Adolphson Observatory facts for kids
| Location | Monmouth, Illinois, U.S. |
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The Adolphson Astronomical Observatory is a special place for looking at the stars and planets. It's located in Monmouth, Illinois, U.S., on the campus of Monmouth College. Built in 2013, this observatory helps students and the public learn about space.
Its biggest telescope is called the Trubeck Telescope. It's a powerful 20-inch telescope that helps scientists and students study the sky. The observatory is used for many things, like teaching college students about astronomy and helping them do real research. They even track and discover near-earth objects, which are space rocks that come close to Earth! It also helps everyone learn more about science.
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How the Observatory Started
The Adolphson Astronomical Observatory was built in 2013. It was made possible by a generous gift from David Adolphson and his wife, Priscilla Trubeck Adolphson. They both went to Monmouth College.
This gift helped create a modern place for students and teachers at Monmouth College to observe the sky. The observatory is located high up on the fourth floor of the Center for Science and Business building. It has a special dome that opens up to the sky.
Amazing Equipment
The main telescope at the observatory is the Trubeck Telescope. It was given to the college in 2015 by William Trubeck, who also graduated from Monmouth College.
The Trubeck Telescope
The Trubeck Telescope is a very advanced 20-inch (about 0.51 meters) reflector telescope. It was made by a company called Planewave Instruments. This telescope is designed to take clear pictures of space.
- It has special optics that work well for taking photos.
- It uses a large CCD camera, which is like a super sensitive digital camera for space.
- It has a computerized system that helps it point and track objects in the sky.
- The telescope can see a wide area of the sky.
Besides the Trubeck Telescope, the observatory also uses four other telescopes. These help students learn and explore different parts of the sky.
Smart Software and Tools
The Trubeck Telescope uses special software to help it work. One program, called TheSkyX Professional Edition, can show what the sky looked like thousands of years ago or what it will look like in the future. It can also help the telescope find more than 1.2 million different objects in space!
The telescope also has something called Adaptive Optics. This technology helps make the images from the telescope even clearer. It corrects for blurry effects caused by Earth's atmosphere.
Learning About Stars
A cool feature of the Trubeck Telescope is its spectroscopy ability. This means it can study the light from stars and other space objects. By doing this, scientists can learn many things, like:
- What chemicals the objects are made of.
- How hot they are.
- How bright they shine.
- And many other details about them!
Building Design
The observatory building itself has a modern and practical design. It sits about 40 feet (about 12 meters) above the ground. It's built on top of a brick building that was constructed in 2013. The building was specially designed to be strong enough to support the observatory on its roof.
