The trouble with viewing stars in the daytime...

Faulkes Telescope North

Many of us have looked up at the night sky and wondered what's out there. We can see the stars - lots of them - and we see the moon and, if we're lucky and have a little knowledge in which direction to look, we can spot a planet or two.

If we want to look deeper? Learn a little more about our solar system or what's between those twinkling little lights? Well, for years, at Uplands, there has been our GCSE Astronomy class (now held on a Tuesday), and locally there is the Wadhurst Astronomical Society, which meets on the third Wednesday of the month in the Methodist Church, Wadhurst (details on the website).

However, unless there's an event such as a solar eclipse, actual space viewing is difficult in the daytime, because the light from the sun prevents the observation of dimmer objects. Although there are some activities we can, and will, do at school (eg observing and recording sunspots) for studying more distant suns and galaxies we need further assistance...

...and this is where the Faulkes Telescopes come in.

Two large (2m) telescopes have been made available for educational use. In the northern hemisphere, Faulkes Telescope North (FTN) is in Hawaii (Haleakala Observatory ) and in the southern hemisphere, Faulkes Telescope South (FTS) is in Australia (Siding Spring Observatory). The best thing about these two telescopes is they are in nighttime during our daytime, and we can obtain full and exclusive use of them for our half-hour (previously booked) sessions.

As long as there's access to a computer and the internet, the telescopes can be robotically remote controlled from anywhere (I've heard that someone even used an iphone when he couldn't get computer access!) to locate any visible astronomical object of interest (with limits on the brightness), which can then be photographed. The image can then be downloaded for use from the Faulkes Telescope website.

We have now tried out the telescope a few times.

The first trial was a bit of a flop, because there was a glitch in the system and we couldn't get the telescope to take pictures. The second effort was more successful and, using FTN, we managed to take images of the Ring Nebula in Lyra (M57) with colour filters and the hydrogen alpha filter (dark splodges on images are dust on telescope):

FT North:Tue 9 June, 2009 10:30 UTC

M57 (Ring Nebula in Lyra): RGB (Red, Green and Blue) filters

M57 (Ring Nebula in Lyra): H-alpha (hydrogen) filter

as well as a these two interacting galaxies:

NGC 6621: RGB (Red, green, blue) filters

and a cluster of galaxies:

NGC 6027: RGB (Red, green and blue) filters

This year we will be introducing the telescope to all year 7 groups as part of their 'Forces and Space' course, as well as hopefully visiting local primary and secondary schools. More news on this to follow...