Photo Credit: Travis Oliver
On July 2nd, at exactly 1:45 pm, students in Rico Tyler’s general studies course “Same Topic, Different Perspective” were able to capture the Tiangong Chinese space station orbit across the sun. This station is very similar to our very own International Space Station, just about half the size. Tiangong’s main goal is for scientific research to assist humanity on Earth and have the ability to do more in space.
Tyler and his teaching fellow Travis Oliver were ecstatic about the opportunity to capture this event, even if it is a slightly common occurrence. “Tiangong passes over Murray around 5 times each day, but only one or two of those passes will be visible, usually as a bright “star” streaking across the sky in a couple minutes at night. In our case, this known point is the sun, which allows us to see the silhouette of the station. This event is much rarer, only happening occasionally in a given location,” Travis states. “ A similar transit won’t happen within 150 miles of Murray for the next two months, though long term estimates tend to be inaccurate.”
The lively duo used the website ISS Transit Finder to compute the precise time of the transit and path over our location on campus, then waited for a couple minutes before recording. Oliver states that “the transit happens in half a second, so recording with a camera was the only way to go.”
Two different types of telescopes were set up to fully capture Tiangong. The first and most successful was a SeeStar S50 telescope, which is a small computerized telescope that transmits its images to a smartphone instead of an eyepiece. The SeeStar S50 tracks the sky without the need of human operation. The second telescope was a 102 mm Maksutov that used a phone as a camera. Even though the Maksutov worked well too, the final image was lower quality due to filtering and slow tracking.
Tyler and Oliver offer both their views and strong passion for astronomy to scholars through not only physical images, but also through their own unique perspectives on the topic. Even when they were preparing for this event, they were overjoyed to share their love for science with the scholars.
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