Tag Archive for 'Telescopes'

SkyMapper & Internship

Published on May 4, 2010 in Astronomical Instruments and Observatory. View Comments Tags: , , , .

Skymapper - project of Australian National University

SkyMapper at Siding Spring Observatory, NSW, Australia

SkyMapper is designed to create the first comprehensive digital survey (map) of the whole southern sky with its 268-megapixel extraordinary wide field camera. It is one of the key projects managed by Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Australian National University.

The survey will consist of more than one billion stars and galaxies to a depth of one million times fainter that what naked eyes can see. By taking multi-colour and multi-epoch images covering the whole southern sky, it allows astronomers to map the dark matter, uncover first quasars and stars formed in the early universe, which are important to the understanding of our universe model. To probe the key aspects of stars, 6 filters (u, v, g, r, i, z) optimised for temperature, surface gravity and metallicity are installed.

After the survey is done, it will be open to public through the web like Galaxy Zoo. Not only public will be rejoiced by the magnificent images,  amateur astronomers will also be fascinated that they can discover supernovae explosions, planet transits and even microlensing events through the survey.

Internship is also available for 2nd year++ ANU students. The application for 2010 has closed and the deadline for 2011 is 5pm 18 March 2011. According to my seniors, the interns are asked to design algorithms to process the humongous data of which rate is 0.8TB/s when SkyMapper goes online. As a 2010 intern, I will write more about what we do in the future. I can’t wait any longer for such thrilling experience.

And yes, SkyMapper is on Facebook.

Hubble Space Telescope Upgraded

Published on May 21, 2009 in Aerospace and Astronomical Instruments. View Comments Tags: , , , , .

hubble-space-telescope-from-atlantisHubble Space Telescope

Our beloved Hubble Space Telescope (HST) launched 19 years ago has now been upgraded by NASA space shuttle mission STS125. The Servicing Mission 4 is Hubble’s last repair mission, so the crew members of STS125 riding on space shuttle Atlantis are the astronauts who touched HST one last time. After the refurbishment of  HST, it is expected to work fine until 2014 and by then, it will be replaced by James Webb Space Telescope (only on infrared).

Hubble Space Telescope is now equipped with 2 new instruments, Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. Its Advanced Camera for Survey down in 2007 and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph failed in 2004 are now back to online. HST is also reloaded with new batteries, six new gyroscopes, a refurbished fine guidance sensor, a new outer blanket layer and a soft capture and rendezvous system.

The WFC3 has higher resolution and wider field of view than Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). It will be used to study dark energy and dark matter, formation of individual star and discover extremely remote galaxy which helps us know more about the early universe. The COS is key to understand galaxy evolution, the formation of planets, the rise of the elements needed for life, and the “cosmic web” of gas between galaxies as spectrograph can reveal the elements by breaking lights into spectrum.

Direct-proof-of-dark-matter

Direct evidence of dark matter. Imaged by HST.

Hubble Space Telescope has long been delivering Earthlings amazing astronomical discoveries and stunning pictures. Now, its ability has been enhanced to a further step that it can do 10x better than before. The secrets of the dark matter and more exoplanets may soon be revealed. We shall anticipate more jaw-dropping discoveries by HST.

I am sure that the info above is not able to satisfied your hungers, read NASA SM4 Essentials. Don’t miss it!

By the way, I am curious about the privacy that the only female astronaut, K. Megan McArthur has. What do you think?

Cracked Corrector Plate: LX90AT

Published on April 12, 2009 in Telescopes. View Comments Tags: , .

shattered lx90 corrector plate 300x225 Cracked Corrector Plate: LX90AT

Did you ever try to break your scope before? I doubt you dare. I maybe the first LX90AT user with the cracked corrector plate.

Here the story begins.

If anyone remembered my previous post about disassembling the LX90AT, you should know why I removed the corrector plate. Yes, I dropped a toothpick into the OTA from the visual back. All of the nightmare started from here. I bought a Purosol Optical (PO below) and their microfiber cloth as I planned to clean the corrector plate. In the end, I cleaned the primary mirror as well because the PO claimed that the solution was enzyme based and would not hurt the coating. That’s true, just that the microfiber cloth left quite a lot of fiber behind.

Continue reading ‘Cracked Corrector Plate: LX90AT’

Galileo Scope Ready To Ship

Published on March 11, 2009 in IYA2009 and Telescopes. View Comments Tags: , .
Aperture: 50mm; Focal Length: 500mm

Galileoscope™ is now on sale at USD15 @ Galileoscope official website.

What’s a Galileoscope? In celebration of International Year of Astronomy 2009, a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers and science educators developed a high-quality but low-cost telescope kit. At just USD$15, you can own the Galileoscope which is even better than the one used by Galileo Galilei himself since 1609.

Continue reading ‘Galileo Scope Ready To Ship’

75 Telescopes Ranked

Published on February 19, 2009 in Telescopes. View Comments Tags: .

If you’re a computer enthusiast, you must be familiar with the benchmark score obtained from 3dMarks, PC Mark, Everest, PCMark, Prime 95 and so on. Is there anything similar to represent the performance of telescope? Well, there’s is and someone did it in the form of scores too.

Credits to Mr.Yoshida Hiroshi, he has done a review on 75 telescopes. He reviewed them visually and scored them. The photographic performance of the telescope is not taken into account. I would say this is just a reference for you but not solely the factor to consider a telescope.

Before buying a telescope, I suggest you read through the reviews posted at forums like cloudynights.com and most importantly, join a stargazing session with someone who already owned a telescope. You will know better what to expect.

Here you read the rankings, cz-telesco.bbs.coocan.jp
The content is in Japanese, you can use Google translator to translate into English or any other language you prefer.

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

Published on May 13, 2008 in Softwares. View Comments Tags: , .

After long waiting since the talk by Roy Gould and Curtis Wong in Feb 2008, Microsoft WorldWide Telescope is finally available for download.

This is a really great art of masterpiece. It features the photos taken by ground-based observatories and space telescopes. There’re terrabytes of images at research grade resolution. I am not sure how to do research with it but it’s totally full of marvelous sceneries. Beware, your harddisk might be filled up with all these images. :P

It also allows you to point your telescope to the target you currently focus on by installing the ASCOM component. This software certainly comes in handy when we do public outreach.

Explore it yourself!

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

PS: I’m going to do a review of this stunning virtual telescope soon.