A Background in Asteroids, Comets and NEOs Asteroids Asteroids are rocky objects which orbit the Sun in our Solar System, but are too small to be considered planets. They are in fact, commonly known as Minor Planets due to their size. The majority of the asteroids in our Solar System orbit the Sun in what we call the ‘Asteroid Belt’. This is located between Mars and Jupiter as can be seen in the diagram below.
Education Partners & Affiliates We have 2 sorts of education collaborations one where we provide and support telescope use (educational partners) and another where we work on joint projects which do not necessarily involve the use of our 2-meter telescopes.
Extrasolar Planets History and Detection Extrasolar planets are planets orbiting stars outside our solar system.The first extrasolar planet discovery was confirmed in 1992, although they had been predicted long before. Planets are difficult to detect directly because they are so much dimmer than the stars they orbit. The Sun is a billion (109) times brighter than Jupiter and 10 billion (1010) times brighter than the Earth. 708 extrasolar planets have been discovered as of 7 December 2011. Astronomers use 5 main methods to find extrasolar planets.
How to Download DS9 for Mac Users These instructions will take you through the steps of downloading and starting DS9. From the DS9 Website, click on the link for the version of MaxOSX you have. You will need to have X11 installed in order to use the X11 version. The download will automatically begin when you click the link. The file will download to where the browser preferences are set to (normally either the desktop or the Downloads folder in your home directory).Aqua install:
How to Download DS9 for Windows Users These instructions will take you through the steps of downloading and starting DS9.
How to find asteroids and comets to observe Asteroids are awkward; they don’t stay in one place! Not only that, as the Earth rotates, different asteroids are visible from the Earth at different times. You might therefore think that finding the position of an asteroid in the sky might be a difficult task. Fortunately, much of the difficult work has already been done by various groups of people, and it is not as difficult as you might imagine finding the co-ordinates of an asteroid in the sky. You will need to follow these instructions on the same day as your observing session.
How to make color astronomical images with Photoshop This article will tell you how to use Adobe Photoshop to make high quality color images with your astronomical data.
How to observe using the Real-time Control Interface If you have access to the LCOGT network provided by Faulkes Telescope Project or Institute for Astronomy, Maui this video might help when planning your first observing session. The video walks you through using the "Real-time control interface" (which we call the RTI), so you can see what to expect. The interface is simple to use and provides plenty of assistance for inexperienced observers. If you do not know what to observe you can pick astronomical objects from one of many Guided Tours of the sky, Search for an object that you know the name of, or for more advanced observers can enter your own co-ordinates.You can also try out our interactive demo which gives you an experience of the control interface without needing to login or book observing time.
How to plan an observing session with Stellarium Downloading Stellarium Stellarium is a free, open source planetarium application which allows the night sky to be viewed from any location on Earth, on any date. The software can be downloaded from www.stellarium.org, together with installation instructions. When you open Stellarium, it adopts the date and time from your computer clock - the first screen looks similar to the image here.
How to set up Astrometrica Astrometrica is a simple to use Windows application which will read in raw telescope data (FITS files) for a set of observations, and check to see if there are any moving objects in them. You can 'blink' data files to see the object moving, mark its name if its know about, and even report a new asteroid to the Minor Planets Center. If you haven’t already, download the Astrometrica software and our customized configuration files (in the Images or Documents section).
