Telescopes, the Moon and Science Week Last week (15 -24 march) was National Science and Engineering Week in UK, and as a break in between writing computer code and telescope scheduling, I took the opportunity to do some public engagement.
Astrophotography on new telescopes Here are three images put together by BJ Fulton from the data from 2 March, 2013 on our newly installed 1-meter telescopes at Sutherland, South Africa. BJ decided that in order to keep the integrity of a "first-light" image, he would not touch-up the images in any way.
Sutherland achieves first, first-light This week members of our engineering team have been installing telescopes at our Sutherland site, South Africa. We are pleased to announce the first of the 3 telescopes to be installed achieved first light on 22 February 2013. The image below is a wide field image taken with a 500mm Nikon lens (not the standard instrumentation) and is a very preliminary observation. There is still much work to do (including installing the other 2 telescopes) but we want to send our congratulations to the on-site team, Annie, Mark C, David, Kurt and Abiy.
2012 DA14 caught on film An asteroid with an orbit that brings it very close to the Earth this week, with it's closest approach on 15 February at 20:00 UT. For the past couple of weeks staff astronomer, Tim Lister and I have been trying to image this asteroid, called 2012 DA14.
Siding Spring back on sky After the bush fires which ravaged New South Wales mid-January 2013, we are pleased to announce that the LCOGT installation at Siding Spring is back on sky!
Siding Spring safe from bush fire This weekend Siding Spring observatory has been ravaged by a bush fire. All of the telescopes (including Faulkes Telescope South and our other instrumenation) appear to be safe. The New South Wales Fire Service used the LCOGT webcams to investigate the extent of the fires. Due to their brave efforts and the preventative measures of observatory staff, no life was lost. Sadly some buildings, including residential buildings, were lost to the flames.
Crab Nebula and other things that go bang in the night Over the past summer I had the opportunity to undertake a summer placement at Cardiff University School of Physics and Astronomy through the Nuffield Science Bursary scheme, under the supervision of Dr Edward Gomez. The main aim of this project was to explore the final evolutionary phases of a star's life. We looked at both large mass and small mass stars and their end stages, comprising of supernovae and planetary nebulae.
Communicating astronomy in Beijing Beijing Olympic park played host to the 28th triennial general assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) this August. I was delighted to get a chance to attend and talk about the education and outreach resources of LCOGT. I am also a member of an IAU task force for children and schools, so it gave me an excellent opportunity to talk to different outreach and education groups within the IAU. The general assembly is actually a lot of astronomy conferences happening simultaneously over the course of 2 weeks, attracting 2,500 astronomers.
A summer of outreach This summer has been a very busy outreach season for us in UK. Stuart and I, with assistance from many others, have exhibited at 3 different festivals and spoken to around 1000 people. We've fine tuned setting up our stand to be a well oiled machine! The theme has an over-arching theme of multi-wavelength views of the Universe. So, armed with a couple of flat screen monitors, a thermal imaging camera, a mobile version of Chromoscope and arm-loads of LCO astronomy stickers, we set out.
Discover Club and the hard-to-see Universe As part of WISE (Women Into Science and Engineering), Haley has run (and I have helped with) an annual workshop for the past 5 years for 12-14 year old girls in Cardiff University.
Show me stargazing live! Tomorrow (14 January 2012) to mark the beginning of a week of astronomy in the UK we will be hosting another of our Twitter events, Show Me Stars, where a prominent guest host tweets live while they observe with our network. The week of astronomy is promoted and organized by the BBC and is called Stargazing Live. It runs from 14 - 21 January 2012 and builds on the success of a pilot last year.
Astronomy for a better world! Last week I visited the South Africa Astronomical Observatory, Cape Town which is home to the IAU's Office for Astronomy Development (OAD). This office has recently been established to deal with issues of science education and awareness in the developing world and how to get people from all nations involved in this effort. Using astronomy as a hook to inspire and excite people about science in general, no matter what their background or circumstances.
What is LCOGT? a pencast At the 2011 .astronomy meeting in Oxford, I was asked to make a pencast by another delegate (Jose Enrique Ruiz). I wrote why we are building a network of telescopes and I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.
Solar eclipse during Cape Town rush hour At an early hour on Friday November 25, 2011 there was a solar eclipse only visible in the Southern Hemisphere. If you had been at the South Pole, you would have seen about 80% of the Sun was covered by the Moon. From Cape Town, South Africa, the event lasted only for about an hour and the maximum coverage was only 10% of the Sun's diameter. Despite the small size, duration and the early hours of the eclipse, it was used as an important occasion to create awareness among the general population in Cape Town.
Following near-by asteroid's journey Observing with BOS one of our astronomy team, BJ Fulton, has compiled a video of the asteroid 2005 YU55 as when it was recently near the Earth on its travel around the Solar System. The video is not in real time and represents many hours of observations, compiled into less than 30 seconds.
