On Oct 9 we received an email from the Faulkes Telescope team in Cardiff, asking all northern FT users to observe and help collect data on a microquasar, in conjunction with the University of Southampton and the University of Delaware. The Veritas gamma-ray telescope is being used for this.
Microquasars are an "extremely energetic subset of x-ray binaries", that are believed to have jets of material ejected from them at fractions of the speed of light.
The time period for these observations to be made was the 15th - 20th of October. We booked time for the 20th, and as we tried to log on and take control of the telescope a "Server Error 500" notice lit up the screen. We tried using a different computer but we got the same result... We don't know why this error occurred but it denied us the chance of taking part in an interesting (though confusing for us!) project. We were wondering what the server error 500 on the Faulkes telescope means. Can anyone help us?
So, although getting all the coordinates and filters off the FT team, we did not contribute to the microquasar project. This is disappointing, as we really only have time now to continue our basic micro lensing during school.
