M2, M3, M5, M12, M13 and M92 in a clear autumn sky
On Tuesday the weather was set fair for a clear evening so Simon Davis, IB Physics and Astronomy teacher, was able to set up the telescope in the garden of one of the student houses from 21:00. Simon explained that they hoped to see globular clusters such as M2, M3, M5, M12, M13 and M92. If they were really lucky they might have seen M51, the whirlpool galaxy. On the night the highlights were seeing M13 and M92. They are Globular Clusters that are in the 'Halo' of the milky way. They also had a look at Mizar, which looks just like a single star but in reality there are two stars - Mizar and Alcor. St. Clare's is the only school worldwide that offers Astronomy as an IB subject and it is proving to be a very popular subject in college both academically and as an extracurricular activity for staff and students. The college has two telescopes: the main one being a Celestron CPC 1100 GPS also called a GOTO telescope because it can be controlled by a laptop. The other telescope is a Coronado which has a Hydrogen alpha filter and is specifically for looking at the Sun. Globular cluster M92 |
 Globular cluster M13 |
 Location of main features in the night sky |
|