
Rittenhouse Astronomical Society.
New construction has increased light pollution to a level where you can not see any
of the interesting galaxies and nebula by eye which takes some of the fun out of it.
For those of you that are further
out of town you might want to try the Chester County
Astronomical Society.
Simon Dicker
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University of Pennsylvania Observatory
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