Long-distance imaging with the Bradford Robotic Telescope
Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 11:16 am
Whilst waiting patiently for a clear night here in Bolton, why not have a go at remote-controlled imaging with the Bradford Robotic Telescope on Tenerife?
http://www.telescope.org/index.php
The skies there are clear more often than not!
The BRT Director John Baruch came to talk to us in 2007, and explained that these instruments were set up by his team at the University of Bradford as a test-bed for "robotic" telescope technology, and schools (and individual amateurs) are encouraged to make use of them.
Once you've registered as a user (which is free!) you can login and submit a "job request" - select your target object and choose a camera, filter and exposure time.
The "robot" will then add this to the job-queue, and eventually will email you to tell you that your job is complete - you can then login to the site and retrieve your files for further processing.
Here's an example of an image of M101 which I took with the Galaxy camera in March 2007 (I submitted the request on the 17th, and it was completed on the 31st): Comet-chasing
The "robot" knows the positions of most of the Messier, SAO, NGC and IC catalogue objects, and the planets, so it's easy to target these.
But it doesn't know about comets, so to capture these you need to guess when your job will run and work out their positions (RA and Dec co-ordinates) for this time, If the comet is in the inner solar system (and so moving quickly) - you need to use the wider field Cluster camera to have a chance of catching it in the field of view. My strategy was to choose a time over the school holidays, and submit a job request for the following night - if the job hadn't executed, then I'd cancel it and try again. I did manage a couple of successes:
http://www.telescope.org/index.php
The skies there are clear more often than not!
The BRT Director John Baruch came to talk to us in 2007, and explained that these instruments were set up by his team at the University of Bradford as a test-bed for "robotic" telescope technology, and schools (and individual amateurs) are encouraged to make use of them.
Once you've registered as a user (which is free!) you can login and submit a "job request" - select your target object and choose a camera, filter and exposure time.
The "robot" will then add this to the job-queue, and eventually will email you to tell you that your job is complete - you can then login to the site and retrieve your files for further processing.
Here's an example of an image of M101 which I took with the Galaxy camera in March 2007 (I submitted the request on the 17th, and it was completed on the 31st): Comet-chasing
The "robot" knows the positions of most of the Messier, SAO, NGC and IC catalogue objects, and the planets, so it's easy to target these.
But it doesn't know about comets, so to capture these you need to guess when your job will run and work out their positions (RA and Dec co-ordinates) for this time, If the comet is in the inner solar system (and so moving quickly) - you need to use the wider field Cluster camera to have a chance of catching it in the field of view. My strategy was to choose a time over the school holidays, and submit a job request for the following night - if the job hadn't executed, then I'd cancel it and try again. I did manage a couple of successes: