The perfect summer night is warm, breezy and filled with hundreds of glittering stars. I recently got the opportunity to enjoy summer nights in all their glory by learning how to use a professional telescope at the University of Toledo’s Ritter Observatory. I was there in June for an astronomical spectroscope training program sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Program for Research and Education with Small Telescopes.

Ritter Observatory is equipped with a 1-meter telescope and two fiber optic fed spectrographs which are used to collect starlight emitted in the visible spectrum. The collected light is separated into a continuum of various wavelengths, and this data is converted into a graphs.

Astronomers use these graphs to determine important information about a star, such as its composition, radial velocity (how fast it is spinning) and changes in mass. During the day, I learned how to use a data analysis program called IRAF (Image Reduction and Analysis Facility). Nancy Morrison, astronomy professor at the University of Toledo, and some graduate students guided me through IRAF and my project. I created an atlas of the spectrum of a red supergiant called Deneb or Alpha Cygni, meaning the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus.

On clear nights, I was trained in the operating procedures of the 1-meter telescope. I learned every step of opening the scope, aiming at target stars, taking data with the Echelle camera, and closing.

Some of the stars we observed are so faint that camera exposures took an hour or longer, and thus, we would collect data until dawn! Monitoring the weather, adjusting the telescope and talking were some of the ways we passed the time during long exposures.

I'm a night person, so I found staying up all night quite enjoyable. Working on the spectra during the day was also very interesting. I learned a lot about the IRAF system and how astronomers process raw data from stars. My favorite part of using IRAF was labeling the elements depicted by the graphs because each graph became a finished product yielding information about Deneb.

I loved learning about the stars and the methods used to study them, and as a physics major here at Albion College, it was also a chance to learn about a future career choice. Ritter Observatory’s training program was definitely the highlight of my summer.