Ideas for astro society project?

[michaelmorris]

At tonight's meeting of my local astronomical society one of the members put forward the suggestion that the society as a whole carry out some form of scientific research or scientific project. We don't have a society observatory or our own buildings.

Any suggestions for projects greatly received.

Thanks.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[jambouk]

All sections of the BAA take data/reports (solar, lunar, variable star, meteor, planetary, minor planets...). Else they might have some ideas.

As research in other areas, you need to think where you would envisage "publishing" it. Looking at that "publication" may give you some ideas.

Do you have any association with near by astro societies? Is it worth asking them if they are doing anything which you could get involved with or just to give you ideas.

Do you have any links with a local physics/astronomy department at a university. Might be worth talking to them as they may have someone who has an idea but no observers to implement it; also could tap into their expertise at conducting a research project.

Worth also contacting the royal astronomical society; i know they have grants, but again may well have some guidance or ideas.

The society for popular astronomy also seem very active, and again may have ideas.

I'm not sure what the federation of astronomical societies does - worth checking them out.

My society is doing something with radioastronomy and meteor detection, and if that interests you i can put you in co tact with my president who seems to be coordinating that. I know that work is linked with local sixth forms so again another option to think about as a local science teacher may have an astro interest.

Depending on what sort of skills, kit, interest there is amongst your members, there may be other agencies you could approach and ask for guidance; exoplanet detection, dark sky quality/light pollution....

Make a cloud chamber (i want to) but not sure what research you could do with that.

It would be really impressive to get involved in some basic research whilst participating in your hobby

Good luck.

James

[jambouk]

Some interesting links from Google:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/sky-and-telescope-magazine/beyond-the-printed-page/how-to-get-involved-in-amateur-research/

http://www.iau.org/public/themes/citizen-science-projects/

http://www.amateurastronomy.com/STARbook.html

http://www.lowell.edu/LARI_welcome.php

http://www.hobbyspace.com/Astronomy/astronomy2.html

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-funded-program-helps-amateur-astronomers-detect-alien-worlds/#.VGWiWYrfXCQ

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CjTDAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=amateur+astronomy+research&source=bl&ots=j6rcLvs38D&sig=X3W0Il8CrKb01FdrZVhoRWo3ElE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eaJlVMqTPNPeaoTIgNgH&ved=0CB4Q6AEwATgU

http://www.astronomycast.com/2007/12/episode-66-how-amateurs-can-contribute-to-astronomy/

I hadn't realised there was so much out there on the topic.

James

[ronin]

Check out what the situation is with Gaia, they were supposed to be getting data from the satellite and had ideas of public help/input/support. Although I will say that Gaia was supposed to be functional about September and it seems to have gone quiet. So I am unsure what the situation at present is. Suspect there is something not right as one or two talks on Gaia at Cambridge Uni seem toi have evaporated.

[Dave]

Check out what the situation is with Gaia, they were supposed to be getting data from the satellite and had ideas of public help/input/support. Although I will say that Gaia was supposed to be functional about September and it seems to have gone quiet. So I am unsure what the situation at present is. Suspect there is something not right as one or two talks on Gaia at Cambridge Uni seem toi have evaporated.

I heard earlier this week that they are having a few issues with calibration at the moment.

Until they are happy that the data they are getting back is top-notch, they have delayed getting it out to the public, hence the delay.

But it will come.

[ronin]

I was curious as I was at a talk about Gaia a year back and I asked about public input and activities and they said that they were hoping for some and that it would be on the website (forgotten the address). However 2 talks I saw mentioned for recent have sort of disappeared and not a mention of Gaia around.

I read of a talk at the local astro club about a new Atlas of the Milky Way but that is not concerning Gaia. The topic but the absence of Gaia started me wondering what the situation is.

[callump]

Hi Michael,

for something that everyone could contribute to, variable star work would be do-able. Can be done with naked eye, binoculars, simple DLSR setup, or telescopically (with or without camera) - so should be possible for a wide range of members to contribute to. 

Maybe start with some short period variables, so you can try and get some results over a few weeks and learn the techniques...

I am sure Roger Pickard or Gary Poyner who both live relatively locally would be happy to provide help / advice / mentoring, or maybe run a kick off meeting for you...

Callum

[Astrobits]

If any of you can video lunar occultations through a telescope then a project you can become involved in is laid out in a message sent out to many occultation groups a few days ago.

I copy Dave Herald's message:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This is a rather long email – but I urge you to read through to the end.

IOTA has been approached to assist with the efforts to detect exoplanets by the Kepler satellite.

BACKGROUND

We all know that the Kepler satellite has been extraordinarily successful in detecting exoplanets. There is plenty of information on the web about how Kepler worked. A key element was that it pointed on the same part of the sky for the whole mission – with that being located far from the ecliptic, in Cygnus. This all came to an end in May 2013 when the number of fully functional reaction wheels was reduced to two, preventing it from maintaining stable pointing.

Subsequently the technicians worked out a way that they could get stable pointing of Kepler. In essence, it uses the light pressure of the sunlight on the solar panels to stabilise the satellite. The end result is that the satellite can point at a region of the sky close to the ecliptic for a period of about 83 days. This mechanism is explained in the Wikipedia item on the Kepler satellite

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)

This has led to the K2Mission, which is set out at:

http://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/K2/

The observing field locations and dates are set out at:

http://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/K2/Fields.shtml

Also available from this location is a list of targets for each field – as they become established. At the moment the target catalogues are only available for fields 0, 1 and 2.

WHY LUNAR OCCULTATIONS?

The reason for our involvement is explained by James Lloyd as:

=======
I am a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, where I work primarily
on studies of extrasolar planets. Recently I have been working on following
up exoplanets discovered by the Kepler spacecraft
(http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html), for which high
spatial resolution observations are very important, since additional stars
in the system hosting a transiting planet will dilute the transit signal and
possibly create false positives from diluted eclipsing binaries. Kepler has
been an extra-ordinarly successful mission, but unfortunately due to a
reaction wheel failure ended its primary mission a little over a year ago.
However, a workaround has been developed where the radiation pressure
torques on the spacecraft are balanced, eliminating the need to control the
spacecraft roll with a reaction wheel. This torque balancing only occurs
when the telescope boresight is oriented along the ecliptic.
 
Fortuitously, this means that rather than observing the high ecliptic
latitude field it had previously been observing, Kepler, in an extended
mission dubbed K2 (http://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/K2/) will now be
observing a series of fields on the ecliptic, searching for transiting
planets. Therefore, many of the stars for which we require high resolution
observations will be occulted by the Moon.
 
I would like to approach you as president of the International Occultation
Timing Association to enquire if your organization would be interested in
partnering with me and my collaborators to co-ordinate lunar occultations of
stars of interest for exoplanet studies. We are planning to conduct
occultation observations with large telescopes, but there are of course many
occultations we will not be able to observe, so observations from the
amateur community will be extremely valuable.
====

and

====

The observations we are looking for are conventional lunar occultations to detect binary stars. Detecting the exoplanets themselves is indeed essentially impossible with lunar occultation. However, if there is an unknown or poorly known binary in a system that has an exoplanetary transit, the light from that binary dilutes the transit depth. Since the inferred size of the planet is measured from the transit depth, this results in errors in the planet size, in some cases leading to mistaking a diluted eclipsing binary for an exoplanet.

====

and

====

Yes, it's definitely advantageous to get the observations going as soon as possible. I just came back from a meeting Baltimore reviewing the proposals for campaigns 4 and 5, and there was a lot of interest in this when I talked to the NASA program officers.

====

That is, a lunar occultation will not result in the detection of an exoplanet. However a lunar occultation can detect close binary systems – and this will have a direct effect on the interpretation of the data from Kepler2.

What is being asked of us is to make video recordings of lunar occultations of K2 target stars, and obtain a light curve.

Personally, I think this is an exciting opportunity to become involved in exoplanet detection!

CHALLENGES

This project has some practical challenges, as follows:

a. The K2 mission has 10 fields. However the target lists have only been established for the first three fields. Further target lists will become available in the months ahead.

b. the great majority of stars in the target lists are far too faint for lunar occultation observations. However from the first three fields there are 6365 stars that are present in the XZ80Q catalogue we use for lunar occultation predictions. Of those stars 347 are brighter than mag 9.0.

c. the best time to observe a lunar occultation and get a decent light curve – especially of a faint star – is in the period 3 days before 1st quarter to one day after – and a similar period at last quarter

d. the motion of the moon (and in particular, the motion of the orbital nodes) means that for most stars there are only one or two ‘good’ occultations in a 9-year period.

e. A consequence of (d) is that we need to start observing relevant stars as soon as possible. In particular, we should not wait until we have established the reporting mechanism.

ACTION SO FAR

I have made a number of changes in Occult to implement the K2 program. These include:

- matching the Kepler2 target catalogues (as they become available) to the XZ80Q lunar occultation catalogue

- flagging stars in the XZ80Q catalogue as being a star in the Kepler2 catalogue

- when an occultation prediction involves a star in the Kepler2 catalogue, a message is include – like:

   *** A light curve is desired as X 85235 is in the Kepler2 program {ID = 202062458}

 

All this will allow observers to identify lunar occultations of relevant stars – so that they can make a special effort to video-record the occultation.

 

In addition, I have gone through the Archive of Lunar Occultation observations, and identified 891 video (or photoelectric) lunar occultation observations made since 1990 of stars in the current Kepler target catalogues. We will be trying to make contact with the observers in the hope that at least some recordings are still available for fresh analysis. This identification of past video observations will be ongoing as new Kepler2 input catalogues are released – so don’t throw out any old video recordings!!

 

WHAT NEXT

Within the next few days I will release an update to Occult (v.4.1.3.0) that will highlight predictions of lunar occultations of Kepler2 stars. Also to be released at that time will be an update to the XZ catalogue. It is essential that this update is downloaded, as it contains the flagging of the stars that are in the Kepler2 target catalogues. That XZ catalogue update will also include a new file called XZinKepler2.dat – which lists the XZ stars in the current Kepler2 input catalogues. The XZ catalogue will be regularly updated as more Kepler2 input catalogues are released.

 

Once this is available, observers will be able to start looking for events they may be able to observe. In general, the moon is within a Kepler2 region for less than 24 hours (and at the moment there are only three regions with targets identified). Combine that with telescope aperture and the phase of the moon – and observable events may not be large in number (at least at the moment). To get an idea of how often such events might be visible from your location with your telescope, in the Occult Lunar Occultation predictions check the box under ‘3.Objects’ for ‘Doubles only’; generate predictions for 6 months; then look for messages like:

   *** A light curve is desired as X 85235 is in the Kepler2 program {ID = 202062458}

 

When I do that for November and December this year, dates to look out for are Nov 10 and Dec 14.

 

Then try to observe some events and derive a light curve!

 

THINGS STILL TO BE WORKED OUT

We will need to establish a reporting regime for these observations. This may take a little while, as we need to establish what the report should contain, as well as the reporting mechanism. [One possibility is a tool similar to the current tool in Occult for reporting double star occultations to a single collecting point.] However this is not an excuse to delay the making of observations!

 

 

Comments/queries etc welcome!

 

Dave Herald
Murrumbateman, NSW
Australia

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I suggest that you join  occult-software@yahoogroups.com and download the Occultation ( the programme is called "Occult" but for obvious reasons don't search for it ) software to predict occultations for your location.

Nigel Wakefield

[michaelmorris]

Thanks for all the great suggestions.

I've posted a selection of them on the society's newsgroup.

[Astro Imp]

Just seen this posted by another member (teleskopjo) :- https://simoninthelakes.wordpress.com/nwaf-presentation/

[jambouk]

Michael, what did he society decide on?

James