Red Barn Observatory Techniques

Red Barn Observatory MPC/IAU H68

Established 2006

Red Barn Observatory Techniques

Near Earth Object Observing:

Many times, Near Earth Objects will appear to move at a high-rate of speed across the sky. Due to this reason, I prefer to center my scope on an area approximately 1/2 hour ahead of the object (assuming I am imaging the object for an hour) and collect a set of images. By doing this, the object will pass through the center of the field of view midway through the hour of exposures. The auto-guider that is built into the SBIG is perfect for this purpose. After I determine the exposure length (according to the speed and magnitude of the object), I calculate how many exposures I will be able to collect during that time frame. For example, if the exposure length is determined to be 30 seconds, I will be able to collect approximately 120 exposures during that time frame of one hour. Between exposures, I program CCDSoft to allow a 5 second delay between exposures to give the auto-guider time to make any fine adjustments to the scope drives. In CCDSoft, all of the settings must be verified (auto-save, file location, exposure, etc...)

After all settings have been verified, image collection can begin. Normally, I will give the equipment and software approximately five minutes to work. If anything will go wrong with the equipment, likely it will happen within the first five minutes. Once the hour is up and all images have been collected, I can work on the next object or go ahead and perform the astrometry on the object.

Asteroid - Sky Survey Work:

This technique allows all survey images to include a "known object". Most of these objects will be numbered objects and observations of these objects will likely not be necessary. But, very good astrometry on nearly any object is normally welcome from the Minor Planet Center. Planning the nightly survey is simple. I first determine approximately where in the sky I want to search that night. Then, I will query the MPChecker located on the Minor Planet Center's Web site, and have it to report all objects within a radius of 300 arc-seconds. Often, this will produce a large number of objects. Now, I go down the list and choose a wide range of objects. Using MPO Connections, I write a script that will command the scope to slew to a number of these objects - often 10 to 15. This will produce 10 to 15 nice fields that can be used for survey images and will contain at least one known object. Astrometry is produced and submitted from all objects detected.

Comet Hunting:

This is a technique that I am currently setting up. The Meade 0.3 - meter LX200GPS is a f/10 scope and can be adjusted to f/3.3 with a focal reducer. At this focal length, the scope and CCD combination produces a field of view of around 16 x 24 arc-minutes. Adding spacers between the focal reducer and CCD will further reduce the focal length, but greatly reduce the quality of this images. I've experimented with the scope at f/2.4 and the images look good. At f/2.4, the field of view produced is about 22 x 33 arc minutes and the image scale is around 5.1 arc-seconds per pixel (almost useless for accurate astrometry). The goal is to add another spacer between the focal reducer and CCD to produce a focal length of f/1.5. Working at this focal length will allow a nice 1/2 square degree field of view, but the image scale will be 8.24 arc-seconds per pixel. No astrometry will be reported unless a new object is discovered.

Once this technique is fully functional, I will use MPO Connections to automatically control the CCD imager and telescope to survey the sky very near the horizon and where the sky surveys have not searched within at least a week. Approximately 10 square degrees of sky will be searched each night and objects as faint as magnitude 16 is expected to be detected. This is a proven method to discover comets.

¬Back Home

Last modified 07/15/2007 06:46 PM -0400

This web site has been active since March 1, 2006

For Information send e-mail to INFO