News / Education
Amateur Astronomer provides observational data to Hubble
Australian Amateur Research Telescope AART
Peter Lake an amateur astronomer and owner of the AART Australian Amateur Research Telescope provides data to support the Hubble Space Telescope's cosmic origins spectrograph.
G11 – Owner: Peter Lake, Australia
Astro Systeme Austria 16” Astrograph Telescope
FLI ProLine PL11002M CCD camera
Class 1 CCD
V842 Cen first came to attention in 1986 as a Nova and follow up studies by Warner/Woudt published in the journal of physics identified it as exhibiting similar behavior to GW Lib. Thus both these stars are now the subject of Dr Paula Szkody's study using the cosmic origins spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
This observation task was somewhat more difficult than last week's effort as the variable star map coverage is somewhat problematic as there are few comparison stars of similar magnitude. However just 7 arcsecs and 20 arcsecs away are two known catalog stars that were selected for comparative magnitudes. Which effectively places them close to the annulus / sky background settings of Photometric measurement tools. At 1.22arcsec per pixel on my trusty FLI that's a tight shot!!!! Normal practice is to try and get the annulus to 2-2.5 times the FWHM of the star. So its tight!
Here at least I was able to adjust the annulus and the inner sky radius such that 0323-0709135 was kept away from the target calculation area. (ie between the two)
The image below I have zoomed in a little to illustrate the difficulty of the task.
One surprise was that the catalog star 0323-0709135 seemed to be a little brighter visually than expected. Instructions from AAVSO alert 418 indicated 0323-0709135 was expected to be slightly fainter than its near neighbor 0323-079110 at 14.88.
Either way V842 Cen appears to be 15.43 at my measurement which I submitted to the AAVSO this morning. I suspect the tightness of the shot and 0323-0709135 sneaking into 0323-0709110's sky background may have V842 Cen a little closer to 0323-0709135's magnitude than it actually is - you can see this in the photo.
Do you want to take your own Deep Space images?
Astronomy.FM and Global Rent-a-Scope have teamed up to bring you a free trial account to use on two of their remote-operated observatories. Our special trial account will give you 100 points of free access to GRAS's one-click imaging systems on their remote telescopes, G3 (in New Mexico), G13 (in Australia). Registration does not require a credit card or any commitment from you. At the end of your trial, you will be able to upgrade to a full-use GRAS account that will let you access all of their telescopes.
Mr. Peter Lake - Owner of GRAS-011 and GRAS Affiliate
G11 – Owner: Peter Lake, Australia
Astro Systeme Austria 16” Astrograph Telescope
FLI ProLine PL11002M CCD camera
Class 1 CCD
V842 Cen first came to attention in 1986 as a Nova and follow up studies by Warner/Woudt published in the journal of physics identified it as exhibiting similar behavior to GW Lib. Thus both these stars are now the subject of Dr Paula Szkody's study using the cosmic origins spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
This observation task was somewhat more difficult than last week's effort as the variable star map coverage is somewhat problematic as there are few comparison stars of similar magnitude. However just 7 arcsecs and 20 arcsecs away are two known catalog stars that were selected for comparative magnitudes. Which effectively places them close to the annulus / sky background settings of Photometric measurement tools. At 1.22arcsec per pixel on my trusty FLI that's a tight shot!!!! Normal practice is to try and get the annulus to 2-2.5 times the FWHM of the star. So its tight!
Here at least I was able to adjust the annulus and the inner sky radius such that 0323-0709135 was kept away from the target calculation area. (ie between the two)
The image below I have zoomed in a little to illustrate the difficulty of the task.
One surprise was that the catalog star 0323-0709135 seemed to be a little brighter visually than expected. Instructions from AAVSO alert 418 indicated 0323-0709135 was expected to be slightly fainter than its near neighbor 0323-079110 at 14.88.
Either way V842 Cen appears to be 15.43 at my measurement which I submitted to the AAVSO this morning. I suspect the tightness of the shot and 0323-0709135 sneaking into 0323-0709110's sky background may have V842 Cen a little closer to 0323-0709135's magnitude than it actually is - you can see this in the photo.
Do you want to take your own Deep Space images?
Astronomy.FM and Global Rent-a-Scope have teamed up to bring you a free trial account to use on two of their remote-operated observatories. Our special trial account will give you 100 points of free access to GRAS's one-click imaging systems on their remote telescopes, G3 (in New Mexico), G13 (in Australia). Registration does not require a credit card or any commitment from you. At the end of your trial, you will be able to upgrade to a full-use GRAS account that will let you access all of their telescopes.
