Mt. Meru Astronomical Observatory
Science Motivation for the Next Generation | Motivation ya Sayansi kwa Kizazi kijacho
In 2014, Astronomers Without Borders and Telescopes to Tanzania hosted a crowd-sourced fund raising campaign on the Indiegogo platform. The design and construction of the observatory; refurbish, shipment, and installation of the 1969 12″ Cave-Cassegrain telescope was made possible by the generous contributions of the following individuals. The teachers, students, and all who visit the …
Zacharia shares the following, “This week, the Ailanga Form 3 and 4 physics teacher asked me [to] help him find a video about Astronomical telescopes and how they work in comparison to microscopes, to show his students in our observatory. Yesterday night we [brought] students to the observatory to show them the video which led …
Today the MMAO hosted the assembly of NASA spectrographs. These simple, effective tools enable us to “see” the composition of our Sun in a safe and effective manner, combining chemistry, physics, and astronomy in a cohesive understanding. Zacharia writes, “… students come over to our library and they were looking for different kinds of materials …
This just in from Eliatosha Maleko, instructor at Ilboru Primary School and Astronomy Ambassador for MMAO, his summary of the month working on the completion of the observatory and installation of the telescope. “I am very happy to express my sincere gratitude and happiness to you since I started my participation in the Astronomy about …
Yesterday was a whirlwind, go-go-go attempt to cross off as many final items from our TODO list. We returned to the issue of “play” in the RA arm and axis of rotation, reducing it considerably with a tighter configuration of the friction clutch and application of nuts on the back of the rear plate. We …
Continue reading “Reduced Play in the RA, Setting Circles Aligned, and Observation”
Yesterday saw a whirlwind of activity, morning ’till night. Zacharia was successful in his first installation of Ubuntu and installation of the ExFAT ‘fuse’ driver. You know you have a true geek in the making when you get a high-five following first use of the command line! He then copied ~200GB of data from a …
Continue reading “Ubuntu, the Moon at MMAO, and a Night of Observing”
Today Eliatosha, Eliona and I rebuilt the 3″ Celestron refractor and a smaller, longer focal length Meade refractor telescope. It took a few hours to fully disassemble, clean the lenses, and put them together again. But the end result, the Celestron in particular, is stunning. The quality of the image is simply magical. Then we …
Continue reading “Rebuilding telescopes, selecting eyepieces”
Today we completed the sorting of the Organization for Science Education and Observatory (OSEO) office at Ailanga Secondary School, taking all tripods, telescopes, and eye pieces to the observatory for cleaning and repair. There, we watched three videos on using the “drift method” to complete the alignment of our telescope, but were once again foiled …
Today was a big day, from sunrise to sunset. Eliona arrived to my lodge a bit past 7:00 am to engage in a review of the agenda for the ambassador meeting. We printed copies here at the lodge, and by 9:00 am were knee deep sifting through a half dozen suit cases in the OSEO …
Continue reading “The Ambassadors Meeting and a Night of Observation”