Connected Astronomy

I really enjoyed Fraser and Dr Pamela's AstonomyCast Podcast last week about "Next Level Telescopes" [Episode #150]. It was a fantastic roadmap of information, so I thought I would follow up, and build on that, by doing a little tour video of my own setup.



The advantages of remote, connected astronomy are many:

-No setup and tear down time
-No cold night air on the back of the neck
-No travel to dark sites
-Desktop convenience
-Collaboration, community and access to other highly skilled experts

Disadvantages (opportunities for personal growth)are:
-Its highly technical and very complex
-Can be expensive to do it yourself
-Broadband access can be challenging in remote areas
-WARNING - check you telco's broadband download limits on your Internet Plan

Whilst some of these interfaces are customised/proprietry the bulk of the legwork is done by Maxim DL, TheSky, FocusMax and the telescope controller.

Of course most challeneges can be overcome if you are dealing with people who know what they are doing, and you are prepared to be patient. There is nothing better than setting up a run and then relaxing in the leather recliner with the iPhone in the cup holder as a virtual console to monitor the progress of the run. Even better is setting up an image run in the dead of night whilst you are fast asleep, and downloading the images next day.

Here is my latest Astrophotography image: M17 or the Omega Nebula is not as often photographed as some, but the surrounding star field makes it a lovely composition.

This LRGB photo totaling 90 mins of imaging time 960sLum, 1500sRed, 1500sGreen, 1500sBlue binned 1x1 shows what is achievable.



So with the last word (or should that be letter) on connected astronomy..... ;-)......Enjoy!

FMOs - Fast Moving Asteroids

Things move along at a fairly fast pace in the space time continuim.

Our little blue green planet moves along around the sun and travels even faster with reference to the cosmic background radiation. So next time someone asks you how fast you can run, you can say "almost as fast as Usain Bolt so long as you use the cosmic background radiation as the reference point not the finish line".

Ah I digress....so what constitutes fast is an interesting discussion you can have for many hours over a glass of red wine.

From the reference point of earth most Asteroids are found in a number of "belts" between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter and of the roughly half a million discovered currently only 1067 occasionally wander into our neighbourhood. These are classified as PHAs and are defined as Asteroids that have a minimum orbital intersect with earth of <0.05 AU (1AU is the distance from the sun to the earth).

The Minor Planet Centre, International Astronomy Union, Spacewatch and NASA JPL lead the charge in identifying and tracking asteroids, after setting a goal in the 1990s to find 90% of the Asteroids larger than 1Klm within 10 years.

Whilst Astronomers from the LINEAR, LONEOS, NEAT, and the Catalina Sky Survey, do the bulk of the legwork in the northern hemisphere, the Uppsala Telescope at Siding Springs in Western New South Wales, bats well above its weight in covering a good portion of the southern sky.

The Telescopes at Moorook D90 are well postioned to do quick follow up work for the professional Astronomers.



Fast moving asteroids are classed as FMOs, which by virtue of their speed usually mean they are fairly close to earth. Most however are relatively harmless as they are usually very small. The fantastic advances in technique honed over the past two decades, and the better technology now available means that asteroids as small as 4 Metres are regularly detected in the surveys.

On the 14th Aug E12-Siding Springs Survey on the Upsala Telescope detected object 2009 PR1 a 42m near earth object which zipped past earth at 7.9 Lunar distances on the 12 August.



The author captured this shot (above) shortly after it was posted on the MPC Confirmation page.

FootNote:
This Blog is posted as a tribute to all those hard working folks in the Asteroid watch programs around the world.

First Light at G11 - AARTScope

Well here it is. A little later than expected.

Its been a bit cloudy this week, so I have been trying to grab something interesting between the clouds.

This is a very quick LRGB 600sec each, just a color combine in Maxim, and autoscaled JPG output.



Enjoy! Hopefully many more to come.

iPhone goes to the Moon

Well, its a beautiful crisp night in Melbourne - and by crisp I mean freezing cold, not that motherhood statement currently popular amongst senior management for "Crisp" communications (code for ...."explain it so your boss can understand it!").

Ah....I digress.

On the weekend I spent some time fashioning a Telescope adapter for my new iPhone, just because you can, or it seemed like a good idea at the time. I have to prove to my little 4.5 inch reflector (my first telescope) that its still loved.

So down to the local hardware store to pick up a few bits and pieces I went. I came home with a threaded 1&1/4 inch hose adapter, a rectagular down pipe plastic thingy and some velcro straps....and whacko, 40 minutes later I have an iPhone adapter for my little telescope.



So tonight on a freezing cold, stunning Melbourne evening the full moon came up over the horizon. What a sight it was! No good for Asteroid hunting so a little fun seemed appropriate.

One of the amazing things about the new range of SmartPhone cameras, and in particular, the new iPhone and Flip Mino is the really low F stop. Many of these cameras are as low as F 2.5- F2.7. I suspect this may have something to do with the ability to take photos in smokey nightclubs, but I am not complaining as it does a fine job on the moon.

Welcome

Hi and welcome to the AARTScope Blog.

This is the space for discussion and collaboration around the Australian Amateur Research Telescope (AART).

The AARTScope website can be found at www.aartscope.com . The AART is a 16inch ASA Astrograph hosted at Riverland Dingo Telescope Farm and is an affiliate of the Global-Rent-A-Scope .

The ASA is married up to some of the finest cameras and filters available, externally guided by an ST-402 ME and eFinder, the 11M 4008 x 2672 pixel FLI PL11002M Class 1 CCD can achieve a SNR of up to 3000 at magnitude 10 on a night of excellent seeing. The 12 position filterwheel carries a full suite of Astrodon color, photometric and narrowband 3nM filters.