Geminid Meteor Shower
On December 14, 2006, the observatory hosted a meteor shower watch party to observe the Geminid Meteor shower. This year, the Geminid Meteor shower was predicted to peak at around 75 meteors per hour.
Ross went and spoke to all of the astronomy professors and they all helped spread the word about the meteor shower - many offering extra credit to students that went to the observatory to check out the meteor shower.
It looked like this was going to be a popular event and we decided it would be best if we could have refreshments available for students at the observatory to make the night more pleasant and to also take away some of the chill that comes with brisk Amherst Decembers.
When Ross spoke with Ken Toong, the Director of Dining Services at UMass Amherst, about the Meteor Shower, Ken was very enthusiastic about the event and was extremely generous in donating refreshments for the students. Ken provided the observatory with 10 gallons of hot chocolate and 3 batches of freshly baked chocolate chip brownies.
The observatory would like to extend a special thanks to Ted Johnson, a resident assistant and Hospitality and Tourism Management major at UMass who helped with transportation and setup with the refreshments and instrumentation. Without his help, the event wouldn't have been able to go on so smoothly.
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Ross and Ted arrived at the observatory and began the setup and preparation of the instruments to begin the night. Many students arrived early in hopes to beat the rush, which was very smart, tonight was the most crowed the observatory has been since recorded records date ( which is back in the mid 1980's).
Tonight we had approximately 200 students show up at the observatory!
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Students came ready to see a meteor shower and if the weather had of cooperated better, perhaps we would have seen the predicted 75 meteors per hour. However, there was a thick patch of clouds on the eastern horizon, so we had to wait 30 minutes longer for the radiant to rise above the clouds. While we waited for meteors to rise over the clouds, we used the telescope to learn about star formation. We talked about the origin of starts, reasons for multiple star systems, and finally stellar nurseries. We looked at a double star in the constellation Ursa Minor and then looked towards the Orion Nebula to get an understanding of stellar birthplaces. While doing this, Professor Todd Tripp stopped by to see how everything was going. He got to get a glimpse of the Trapezium inside the Orion Nebula!
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Finally, we heard "oohs" and "aahs" as several meteors streaked above us. Although the rate that was predicted was not what we observed, many people saw a "shooting star" for the first time in their lives tonight. For many this is a rare treat to see such and event.
The crowd started to leave around 10:30. After an hour and a half of keeping a careful watch on the sky, many students had to return to the dorms to put some time in for studying for finals the next morning.
Some students stuck around and made themselves comfortable as they hoped to catch the last meteors of the night.
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This was a great night for the observatory! We hope to have events like this more often!
Again, we would like to thank Ken Toong and Dining Services for their generosity and especially all the hard workers at the Worcester Dining Common that took the time to prepare our order on a very busy night!
