Things that happen in the sky.

So far, it has been a very unusual Fall here in Italy. Of course, under the point of view of a star observer.

Plenty of clear nights (November, in particular, was good for observing almost every night!), so I tried to look up as much as possible, using my telescopes both for science and fun (and science is also fun, by the way).

As you may remember, I'm usually quite far from my telescopes. I live in Rome, a big city with a very strong light pollution. While I'm very convinced that a lot of astronomy can be done from cities (we will talk about this in a future post), you need a dark site for better investigate the Cosmos. The darker the sky, the better the signal you will collect from faint, distant objects.

As I was raised in a small town about 100km south of Rome (Ceccano, in Central Italy), I decided to build an observatory there; it saw the first light in 1997 and since then I've been doing a lot of astronomical works from there.

The first telescope installed at Bellatrix Observatory in 1997.

As an astrophysicist, I'm particularly interested in asteroids, comets, variable stars and exoplanets: all these topics may require intense and frequent observing sessions and you can have troubles if you have to cover large distances to reach your observing site every time. This is why in 2006 I decided to develop a fully robotic, remotely accessible observing system, the Virtual Telescope.

A new mount arrived im 2006, when the Virtual Telescope adventure started

In five years, the Virtual Telescope evolved quite a lot and today is one of the most advanced remotely controlled astro-facilities on the planet. Now, I can access my telescopes in every moment, in an handful of seconds and this has increased my scientific productivity quite a lot! Having two remote, advanced telescopes I can use both at the same time, covering more targets and needs.

Let me say this clearly: observing the sky while being out there, under the stars, is such a great and memorable experience that a remote system cannot offer in any way. That said, surfing oceans of space and times through a remote telescope has its many benefits and, as strange as as it may sounds, offers its exclusive emotions.

When I start a remote session, the first thing I do - once checked that the sky is clear and it is NOT raining! - is opening the roof of the observatory. It is great to see it sliding away, leaving the telescopes under the sky. Unless I'm starting a last-minute session, triggered by a special astrophysical alert, I usually open the observatory well in advance to the beginning of the night, as soon as the direct sunlight is no longer reaching the instruments. This way, you leave them enough time to reach the thermal equilibrium with the environment, and this is vital for the best performances.

I love to open the roof while looking through the local, remote webcam inside the observatory. While the roof moves, you can see the sky showing and you can see what is up in that moment. And these last nights it was a particularly rewarding experience.

On the evening of 6 Dec., while opening the observatory at dusk, I recognized that something beautiful was happening in the sky: my webcam spotted the Moon and Jupiter having a nice conjunction. Here it is the scene I saw:

The 17" Planewave telescope with the Moon and Jupiter meeting over it.

This "preview" was enough to push me to check the skyscape again, a bit later, when the night was almost started:

As in the previous image, now the night was fully arrived.

Of course, these are not rare events, but they are still beautiful to see.

On the next nights, the Moon moved East, "leaving" Jupiter and I captured an image both on Dec. 7 and 8:

The Telescope, the Moon and Jupiter imaged again on Dec. 7, 2011

The Moon says goodbye to Jupiter on 8 Dec. 2011

 So, the sky is always ready to amaze you. All you need is to look up, from time to time. Soon, you will find yourself attracted by those vaste territories and maybe you will discover a strong interest for astronomy and the beuty of the heaven. If so, welcome aboard!