The End of Night

Joaquin s -

Hey everyone,

Recently I’ve been encountering a pretty big problem, that could potentially pose a threat to my project, that being summer. As many of you probably know, in winter the days are short and the nights are long, and in summer it’s vice versa. This makes winter a perfect time to do astronomical observations, but along the same lines summer is a bad time. When I first started my internship at the observatory, I would get there at 5:30pm and we would open shortly after at sunset. However, now that sunset is around 6:30pm every day, I am losing out on a significant amount of work. This issue will only worse as we get further into spring and summer, as by the time my project will end, sunset will be around 7:15pm, causing me to only get around 2 and a half hours of work each day that I am there. I will have to find a solution to remedy this issue, or otherwise I will not be able to meet the requirements for this project.

In lighter news, I managed to capture some pretty cool photos this week. The first is one that Ms. Giles requested of me, being the hand crank I use to close the opening of the observatory. The second photo is an image I captured through the telescope at the Gilbert Rotary Centennial Observatory of Jupiter. Sorry for the poor quality of the image, it’s hard to get a good picture just holding the camera up to the eyepiece. You can still see Jupiter and its 4 largest moons all in the line of its axis, which I think is pretty cool. The last image is a picture I captured of the International Space Station. I was told by one of my “coworkers” at the observatory that it would be going past, so I looked for a slowly moving light that was not blinking. In general, a slow-moving blinking light is a plane or drone, a fast-moving light is a shooting star, and a slow-moving non-blinking light is a satellite. Because of this knowledge, I identified it and took this picture of it. I think the distinct shape I was able to capture is very interesting. If anyone would like me to try to capture something specifically at the observatory, just let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best to get it for the next post.

See you next time!

More Posts

Comments:

All viewpoints are welcome but profane, threatening, disrespectful, or harassing comments will not be tolerated and are subject to moderation up to, and including, full deletion.

    sidd_s
    Hey Joaquin, sorry to hear about the issues with your site placement. Have you considered adjusting your schedule to maximize your observation time? Also, have you spoken to past interns about this problem, and how they dealt with it?
    April 2, 2025 at 11:13 am - Reply
    nico_l
    Hi Joaquin, is there any work that's more on the theoretical side of things that you can do? Other than that I like the hand crank; is it hard to open or is it assisted by anything?
    April 2, 2025 at 2:13 pm - Reply
    joaquin_s
    Sidd, neither of those are really an option for me. The observatory is open strictly from sunset to 9:30pm on Fridays and Saturdays, so I'm already maximizing my work there. Also, the concept of "interns" isn't really a thing for the GRCO, as I am the first one they've had. I act pretty much just like a volunteer there would, except I have the requirements of my project.
    April 2, 2025 at 2:50 pm - Reply
    joaquin_s
    Hey Nico, there's not really a route for me to take to do theoretical stuff now, as most of that requires getting together with an established group, usually a college class, and most of them would have already started and possibly concluded by this time of year. I could theoretically do theoretical work on my own, but in practice it probably wouldn't be anything substantial. I will consider it though, so thank you. For the hand crank, it requires a little bit of force to get started but it really isn't that difficult at all. It's not assisted by anything either, it's just a simple mechanism to open and close it, but because of the mechanism it isn't hard to do.
    April 2, 2025 at 4:48 pm - Reply
    mj_j
    Hey Joaquin! I really enjoyed the pictures you sent alongside your blog, especially the hand crank (it's not every day people get to see these things!). My question for you is: Have you thought about any creative ways to adapt your project to the shorter nights of summer, or are there other parts of astronomy you’re considering focusing on during this time as of yet?
    April 4, 2025 at 9:00 pm - Reply
    joaquin_s
    Hey MJ, the easiest solution for me is to just stay up later into the night, and to do astronomy work on my own. I am planning on doing something like this, where I use my own telescope to observe a lot of different things on my own.
    April 7, 2025 at 6:32 pm - Reply
    vinesh_k
    Hi Joaquin. Does air pollution ever impact the ability to see the night sky? During Arizona summers, there's a higher amount of pollution than there is in the winters. Just curious if that would affect anything.
    April 7, 2025 at 8:33 pm - Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *