For the past few months a small team of astronomers from uplands community college have been on a mission to locate a new ellusive asteroid using are schools classes to the Faulks telescope project located in Hawaii and Australia. The study was tedious and extremely hard, we were hoping to get a deep space picture of it but after a lack of information about where in the image to find the asteroid, and bad weather anomalies over Hawaii and Australia we finally conceded defeat and a four and a half month project came to an end. We used a blinking method which means that we take several pictures of an area of space and we flash the pictures and see of we can see a correlation between the pictures but any disturbances like planes and asteroids which ruin the pictures.

Although this mission was a failure we hope to start a new one were we hope to discover something new in our galaxy or the next.
The next three are todays solar filter images of the same asteroid imaged yesterday:

Sky Object Name: 2010 LX15
Taken By: Uplands Community College
When taken: Jun 16, 2010 13:07:00 UTC
RA: 16h47'51"
DEC: -22°44'53"
Filter: Solar
Exposure time: 120 secs.
Instrument: EM03

Sky Object Name: 2010 LX15
Taken By: Uplands Community College
When taken: Jun 16, 2010 13:12:05 UTC
RA: 16h47'51"
DEC: -22°44'53"
Filter: Solar
Exposure time: 120 secs.
Instrument: EM03



by Jordan Harris (Yr10) Badge Winner
(Editor)

[*Ed. Jordan also had the idea to take different colour pictures of the same area of sky, and see if the asteroid movement could be seen by layering the images, but, unfortunately, this did not reveal any more than the above pictures]

Long Exposure Photography

These two pictures were taken by Amy, while a GSCE Astronomy student in Yr 10. She kept the camera very still (on a tripod) and kept the shutter open for a long time.

The length of the sidereal day was calculated using these photos. Knowing the length of the exposure, and measuring the angle through which the stars have moved (actually how much the Earth has rotated), gave a value for the sidereal day. It should be 23 hours 56 minutes. The main uncertainty in this experiment is measuring the angle correctly.

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)
Badge Winner