Submitted by Andrea Spino, FOB Secretary
This summer we had the pleasure of having the Astronomical Society of New Haven at the
Park where we got to learn about space and take a peek through their telescopes.
Greg Barker has been President of the Astronomical Society of New Haven (ASNH) for the
past 20 years. When asked how he became interested in space, he said he grew up in
Monroe, CT and, as a child, he used to go outside at night and look up to see what the
night sky had to offer. Imagine so many stars visible that you actually had to pause and
look for the constellations because it was so bright. It was that love and sharing the love of
the night sky that led him to where he is today.
The board members of the ASNH brought their different telescopes for us
to look through. Greg’s telescope dwarfed the others on the field in height
and weight, but that also allowed him to see further into the sky. So how
does a telescope work? The simplest answer is that it uses mirrors to
gather and focus the light from the sky. In the telescope seen pictured to
the left, there are a total of 8 tubes with mirrors in the body that allow
the user to see very far into space. This telescope weighs 175 pounds and
can collapse for transportation.
When the sun set and Greg was able to see into the sky, he focused his
telescope on M13, which is a globular cluster of stars. Some of the stars in that cluster are
12 to 13 billion years old, which is almost as old as the universe. To find M13, however, we
first had to find the constellation Hercules. As someone who has only ever seen the
constellation at the end of Disney’s movie, locating a constellation that wasn’t one of the
Dippers was challenging. I, like many others that night, ended up downloading one of the
many apps that helped orient the user to the constellations that the phone was pointing at.
Once Hercules was located, Greg focused the telescope on the globular cluster.
It is unknown the exact number of stars in M13. It is theorized that there are anywhere from
300,000 to half a billion stars in the cluster. This is one of 150 galaxies that orbit the Milky
Way tens of thousands of light years away. It was first observed by Edmond Halley (if you’ve
ever heard of Halley’s comet, same guy) in 1714 and is one of the most observed globular
clusters in the Northern Hemisphere because it stays visible for the majority of the year.
Depending on the size of the telescope will depend on how detailed you can get in M13.
Besides the telescopes that the ASNH brought, there were some more tech
based telescopes on the field. This is a telescope that was made by a
company called Dwarf Lab and it connects your smartphone to the telescope.
This will allow an app to view your position and list available objects for
viewing. It is also possible to setup a long exposure on the phone and watch
different objects appear on the phone.
