Sky and Telescope - February 2016 - 6

Letters

The Analemma from Antarctica

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Februar y 2016 sky & telescope

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February 9
October 27

March 23
September 17
ADRIANOS GOLEMIS

Thanks to Earth's spin-axis tilt and the
slight eccentricity of its orbit, the Sun
does not return to the same spot in our
sky at the same time every day but instead
traces out a "ﬁgure eight" over an entire
year. Photographing this looping circuit
- called the analemma - has tempted
amateurs ever since Dennis di Cicco's
pioneering conquest nearly four decades
ago (S&T: June 1979, p. 536).
Apparently no one has ever recorded
the analemma from a polar region. But I
had this chance in 2014, while working as
a European Space Agency research doctor
at the French-Italian polar station Concordia (75°° south latitude). There I witnessed
the Antarctic summer's midnight Sun,
as well as the 3-month-long polar night.
That's exactly what makes the Antarctic
analemma so intriguing: owing to the
extreme location, only one lobe of the
usual 8-shaped ﬁgure is visible - and it
also appears almost vertical in the sky.
I began in late 2013, making exposures
at 4 p.m. local time every week from
December 28th until the following March
23rd, and again from September 17th to
December 13th. Attempts to use a DSLR
or analog camera proved unfruitful due to
the low temperatures. So I used my Canon
PowerShot A4000 IS HD compact digital
camera in its "Fireworks" mode. Other
settings were a 5.0-mm focal length, f/9
focal ratio, ISO 100, and ½-second exposure. Strong winds aﬀected the camera's
steadiness, and that's why some exposures
appear wobbly. I shot the background picture at 9:15 a.m. to avoid direct sunlight.
Finally, all the exposures were compiled
in a single photo with the help of fellow
astronomer Tilemachos Athanasiadis.
Adrianos Golemis
Larisa, Greece

A series of 21 exposures taken over 7 months
from Concordia Station in Antarctica reveals
half of the analemma. (There the Sun remains
below the horizon from May to August.)

Information, Please!
I went out to get my Sunday paper on
October 25th. Two bright "stars" appeared
overhead; one was extremely bright,
perhaps the brightest I've seen. I decided
to ﬁnd out which planets I was looking
at, and your website provided the information immediately: Venus and Jupiter.
Thank you - I will be visiting again.
Ed Hostettler
Billings, Montana

Saving America's Observatories
Trudy Bell's article on Lick Observatory
(S&T: Aug. 2015, p. 24) evoked vivid and
fond memories of my pre-grad-school
days in the 1950s. While at Lick I was an
observing assistant assigned to astronomer George Herbig, helping to complete a
spectrographic survey of bright stars using
the 36-inch Clark refractor. Computing the
orbits of spectrographic binaries with a
mechanical calculator was a rite of passage.
Friday night was visitors' night. Each
week many dozens, if not a hundred, local

residents made the hour-long drive up
Mount Hamilton to see Saturn through
the 36-inch and the Moon through Lick's
12-inch Clark refractor. Reservations were
necessary to limit the crowd, but the tickets cost nothing. Completion of the Shane
120-inch reﬂector, then the world's second largest, ended those visitors' nights
- presumably due to the disruption from
car headlights on the mountain.
Yet public enthusiasm is the rooting
soil of astronomical research. The decommissioned 12-inch should be restored to its
small dome, and the original 1887 building and both Clark refractors should be
designated a national monument. Funding in perpetuity should be contingent on
at least one visitors' night per week.
Robert Innes
Sebastopol, California
I have never seen the Moon or the stars
through the eyepiece at a big observatory.
But were I given the opportunity to look
farther into the night sky than I had ever
seen before, it would be an awe-inspiring
moment. The sad reality is that many
observatories face funding shortages
because there are those who believe that
looking up is a waste of time. However,
in reality, it was through the study of
astronomy that we have made so many
scientiﬁc discoveries, including our very
understanding of time, space, and our
relationship to the cosmos.
Michael Aaron Gallagher
Syracuse, New York
Soon after I received the August issue,
oﬃcials at Wichita State University
announced that the school's Lake Afton
Public Observatory would close on
August 22nd. Those of us who volunteered at LAPO were very sad to see this
happen. We love outreach education
enough that we aren't really sure what,
where, or how to go on. However, members of the Kansas Astronomical Observers are working on a proposal to maintain
and operate the facility going forward.
James J. Fullerton
Wichita, Kansas

Sky and Telescope - February 2016

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