Faulkes Telescope Tue 14 July, 2009 14:30 UTC

Around a few months ago, we (the astronomy group) got to use the Faulkes Telescope to get our own pictures of the universe. In the end…we were left with 3 pictures.

lc 5146: RGB (Red, Green, Blue) filters

mgc 7686: H-alpha (hydrogen) filter

M15: RGB (Red, Green, Blue) filters

To get these pictures, we did this:

First we chose which stars/galaxies/clusters we wanted to look at. This was done simply with Stellarium, which gave us the coordinates of what we wanted to look at. It also proved useful as we could also see what would and wouldn’t be visible on the day we used the telescope.
For the next part, we chose which out of the stars we wanted were best and then planned which order to photograph them. This was to save time when the telescope had to shift position between images. With Mr. Pert helping us, this was quickly done.
Finally we could use the telescope. For this, all we needed to do was input the coordinates of the star we wanted and wait for it to be photographed. When Mr.Pert had put in the coordinates, we got a live feed of the telescope moving. In the 30 min time frame, we got the 3 images you see above.
Overall, it was a fun experience that I learned a lot from. If I got the chance to do it again, I would.

by Connor Lynch (Yr10)
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