Observatory
Open House is every Friday evening, WEATHER PERMITTING,
starting at dusk.
Please
come and observe the stars and planets with us, on any Friday
evening that looks like "clear skies."
Enter
the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, and take
the elevator to the fourth floor. Directions are posted.
Observing continues as long as conditions remain good.
Observatory
telephone "hotline" is:
410-516-6525 call after 5 p.m.
Click Here For More Information.
Another
chance to observe the heavens at the Maryland Space Grant
Observatory occurs after each Open Night Lecture
at the Space Telescope Science
Institute. These lectures are given on the first
Tuesday of every month.
Get Trained to Use the Telescope
Observatory
Schedule - Click here
Are
you a student at Morgan State University, or at Johns Hopkins
University? You may wish to be trained to operate the telescope
yourself. Apply to Chris Merchant at camercha@pha.jhu.edu
.
Click
Here For More Information.
Maryland
Space Grant Observatory is a facility of Maryland Space Grant Consortium. Another
opportunity to look through a telescope is provided by the
University
of Maryland Observatory in College Park.
General
Information
The
Morris W. Offit Telescope
is the major observing instrument in Maryland Space Grant
Observatory,
This
telescope was provided by an anonymous donor, in honor of
Morris W. Offit, past Chairman of the Board of Trustees
of the Johns Hopkins University. The telescope has, as its
major optical element, a 20"-diameter (that is, half-meter
diameter) parabolic mirror. This f/8 Cassegrain telescope
was built by DFM
Engineering of Longmont, Colorado.
The telescope is located under the Stanley
D. and Joan F. Greenblatt Dome,
on the roof of the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy,
on the Homewood Campus of The
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
Maryland.
(This is not the only Morris W. Offit Telescope! The
original telescope is at Apache
Point Observatory where it is serving as the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey monitor telescope. That 1/2 meter
telescope observes the transparency of the atmosphere, so
that systematic images from a 2.5 meter telescope will be
consistent over time. This is a crucial element of the survey,
which will provide spectra for a million objects over 1/4
of the sky, and positions for more than 100 million celestial
objects. More information about the sky survey can be obtained
from the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey web site at Hopkins, or the SDSS web site at Apache Point Observatory.)
Do
you like Astronomy? Then please support the International Dark Sky Association.
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