Just before we introduce ourselves to you we want at this instant say many many thanks to Hughes Pack. He is a teacher at Mount Hermon High School in Northfield, Massachasusetts. We got to know Hughes and regard him highly since the HOU-conference in Munich (Germany) in July 2000. Especially my girls grow fond of him as he offered to lend one of his ccd cameras to us. Not for long and Hughes fullfilled his promise and sent the ccd to Germany the first days of September. After two hours of negotiating we took the ccd from customs without paying any tax. In September we were stuck to "home-training" for the weather hindered us doing exercises outside.
In the middle of October the time had come after long training we could direct the ccd to the stars the first time - the Moon exactly was our first try. Naturally we had to learn it the hard way. Earthīs moon was too bright and we had to reduce the aperture of the telescope and there were some other problems too.....Who has ever worked with a ccd knows all the mistakes a greenhorn can make from own experience, I think. So Jupiter week came just in time to show that we have learnt something new. Unfortunately the weather condition were rather bad in Bavaria at the beginning of December. The temperature was too warm and so the stars and planets were mostly hidden behind mist at dusk or clouds came up during the night. Despite all this adversities we tried to watch jupiterīs moons as often as possible using the ccd. And here they are:
If you are interested to load down a selection of our images for the use with
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Finally a few words, who we are. We are four girls, Carina, Ines, Maria, Sabine and a teacher for math and physics at Franz-Marc-Gymnasium in Markt Schwaben. We do astronomy together for at least two years and I hope they will go on one year more. Markt Schwaben is located about 30km eastward of Munich. The small town has about 8000 residents and a Gymnasium with a mathematical-scientifical and a foreign language branch. To date 1000 pupils are studying there and slow growth might not be ruled out.