South County Bureau Reporter Alex Nunes visited the Frosty Drew Observatory in Charlestown and has this sneak peak ahead of the Geminid Meteor Shower, December 13. A transcript of the audio story can be read below.
NUNES [NARRATION]: Astronomer and observatory director Scott MacNeill is adjusting the movable dome roof at the Frosty Drew Observatory in Charlestown. It’s clear and cold on this Friday night and the opening to the night’s sky is aligned with a new centerpiece to the observatory: a telescope called the PlaneWave CDK600.
MACNEILL: Looking into the telescope, the things that people will notice immediately is a lot more detail on objects that are so dim that most telescopes just see it as a blurry spot or a fuzzy patch.
NUNES [NARRATION]: It’s hard to describe the telescope, but it looks something like a cross between a medical imaging device and a bass drum, outfitted with high-tech bells and whistles. With the mount and other components, it weighs about 1,000 lbs. and had to be dropped in through the roof by a crane when it was installed in October. The price tag, covered with a grant from The Champlin Foundation, was north of $100,000.
NUNES [NARRATION]: MacNeill and I are on the viewing platform, as he operates a few controls to set our sights about 970,000,000 miles away.
NUNES: Oh, wow.
MACNEILL: You see the rings? You can see some of the stripes in the atmosphere.
NUNES: Yeah, that’s Saturn…What reaction do people typically have when they see this for the first time?
MACNEILL: [Laughs] Some of them are very strange. So I get–obviously there’s a lot of like “oohs” and “ahhs.” You get a lot of laughter. You get some criers. I had one person be like, “Is that for real?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And then they punched me. And so now I tend to stand back, especially Saturn. I tend to stand back when I give people a view of Saturn.
NUNES [NARRATION]: Through the telescope I see what looks like an illuminated light in the shape of Saturn. MacNeill positions the telescope to Jupiter, and we can clearly see its equatorial bands and four largest moons. MacNeill hopes to wow more visitors in the coming months, and he thinks this new addition to the more than 33-year-old observatory will make it a destination for stargazers.
MACNEILL: When we first installed the last telescope that was here, that was in here for 21 years, that telescope was the best telescope in the region. And eventually over the years, a lot of other observatories in the region had gotten that telescope. Now we again have the best telescope in the region available to the public. So number one, that’s huge for us. We’re again pushing that bar, we’re pushing the limit. But it’s also going to allow us to take a much larger step with our imaging programs and our research programs where the old telescope got to the point where we really couldn’t use it for that anymore, because it was just so worn down.
NUNES: So a lot of people come out to the observatory, you know, sometimes hundreds of people at a time. What do you think it is that draws people out here?
MACNEILL: Everybody wants to see UFOs. That’s always a question we get. And anything that we see that’s odd to people, it’s instantly them aliens. But anything that’s happening in the news, anything. If NASA or another space agency releases something in the general media, and it gets picked up by more mainstream media, then people come out and they want to see that.
NUNES: And there are some pretty good celestial events coming up?
MACNEILL: So now that we’re in December, we have the best meteor shower of the year that occurs–Gemini meteor shower–and it will happen overnight December 13, into the morning of December 14. What’s good about the Geminid shower, aside from the fact that it brings a lot of meteors with it–we’re talking upwards of 150 to 200 meteors per hour, in addition to what we normally see. But unlike other meteor showers, where you need to be out at like three o’clock in the morning, the Geminid is right around the winter solstice, and Gemini is above the horizon at sunset, which is where all the meteors radiate from. So you have the entire night period from we’re talking like six o’clock at night until like five o’clock in the morning to observe the shower. And no matter what time you’re out, it still really is good.
NUNES: Sounds out of this world.
MACNEILL: [Laughter]
NUNES [NARRATION]: If it’s clear tonight, you should be able to see the meteors just about anywhere outside of a city with a wide view of the sky, but if you are looking through the telescope at the Frosty Drew Observatory in Charlestown, you will really get quite a show.
Alex Nunes can be reached at anunes@thepublicsradio.org.
