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Skywatch line for November 6 and 7th, 2024 written by Alan French
The Sun rises at 6:36 A.M. on Wednesday and sets at 4:41 P.M. On Thursday it rises at 6:38 and sets at 4:40. This Thursday has just under 17 and…
Read MoreThe All-Cut Come-It
Dr. Rapson put together this display in our Planetarium Gallery. That’s the Dudley’s Comet Seeker telescope, built by Alvan Clark & Co., along with articles from the Astronomical Journal detailing…
Read MoreCounting Questions: Dudley Observatory FAQ
To start off, I thought I would use this space to answer some of the most common questions that I receive on the exhibit floor: Where is the Observatory? Funny…
Read MoreFrom the Collection: the Pruyn Brashear Equatorial Telescope
With the recent announcement that Dudley will be building an observatory, it seems like a good time to introduce the piece that will be at the heart of that observatory:…
Read MoreOne, Two, Three ..
… gosh, there are a lot of them, aren’t there? Welcome to Counting Stars, a repository for writings on the history of and around the Dudley Observatory. Those of you joining us…
Read MoreFrom the Collection: Dopplemayer’s “Atlas novus coelesti”
The night sky has always been a source of inspiration for art that borders on science (or maybe the other way around). Examples are as ancient as the Dunhuang Star Chart,…
Read MoreDudley’s Female Computers
Dudley Observatory has spent most of its 160 years as a working science institution, and not a museum. That means that its employees weren’t always focused on saving the kind…
Read MoreFrom the Collection: Gemini S-10 Particle Collector
Few pieces in our collection have traveled as far as this one, or seen quite so much. This is the S-10 Particle Collector, from the Gemini space program. How Dudley…
Read MoreSTEM Education for the Young to the Young-at-heart
Our high flying outreach astronomer Dr. Valerie Rapson recently gave a Tedx Talk in Albany about the need for continuing education in the STEM fields, the ways in which we…
Read MoreThe Battle of the Board
It’s an unfortunate fact that the Dudley Observatory, no matter what it has accomplished and no matter what it may accomplish, will always best be known to historians for its…
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