Turn-Key Hosting Solution Available at an Amazing Price!
We have a very unique hosting opportunity at our Siding Spring location. A complete system, Turn-Key and ready to be installed today at an amazing discounted price!
A Celestron C-14 SCT OTA with a mirror locking collar on a Paramount ME mount. It comes equipped with an Apogee AP6EP CCD Camera, an Optec TCF-S motorized focuser and an Optec motorized Colour Filter Wheel with Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, H-Alpha, and Bessel B, V, R filters.
A system with these specs would normally cost close to $50,000 with a year of private hosting!
We have it available today and for a very short time for $30,000 including 1 Year of private hosting at our Siding Spring Observatory Site, installation, and calibration. This would also include all needed software, computer, server cabinet and accessories.
For more information, please send an email to aron@itelescope.net.
Exupery ups the ante! by Peter Lake
This is my first report on iTelecope.net's Grant Program, and what a first quarter its been for 2013. This is a great story, and I am very excited, but not half as excited as our grant recipients, it would seem.
One of the fundamental issues in education today is capturing the passion of young people into science and math, the innovation engine of a nation's future, its intellectual capital and ability to innovate. Social media has been at the forefront of engaging people in science through Citizen Science programs like CosmoQuest, Zooniverse and also here at iTelescope.net where amateur astronomers do hundreds of hours of science each month.
Our first grant of the year went to the College Saint Exupery in Perpignan, France. A humble 400 points to enable them to do several exoplanet transits for a local science competition. Immediately I was impressed with the quality of their grant application; they had a keen appetite for discovery of new things and were fascinated with concept of transit timing variations (TTVs), and the prospect that they might be able to detect something really exciting.
The 14-year-old students in "Troisième" (which is equivalent to middle school in Australia or junior high in the U.S.) made all the decisions, submitted their grant proposal to their science teacher first, then to their English teacher to make sure it was well written in the "Queen's English" for us convict-descended Australians. They set out their goal to collect two transits and report the data to the TRESCA database run by the Czech Astronomical Society.
As most of you know -- not everything goes to plan in astronomy!
After several test runs to determine exposure length, and learning about converting universal time zones to local time zones and identifying a suitable target, they discovered some "learnings". What a refreshing attitude to see kids try something, get it wrong, chalk it up as a good lesson in what not to do, work out what they did wrong and quickly adjust. On most occasions when they asked a question, by the time I got back to them they had already worked out the answer themselves, such was their energy and commitment to the task.
They had several setbacks, they ran into the bane of every Astronomer's worst nightmare -- WEATHER!
The first couple of sessions they booked were "weathered out", then just when they thought they had nailed their first transit, the weather showed up again -- you guessed it -- right at the ingress of the transit, producing this rather interesting light curve, where they lost the middle of the transit. They pressed on undeterred!
Image credit: Transit of WASP-43b From Q62 - College Saint Exupery
They gave up on the monsoonal flush of weather drowning the Australian east coast and jumped onto iT11 in New Mexico and got a beautiful transit of Qatar-2b but AGAIN missed part of the pre-transit data due to weather, but this time good enough to "tick the box" and submit some meaningful data.
Image credit: Transit of WASP-43b From Q62 - College Saint Exupery
Now, do you think that would be enough for teenagers with new toys? Of course not! They were keen to make a discovery and nothing was going to stop them. So armed with over 200 quality images covering over five hours of data they began exploring what else their photometry tools could do. Bingo! They identified a new variable star that was previously unknown.
As good little scientists, they know you don't announce discoveries in internet blogs -- you write a discovery paper and have it peer reviewed by a local french astronomer!
These kids are just awesome and optimize the very future of science.
The students contacted Raoul Behrend at the Genève Observatory to peer review their work. They had also located a second variable star in their images, and both have been confirmed by Mr. Behrend and have been published in the USNO A2.0 Catalog with the common names of Perp-1 and Perp-2. The students have just returned from their winter break and are now working on a submission to the VSX catalog of the AAVSO.
Image Credit: Raoul Behrend
I asked Julien Vandermarlière, the Troisième science teacher, what the students had learned so far and what they hoped to achieve in the future:
"We entered the competition because we wanted to discover the universe of astronomy. We think exoplanets and variable stars are very mysterious things and we would like to learn more about it!"
"Controlling your telescopes via internet was really interesting and we really appreciate it. Learning to do it was the most exciting part of the project! Astronomy is very interesting part of sciences and may be we will try to learn more about it after our contest. May be we will make another project but we don't know which one yet. May be in the future some of us will be professional astronomers!"
Troisième Science Students of College Saint Exupery, Perpignan
I asked my good friend Mike Simonsen from the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) how important it was to encourage young people to connect with science and how important it is for the AAVSO and the field of Astronomy:
"Astronomy is a great way to get kids involved in analytical and
critical thinking without them even knowing they are learning
something until it's too late! Astronomy is really the science of
everything. The entire universe is the laboratory, and we use
mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and all the technology and
engineering skills we can muster to learn who we are, where we came
from and what our place is in the grand scheme of things. If you want
to give meaning to a young person's life, introduce them to astronomy
and help them find answers to the biggest questions we can ask."
"What is surprising to many people is how important variable stars are
in the landscape of astrophysics. When we study variable stars we are
really studying the secret lives of stars. How they are born, live out
their lives for millions or billions of years, and die, sometimes as
white dwarfs or in violent eruptions that seed the universe with the
raw materials to make the next generation of stars, and us."
"Much of what we know about stellar evolution, the distance to objects
in the universe and the search for life on planets around other stars
is based on our study of variable stars."
Mike Simonsen - Membership Director & Development Officer - AAVSO
I have learned just as much from the College Saint Exupery Students and their energetic teacher (Julien), as they have from their project. It's been great to be part of their journey, which I am sure we will hear more about very soon.
The key learnings for the grant program have been:
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carefully select applicants who have the energy and drive to achieve their goals;
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it's okay to make mistakes -- just encourage people and keep moving;
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never underestimate how powerful it is to place quality tools in the hands of people who love science;
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gently guide and make suggestions but allow the applicants to drive the process;
So to the budding scientists at College Saint Exupery, you are an inspiration to all. Good luck with your discovery paper and your entry in the science competition.
iTelescope.net wishes to thank the parents of College Saint Exupery who graciously gave permission to publish the class photo.
iTelescope.net considers each grant application on its merits, and gives preference to Education, Science Research and Citizen Science collaborations such as OSIRIS-Rex.
Year of the Comet by Nicole Mortillaro
If there were such thing as an Astronomical Calendar, last year would have been the “Year of the Sun” following the total solar eclipse, the annular eclipse and the Transit of Venus. And this year it would be the “Year of the Comet.”
Feb 2012 NASA APOD - C2009 P1 & M92 on T14 credit Rolando Ligustri
Comet C/2011 L4 (or just Comet Pan-STARRS), was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Haleakala, Hawaii, and first made an appearance in the southern hemisphere in 2012. People were treated to a spectacular show as the comet neared an estimated brightness of around +1. People in the northern hemisphere enjoyed Pan-STARRS in March 2013. Although it’s still visible, it’s not nearly as impressive as it has been.
But in 2013 we are going to get a very special treat. Coming soon to a sky near you is Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), which most people simply call Comet ISON. Discovered in September 2012. There is some speculation that this could be the best comet in years.
Of course, we all love seeing comets, and we also know that there’s a lot more detail available to comets than what we can see with the naked eye. So what about using iTelescope to image comets? It can be done.
And if there’s anyone who knows about imaging comets, it’s iTelescope member Rolando Ligustri who lives in northeastern Italy. I asked him a few questions about his experiences and how he got into imaging comets.
When did you start becoming interested in astronomy?
When I was young, I saw men land on the moon and fell in love with space immediately. I received my first telescope in 1973. It was a small but excellent refractor: a 76/910. With it I began to observe the sky. My first target was the Pleiades, and then Saturn. When I first saw it, I was overcome with emotion: it was a three-dimensional planet!
Then I continued to observe the sky. I only stopped when I was an officer in the Italian Navy. In 1986, I bought my first real telescope for astroimaging — to photograph Halley’s Comet! In 1995, I bought my first CCD and after that another, I imaged hundreds of objects and dozens of comets.
When did you start becoming interested in comets?
My interest began with the observation and photographing of Halley’s Comet. It was too bad that the 1986 passage wasn’t very bright. Then, with the creation of the CAST Observatory (MPC235) [an observatory in Italy], I began to study them more and more. As of today I have photographed almost 150 comets, and thanks to remote telescopes like iTelescope, I have had several of my photographs appear as an Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).
Which iTelescopes do you use to image?
There is no one telescope in particular that needs to be used for photographing the comets. Every set-up in the various sites around the world can go well with astrophotography — you just need to know what you want to achieve (beautiful photograph or scientific measurements) and the size of the target. In principle, the telescopes with short focal length are useful for creating beautiful images; ones with longer focal lengths can be used for searching out details inside the coma or in the first part of the tail in addition to measurements of position and light. What is important is to always pay attention to the resolution of the telescope and the movement of the comet. If you’re making measurements, 1 pixel of blur is acceptable. However, if you’re just imaging for the pure beauty, it can move 6 to 8 pixels, which you can fix in post-processing.
Can you give advice to those looking to image comets?
As I said above, you first need to decide the field of view, both in terms of the size of the comet, or for any deep sky objects nearby. A photo of a comet must always be studied, even for how to frame it. Once you decide how to frame it and know the resolution of the instrument as well as the apparent speed of the comet, you need to determine the maximum exposure.
Member Showcase: Pick Your Target Contest
Last month, we asked you to start imaging and post those images on Facebook and you responded! There were so many amazing images this month that we couldn't narrow it down to the normal three. The below images were the winners of the contest as voted by you on Facebook!
We begin this month by highlighting long time member, Gordon Mandell. He shared many amazing images this month, but these three in particular are just spectacular.
This image of IC 2944 in Centaurus was captured by Gordon Mandell using T30. It is a tri-color narrowband image in the Hubble palette. It consists of 370 minutes of total exposure time using 600sec subexposures. As Gordon mentioned when posting this image to Facebook, the Bok globules in this image are truly amazing, and could host the creation of double or mutli-star systems in the future
This image of M 16 by Gordon Mandell using T30 is composed of 24 x 600 sec narrowband subexposures. It is presented in the Hubble palette and has some of the most amazing detail I've seen on this target. What is further amazing about this image is the fact that all subs were obtained around the Full Moon less than 60 degrees away from the target. This is possible because of the narrow 3nm passband of the Astrodon SII, Ha & OIII filters on T30. Amazing job, Gordon!
The final submission from Gordon is this fantastic M 20, Trifid Nebula, emission & reflection nebula in Sagittarius captured with T30 at SSO. It consists of 18 x 300 sec (1x1) Luminance + RGB 6 x 300 sec (2x2) each; 180 min total exposure. Processed with MaxIm, CCDStack, RegiStar & PSCS3. Gordon shared some amazing work this month!
Next we examine the amazing art of Noboru Yamamoto. No stranger to the Monthly Showcase, Noboru has once again given us an amazing mosaic and a gorgeous look at a more rare target.
This month, Noboru Yamamoto has submitted another absolutely amazing 6 panel mosaic. His target this time was Antares - Rho Ophiuchi area in Scorpion and Ophiuchus. As always with Noboru's images the amount of details visible on the stunning star background are so well done, they almost seem to pop off the screen! This mosaic was captured on T12 with a total of 438 minutes of exposure time, with panels 1-4 and 6 using 35 minutes of Luminance and 36 minutes of RGB and panel 5 using 35 minutes of Luminance and 48 minutes of RGB. Another breathtaking submission by Noboru Yamamoto!
This second submission, while technically not eligible for the contest this month (Submitted May 27th), was one I just could not wait another month to share! Noboru Yamamoto has done some amazing work in the past and this image of NGC 6726, Galactic Dust Cloud is just fantastic! The amount of subtle details Noboru pulled out of this image series is amazing and has led to one of the highest rated image submission we've had. It was captured on T12 with 15 x 5min (1x1) of Luminance, and 5 x 5min (2x2) of R, G, and B. It was processed using MaxIm, CCDStack, PixInsight, and Photoshop CS5.
Finally, we take a glance at the great wanderers of the universe with an amazing shot of Comet C/2011 R1 McNaught, by Damian Peach. It was a difficult choice, and there are already some amazing images of comets from this month that I cannot wait to share with you in next months newsletter!
