EIU Astro

Welcome back, or if your new, welcome. Classes begin on Monday. If you come around to the second floor of the Physical Science building, you’ll see a few changes. We now have the Astro-murals mounted on some nice new boards. You will notice we now have a corner room, where computational physics was, for astrophysics research. The computation physics moved to a bigger room downstairs across from the machine shop. We’ll soon be putting in some computers to be used for both image reduction and running code using programs like Mathematica and Mathlab. We will also use the room to do instrumentation work, maintenance, and repair for the observatory.

More good news. We now have a full aperture solar filter for the 16″ telescope. So solar observation for labs and research will be coming soon.

Solar filter for the 16" telescope

Bad news, we are in the midst of the lowest solar minimum in several generations. So it’s BORING to look at. No sun spots or solar flares!

SOHO Pic from 8/23/2009....see.... NOTHING!

But if you want to keep track of the sun, or look at it when it was a little more interesting, go to the website for the orbiting solar observatory SOHO. Look at the BLOG tomorrow for details about the picnic this week, and the new podcast and open house.