FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Serious Observing

[Jeff Hopkins <phxjeff@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've created a web site devoted to astronomy. It's located at

http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html

There are numerous links to various astronomy projects.

 From the AAVSO web site:

http://www.aavso.org/committees/pep.stm

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Are you tired of looking for Messier objects, or NGC objects?

Some folk call them "fuzz-balls" and tend to think that amateur 
astronomers who spend time looking for them could be doing something 
better with their time.

Have you made about the best lunar or planetary photos you can ever 
expect to make with your equipment?

If you have a good 6 or 8 inch telescope that has a drive suitable to 
make photos of the planets, please read on. You can, with a 
photoelectric photometer mounted on your telescope, obtain 
scientifically useful astronomical data. If you have a bright 
polluted sky, it will be less of a bother with PEP than it is with 
photography. What you would be doing is called photoelectric 
photometry of variable stars.
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One project I am interest in is Photometry of Eclipsing Binaries

http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/PEP/obsprgms.html.

http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/PEP/eclipsingbinaries.html

In particular UBV photoelectric photometry (PEP) of long period 
eclipsing binaries. One star system is particularly interesting.

Epsilon Aurigae.

http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/PEP/EpsilonAurigae.html

This is a 3 magnitude star that eclipses once every 27.1 years. Being 
so long, one would expect a fast eclipse. Instead the eclipse lasts 
nearly 2 years. To add to the mystery in the middle of the eclipse 
the star system gets brighter. It's like the largest object in the 
universe is eclipsing the main star and has a hole in the middle. 
During the 1982-1984 eclipse there was a worldwide effort to find out 
more about the system. The the next eclipse begins around 2009.

What can amateurs do with small telescopes in their backyards in a 
large city? It turns out, a great deal. Professional astronomers are 
not able to get telescope time to observe bright stars over a long 
period. By supplying professional astronomers with accurate data on 
bright stars, they usually are more than happy to write a 
professional paper, use your data and you get to co-author the paper. 
Lots of fun.

You do not need dark skies or a large telescope to do 
photometry.Ideally for UBV photometry you would use a photoelectric 
photometer (with a photomultiplier tube) as opposed to a solid state 
device (these are not sensitive in the U band). This coupled with a 
reflector 6" or large objective can work fine. CCD and solid state 
photometry can extend into the red and infrared bands. CCD astronomy 
is normally no where near as accurate as PEP, however.

While 2009 seems a long way off, time goes fast and it's not too 
early to get ready. In fact setting up our equipment and calibrating 
it can take many nights and can extend to months and years. Practice 
is important too.

Anyone who is interested in getting involved, please drop me an 
e-mail. There is also a lot of information on my web site and others. 
This can be a challenging astronomy project, but one that can be very 
satisfying and one that will boost your knowledge (math, science, 
electronics, astronomy, etc.) several orders of magnitude.

Jeff

-- 
                                           Jeff Hopkins
                                            HPO SOFT
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     Phoenix, Arizona                             Atlanta, Georgia
   7812 West Clayton Drive               12170 Boxwood Circle
Phoenix, AZ 85033-2439 U.S.A.   Alpharetta, GA 30005 U.S.A.
    (623) 849-5889 (Fax)               (770) 619-3322 (Phone/Fax)         
         www.hposoft.com               dataman.home.mindspring.com
                                4th Dimension Developer                     
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                BASIC/C/C++ Programmer/Web Site Developer

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