Summer opening of the Dwingeloo Telescope

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.© CC-BY-4.0 Tammo Jan Dijkema

During the summer months, volunteers of CAMRAS open up the Dwingeloo telescope for visitors. This year, the telescope was open every Sunday afternoon in July and August. In total, around 850 visitors showed up (of which around 250 kids). This is more than double the amount of summer visitors of previous years!

A novelty this year were two "Moon bounce" afternoons: transmitting radio signals to the Moon and receiving the reflection 2.5 seconds later. This live demonstration was not possible on other afternoons due to negative Moon altitude. Luckily, our favourite pulsar B0329+54 is always up for a live demonstration. Finally, we have experimented with a live demonstrations of hydrogen lines - a demonstration that we will further polish shortly.

29 CAMRAS volunteers helped making this possible, some of which were helping out for as many as four afternoons. We are happy that they all made this possible!