Assistant Professor Tatiana Podladchikova of the Skoltech Space Center (SSC), Nikita Veliev, an engineer of the SSC, and Galina Chikunova, a PhD student of the SSC, recently created a course for the Independent Studies Period (ISP) titled “Solar Observations with a Telescope.”
What gave them the idea to run it? After Arkady Dvorkovic, Chairman of the Skoltech Board of Trustees, donated a high-end Sky-Watcher telescope to the SSC, Nikita decided to create the course.
“When it was gifted to our center, I was responsible for assembling it and setting everything up. I then began thinking that if the students want to use it, we should instruct them,” said Nikita.
Realizing that it made more sense to teach students in groups rather than on an individual basis, he created an ISP course. As well as teaching basic astronomy, the main goal of the program is to teach students how, when and where they can use a telescope, with a special focus on solar observation.
While the telescope in question is of the more advanced kind designed for experienced users, the fundamentals for use are very similar across the board. It has a maximum magnification of 400x, meaning that one could make out the colorful atmosphere of Venus (incidentally, the planet is very bright during the evenings at this time of year); likewise, Andromeda, the galaxy nearest the Milky Way (2.5 million light-years away), would be visible on a clear night without light pollution as an unmistakable galactic ...