Error 500 and failed Microquasars observing.

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.

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.

Starting up

Hi.
First to inform you all, this year is the International Year of Astronomy and all over Ireland there is an astronomy competition for secondary schools.
We are given a project, a mentor and must create a blog containing our research. The winners will win a trip to Chile and get to use the VLT (Very Large Telescope). To date we don't know what our project is but, along with Gregg Hallinan, our mentor (a galactic astronomer based in NUI Galway), Ms. Herbert and Mr. Ryder, the teachers who got us involved, we have been getting familiar with the Faulkes Telescope online.
That's all for the moment, but once we get started you'll be hearing all about us.

Ciaran, Clara, David and Niamh.