News / Education
Kevin Hills, Asteroid hunter realizes life's dreams at GRAS
Remote asteroid hunting from the UK
Global-Rent-a-scope (GRAS) is proud to present the work of Kevin Hills, GRAS-006
Kevin relates his own story as to how he joined the GRAS Adventure of discovery. Read about Kevin's bold and fascinating adventure as only he could describe the events that led him to GRAS.
Kevin writes:
"I have been interested in science since I can remember and saved up for my first telescope, a 60mm refractor, at the age of ten. I couldn’t see a great deal from our house in London but I was still amazed by Venus, Jupiter and Saturn and since then I have always owned a telescope of one sort or another.
As an adult my challenge has always been (and continues to be) that I have difficulty observing because my work often takes me far afield, including stints living in Brisbane and New York. Nevertheless, I always return to my hobby when things settle down.
A few years ago I started to get interested in helping to track down asteroids, more by accident than planned. In addition to finding a lot of material online I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting of the Asteroids and Remote Planets Section of the British Astronomical Association (BAA), in June 2007.
The meeting was excellent, including talks by Roger Dymock, Andrew Elliott, Richard Miles, Peter Birtwhistle, Mark Kidger, Alan Harris and Eamonn Ansbro. It was also timely, as I was soon to take delivery of a 16-inch ion milled Ritchey-Chretien telescope from RC Optical Systems and Paramount ME mount from Software Bisque.
Although I couldn’t have been more pleased with the operation of the telescope, I live in a relatively light polluted part of the United Kingdom, which is also often cloudy. Added to the challenges of traveling for work and balancing life at home (Claire and I have two young children) I felt that the telescope wasn’t being used as much as it should be.
By chance, I stumbled upon GRAS following another BAA meeting at which remote observing was mentioned and after a few calls with Arnie I decided to move the whole system to Australia. The system has now been up and running for less than a month (it is called GRAS-006) but I am already thrilled with the performance.
First it is very efficient: it takes me about ten minutes to check the Minor Planet Center’s NEO Confirmation Page and program the telescope before I leave for work in the morning. Due to the time difference the images are taken during UK daytime, while I am at work and I download and analyze these in the evening.
An added advantage is that I can program and download wherever I am, even when working away, as nearly all hotels have internet access. As a result I have used the system more in the last three weeks than I managed in several months before I shipped it.
Second, and perhaps even more impressive is the difference that hosting in a dark site has made. In the UK I struggled to identify objects fainter than magnitude 19.0, even when stacking images to increase the signal to noise ratio, but this is now easy with a 60-second exposure.
Tests to date show that by stacking images with exposures of between 30 seconds and 120 seconds (depending on the speed of the minor planet) the system can get to between magnitude 21 and 22. I have recovered a few faint minor planets already, including 2006 SX48 at predicted magnitude 22.0 (measured = 21.4) and 2008 GY23 at predicted magnitude 21.4 (measured = 21.6). I simply could not have achieved this from where we live in the UK.
Finally, mainly due to light pollution causing images to look “washed out”, I gave up trying to image in colour over here. The following image shows my first attempt at a colour image at Moorook, taken through luminance, red, green and blue filters, again while I was at work. I am very pleased with it and plan to explore this type of imaging further.
So, in summary, a big thank you to Arnie, Brad and the team for making this happen. I had imagined that one day operating a telescope like this might be possible, though I suspected that it was quite a few years away yet."
Many members of GRAS and the RAS Observatory routinely perform the following research activities: Astrometry, Photometry, CCD Imaging, Remote Astronomy, Robotic Astronomy, Supernova, Variable stars, doubles star research, binary star research, eclipsing variables, comet research, asteroid hunting, Astrophotography, Galaxies, Nebula, Planet, Space, Minor planets, deep space, Gamma Ray Bursters, Astroimaging, astroimager, photography
They use the following equipment to perform their activities: CCD cameras, scientific filters, technical experience, research, telescope mounts, optical systems, Paramount, Takahashi, SBIG, FLI, Astrophysics, CCD camera,
Kevin relates his own story as to how he joined the GRAS Adventure of discovery. Read about Kevin's bold and fascinating adventure as only he could describe the events that led him to GRAS.
Kevin writes:
"I have been interested in science since I can remember and saved up for my first telescope, a 60mm refractor, at the age of ten. I couldn’t see a great deal from our house in London but I was still amazed by Venus, Jupiter and Saturn and since then I have always owned a telescope of one sort or another.
As an adult my challenge has always been (and continues to be) that I have difficulty observing because my work often takes me far afield, including stints living in Brisbane and New York. Nevertheless, I always return to my hobby when things settle down.
A few years ago I started to get interested in helping to track down asteroids, more by accident than planned. In addition to finding a lot of material online I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting of the Asteroids and Remote Planets Section of the British Astronomical Association (BAA), in June 2007.
The meeting was excellent, including talks by Roger Dymock, Andrew Elliott, Richard Miles, Peter Birtwhistle, Mark Kidger, Alan Harris and Eamonn Ansbro. It was also timely, as I was soon to take delivery of a 16-inch ion milled Ritchey-Chretien telescope from RC Optical Systems and Paramount ME mount from Software Bisque.
Although I couldn’t have been more pleased with the operation of the telescope, I live in a relatively light polluted part of the United Kingdom, which is also often cloudy. Added to the challenges of traveling for work and balancing life at home (Claire and I have two young children) I felt that the telescope wasn’t being used as much as it should be.
By chance, I stumbled upon GRAS following another BAA meeting at which remote observing was mentioned and after a few calls with Arnie I decided to move the whole system to Australia. The system has now been up and running for less than a month (it is called GRAS-006) but I am already thrilled with the performance.
First it is very efficient: it takes me about ten minutes to check the Minor Planet Center’s NEO Confirmation Page and program the telescope before I leave for work in the morning. Due to the time difference the images are taken during UK daytime, while I am at work and I download and analyze these in the evening.
An added advantage is that I can program and download wherever I am, even when working away, as nearly all hotels have internet access. As a result I have used the system more in the last three weeks than I managed in several months before I shipped it.
Second, and perhaps even more impressive is the difference that hosting in a dark site has made. In the UK I struggled to identify objects fainter than magnitude 19.0, even when stacking images to increase the signal to noise ratio, but this is now easy with a 60-second exposure.
Tests to date show that by stacking images with exposures of between 30 seconds and 120 seconds (depending on the speed of the minor planet) the system can get to between magnitude 21 and 22. I have recovered a few faint minor planets already, including 2006 SX48 at predicted magnitude 22.0 (measured = 21.4) and 2008 GY23 at predicted magnitude 21.4 (measured = 21.6). I simply could not have achieved this from where we live in the UK.
Finally, mainly due to light pollution causing images to look “washed out”, I gave up trying to image in colour over here. The following image shows my first attempt at a colour image at Moorook, taken through luminance, red, green and blue filters, again while I was at work. I am very pleased with it and plan to explore this type of imaging further.
So, in summary, a big thank you to Arnie, Brad and the team for making this happen. I had imagined that one day operating a telescope like this might be possible, though I suspected that it was quite a few years away yet."
Many members of GRAS and the RAS Observatory routinely perform the following research activities: Astrometry, Photometry, CCD Imaging, Remote Astronomy, Robotic Astronomy, Supernova, Variable stars, doubles star research, binary star research, eclipsing variables, comet research, asteroid hunting, Astrophotography, Galaxies, Nebula, Planet, Space, Minor planets, deep space, Gamma Ray Bursters, Astroimaging, astroimager, photography
They use the following equipment to perform their activities: CCD cameras, scientific filters, technical experience, research, telescope mounts, optical systems, Paramount, Takahashi, SBIG, FLI, Astrophysics, CCD camera,
