Mixed Results

We have been using the Telescope for the past few days with mixed results. It has been raining a lot in Australia and there have been many other problems, see the example below. Despite this we finally managed to get a good few images on the Southern Telescope. We have learned a lot about observing over the last few weeks and are hoping for the best because the projects will be judged soon. We have been in contact with Edward Gomez from the LCOGT and he has helped us with our project which has been very challenging in many ways.

For the past week we have been cleaning up the blog, putting in pictures and checking spelling on the posts. School is finishing this week so a lot was happening (test etc.) It was hard to get the whole team in one place for our group photo and to get our observing time done every day. We still managed to get the observing done. This is one of the latest targets we observed (called MOA-2009-BLG-163) which was taken on the 28th of May

We hope to get more observing done over the next week or so. Our next session on the southern telescope is on Monday and we might have more news then.

The impact of weather on astronomy!

For the past few days it has been raining constantly in Australia and this has denied us access to the telescope. We are using optical telescopes rather than radio or space telescopes. Radio telecopes (which don't rely on visual light) are barely affected by weather and space telescopes aren't affected at all (obviously!). So, we are doing a juggling act with the weather, the visibility of the target and the proper functioning of the telescope. But we have high hopes for today as there is very good weather and as far as we can tell the telescope is working fine.

Observations interrupted

We received an email from Yiannis Tsapras, a research astronomer from LCOGT, explaining that no one could observe last Thursday due to a software incompatability. So we were not alone!

For the past few days our observations have been interrupted. Yesterday, having booked the Hawaiian telescope, we were unable to use the telescope due to bad weather conditions. Today, we were first unable to find a computer, or one with steady internet access. Now, we have also just learned we would not have been able to observe anyway, because it was raining again!

So, we have been in a rut for 5 days. Encountering errors and bad weather has meant we've been sitting at our computers, unable to do research for our project.

Once this is fixed, we will be coming up with a rota for observing. But as things have been slow, we haven't been able to arrange anything properly.

Hopefully with the next post, we will have better news.

Light curves, good news and bad news

Hello, I'm just going to pick up from where we left off in our last blog, and talk about the light curves. But first, some good news!

The LCOGT (Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network) have been in contact with us. They are the group which provide our Microlensing Targets, and collect all the data from the observations, then put them into Light Curve Graphs. They have offered to help us with our project, and we can help them with theirs. They seem very happy that a school group is involved in the search for new planets, and would like to improve their system as much as possible.

This is great news for us, as even being in contact with astronomers from such a group is an honor. We will be replying to their e-mails tomorrow, and we hope that we can learn a lot from them.

Now onto the Light Curves.
A light curve graph maps out the brightness of the star during the microlensing event. The light gets brighter, then dims in a steady curve. However, if there is a sudden change to that light, a blip occurs on the graph, and it means you have just found a planet. The change in brightness due to a planet, can last anything from half an hour to a day, depending on how fast it orbits the star. Here is a great example of what this blip looks like.

And, to show our work on this project, we hope to be able to upload examples of Light Curves before and after we submit our data.


Now, on to the bad news.
We were supposed to observe for an hour today, but we were unable to do so as an "unusual error" was occurring. We could move the telescope to point at the right place, but couldn't do anything after that.

We thought it might have been the weather (as the telescope is designed to automatically close if it rains) so we checked the weather status. However the humidity, temperature and wind were all reasonable, and we could see no reason for the error to be caused by weather.

We stayed there for almost all of the hour, in case it worked again. We tried looking at various different things, and we couldn't use it at all. We are all fairly disappointed about this, as it cuts into our observing time greatly.

Also, the telescope is completely booked out for the weekend, so we have to wait until next Monday to observe! But we will just have to work on another aspect of the project until then.

Observations and light curves

Yesterday and today we have been using and observing with the Southern Faulkes telescope. Above is a product of our microlensing experiment. However, there have been a few hiccups along the way...
The first problem was confusing Greenwich Time with Greenwich Summer Time. When we booked the telescope, the time was UTC(coordinated universal time) . We found out that UTC is the same as Greenwich, but we aren't Greenwich. We're Greenwich Summer Time. We also learned about the Julian Day system. Every day in every calendar is unified by the Julian Day. Today is JD 2454964. It is a simple way for astronomers to stop confusion when talking about dates using different calendars.
To read more...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day

So, all that means is we had an extra hour to prepare.
We checked out the OGLE recommended target list to find out what we'd be observing, and the exposure times for each target, etc. From there we also got a star finder map with the the light curves made up from other astronomers data. Our observations of the targets from the OGLE list are automatically transferred to the light curves, if the targets names are entered correctly. We hope that a planetary microlensing event will occur during our time observing.
We also had to check to see if the stars were visible at the time. We used the Staralt website to do this.
This website is very useful as it tells you when the stars are visible, and where in relation to the moon they are. This is important, because if the moon is too close, the telescope will not let you observe. It can also change the quality of of the observations.

When we took control, we started out filling in (accurately) the RA and DEC (like the longitude and latitude of the sky) and the OGLE name of the target. Then we move the telescope to point at the coordinates. We select the filter - Filter i'- and we chose the exposure times. They were mostly around 3 seconds, so it didn't take long. We re-exposed each target 3 times before moving on. This provides an even more accurate reading of the star.

On the Light Curve an accurate reading is a point, but when inaccurate, there is a line with the potential error. We hope to avoid this, as we are using a very strong telescope.

Today, however, we were unable to access the most recent target list, so our readings may not be as useful over all, but we coped with the various problems (internet access down, no target list) well. We also had enough time to make 25 observations, so we are pleased with the outcome.

We have also been granted our request for extra time. As part of our project we are allocated 90 minutes of telescope time, in 30 minute slots. However our project requires a lot of time, so we now have an extra 120 minutes.

Starting our project and our roles in the project

Today, at 1:30pm, we will be using the Southern Faulkes Telescope(pictured on the left) to work on our project microlensing. We are very excited about this. We will now explain our roles in the project.

Basically, we will all participate in researching background information for the project. However, when it comes to our blog we will each do tasks which are suited to our strengths. Ciarán Coen and David Mooney will use their I.T. skills to maintain, manage and design our blog. Niamh Butler Thornton and Clara Sherry will write the blog entries and are in correspondence with Dr. Gregg Hallinan, Mike Ryder and Deirdre Herbert. They will also arrange our group meeting times, and make sure that we book the telescope for times when the school computer lab is free.

We will all be involved in using the telescope, but we don't yet know who will be typing the actual commands.

As a team we work well together and our strengths complement each other greatly.
we hope to post another blog soon with our results from later today.

microlensing; our project

We have just learned that our project will involve microlensing. So, what is microlensing?

Well, microlensing (or Gravitational Microlensing) relies on two stars aligning by chance. One is close, the other far away. The light sent out by the stars bends due to gravity. This means that if you repeatedly took pictures of the stars, you would see the light curve of the brightness, if you put the data on a graph.
However(and this is the interesting bit) if there is an exo-planet* orbiting one of those stars, we can spot it! A planet disrupts the light as it travels towards us. When the light is plotted on a graph, this creates a 'blip'. There will be a jump in the smooth curve to indicate a planet. The blip may be large or small, all depending on when it orbits, etc...
For more information on Micro-lensing:http://lcogt.net/en/education/activity/join-our-search-new-planets

(* an exo-planet is a planet that is not part of our solar system)


So, as you can guess, we are very excited. We have booked time for this Monday the 11th on the Faulkes telescope in Australia, and have invited our mentor Dr. Gregg Hallinan to take a look at our work.
If you're interested in more, this is a video explaining how the light bends, and how we see it with a lens.


The history of micro-lensing involves many famous scientists including Newton, and Einstein. To learn more visitthe Wikipedia page.

Our first day in NUIG

We went the to the astronomy center in the physics department in NUIG, along with our teachers Ms. Herbert and Mr. Ryder. There we met with our soon-to-be-mentor Gregg Hallinan, who had booked us a session on the Faulkes Telescope. We arrived early so we would be able to take the Real-Time Interface Demo and become familiar with the telescopes workings. In the demonstration we entered the names and coordinates of Saturn, Pal3 and the Eagle nebula and it showed us what the telescope would do and how the images would look if we had control of the telescope.

We then took control of the telescope we decided to take a picture of the Sombrero Galaxy(M104). We experimented with the exposure times and decided on a basic colour filter. The exposure time we used was 120s but when we got the picture in return we were confused because it was mostly blue. After a bit of investigation we realised it had started to rain at the site of the telescope, and to protect the telescope lens they closed the dome. This meant the galaxy only went through the blue filter before it began to rain. Here it is on the the top of the entry after playing around on DS-9.

Unfortunately the picture wasn't as clear as we would have liked it to be but the dust lane was very prominent so it's a success for a first time try. We hope we have improved with our practice on the Real-Time Interface Demo and the demo's on the Faulkes Telescope support documentation so that next time the pictures will be clearer and greater in quantity.

This is a link to the support documentation and the Real Time Interface demo:
We recommend taking the online filter course as we found it very informative and helpful.

As our picture of the M104 was not of great quality we used the DS-9 software to change colour so that we could highlight possible hidden detail in the image. We have posted our favourite.

We discussed, throughout the day, what this project would involve,what careers there were in astronomy and basic questions about our universe and what a job in the astro-physics department would entail.

We completed this day very enthused and informed and eager to dive straight in.

Ciaran, Clara, David and Niamh.